Mark Levin pushes back on Democrats' Roe v Wade outrage
'Life, Liberty & Levin' host Mark Levin calls out Democrats' protests, rhetoric about abortion after years of demanding Americans 'follow the science.'
This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty, Levin," June 26, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TREY GOWDY, FOX NEWS HOST: "LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN" is up next.
MARK LEVIN, FOX NEWS HOST: Hello, America. I'm Mark Levin and this is LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN.
And this, about an inch and a half thick, is the opinion and the dissent of the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case that has received so much attention.
And isn't it amazing that as soon as the decision was issued that people were giving their opinions. Now, you know, they didn't read it. You know, Nancy Pelosi didn't read this, and yet she came out and made a poisonous statement, filled with lies intended to provoke, because the Democratic Party has had an entire plan, e-mails, get out the vote, grassroots operations, protests, money on commercials, and you're seeing it play out in anticipation of this decision that was leaked from, I would argue, a liberal clerk on the Supreme Court.
This is an incredibly important decision. Why? Because it's a constitutional decision. It's a decision that recognizes a Court that accepts the fact that it is not all powerful.
You know, one of the great things about President Washington was he decided that he would not be King, many ways he could have been. He said, no, I'm going to follow the Constitution.
We have activists on the Court and activists who lobby the Court to basically turn the Supreme Court into a super left-wing legislature, just as a backstop to Congress, the President, and the bureaucracy.
So even if the left loses elections, it can never lose the issue and that's pretty much what's going on here, so let's start at the beginning.
Roe versus Wade reversed almost 200 years of American Jurisprudence, almost 200 years. There is not a word in this Constitution, not one about abortion. There's not a word in the Federalist Papers about abortion. There's not a word about abortion in Madison's notes or other notes that were taken during the Constitutional Convention.
So obviously, that had nothing to do with the decision in Roe versus Wade. Roe versus Wade was a long op-ed. It was a decision looking for a constitutional argument, but it never found it because there is none.
And in fact, in his decision, this is my first book "Men in Black" about the Supreme Court. Harry Blackmun, probably one of the dumbest members of the Court in the last hundred years, he said prior Justices have looked at the First Amendment. They've looked at the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment. They've looked at the penumbras and emanations. They've looked at the Ninth Amendment. They've looked at the 14th Amendment.
Wherever we look, whatever we look, and whatever the justification and then he says Roe v. Wade that abortion is a fundamental privacy right. But even in Roe versus Wade, this is important, stick with me on this. There were limitations.
The trimesters, remember? The third trimester, the science at the time for sure, but the third trimester they argued, the state had an absolute interest in regulating or if it chose to, to even ban abortion.
That case was overturned. Roe versus Wade was already overturned by a subsequent decision called Casey. The Supreme Court went even further. It basically allowed without getting into all the weeds, abortion on demand if a state decided that there would be abortion on demand.
When the first draft of this decision was leaked in February, Chuck Schumer ran to the Senate floor to put up a vote that he knew would lose, and what did the Democrats propose? They didn't propose reinstating Roe, they proposed a bill that would allow abortion up to the last second of birth throughout the country, blowing away every restriction that exists in virtually two-thirds of the states.
This is a party that supports abortion, the most extreme kind of abortion - - infanticide right up to the last second. And when you do partial birth abortion, just a reminder, and I won't show you the graphics, they take a very, very big needle, syringe, they stick it into the soft spot of the top of the head of the baby. They drain the brain out. They turn the baby around, now dead, and pull it out by its feet and that baby suffered horrifically.
You see if we follow the science, that's a baby. We know the baby feels pain. If we follow the science, Roe versus Wade would have died of its own weight because viability as Roe argued, will be more than the last three months as technology continues to expand. It what have been the last two trimesters.
So Roe could never stand up its own weight. The Supreme Court broadly expanded it.
Now, overturning Roe versus Wade.
Now, the Court says clearly, this is only about abortion. It says it over and over again in its opinion. It's not about contraception. It's not about marriage. It's not about those issues.
So Nancy Pelosi who didn't read the opinion, she came out immediately after this decision was released on Friday and she said it is about contraception and it is about marriage. Why? Because most Americans do not believe in extremist positions on abortion up to the last second like Nancy Pelosi does, like Chuck Schumer does, like the Democratic Party does. This party stands for infanticide, the Democratic Party.
So she has to try and expand it. She wants to upset gay people. She wants to upset people who never contemplate abortion, people who use contraceptives. It has nothing to do with any of that. Not just because the Court said it, because the Court's rationale does not include it.
Now, abortion could actually be expanded in certain states under this ruling. This was a very moderate ruling. The Court basically said, we don't have power. How many times have you heard institutions say that? Almost never. Court said, we don't have power here. This is up to the states and the people in the states. You figure it out and you handle it.
What that means is, you can have more lenient, radical abortion laws that expand on existing laws in states depending on who gets elected. Abortion right to the last second, unfortunately, from my perspective, is not only still permitted, it can be added in different states.
And now Lower Federal Court Judges are not going to get to overturn decisions by the people's representatives in the State Legislatures. There's a thousand Federal Judges, some of them are really kooks, radical leftist. We've seen them. We've watched them.
They're just flesh and blood. They're lawyers in black robes.
And so it is not up to them anymore to make these decisions. It's up to you to make these decisions. So again, it's quite a moderate decision.
This Court could have held if it was of an activist mindset, but from a different perspective, that that is a baby. That from the position of the Court and the science, they could have argued that that is a baby that a woman is carrying. And they could have said from there, we're going to invoke the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to protect the second human being involved in this issue, the baby. Therefore, abortion is unconstitutional.
Theoretically, it could have made that decision, too, but it didn't. It said we don't have any power.
And we look at the 10th Amendment. Things that are not granted the Federal government, even the Court don't belong to us. At some point, we have to accept the fact that our Constitution is a brilliant document. We don't have to accept the radical left agenda, whether it is coming out of Law Schools or newsrooms, or the Democratic Party. This is the United States of America where we have a rule of law.
It's not the United States of the Democratic Party where they rule no matter what.
So they could have taken that last trimester and expanded it. They didn't. They could have said, this is an Equal Protection issue.
So New York and California and those states that have what's pretty close to infanticide, they will continue to. You will see sanctuary abortion states popping up all over the place because apparently they are obsessed with this issue.
But more than anything else, the Democratic Party has exploited this issue, exploited it for political gain.
You hear their mouthpieces like Pelosi and Biden and the others talk about women like they represent all women. Suddenly, they're able to define what a woman is. Isn't that weird -- while they're destroying women's sports, and women's identification, through executive orders and regulations.
But now they represent all women. Do all women support abortion on demand? Do all women's support abortion, partial birth abortion right up to the last second?
Does every person in every state support the abortion laws in New York and California, which are so radical so extreme, that they're really only applied to nations like North Korea and Communist China? Is that what women in this country believe?
I've said before, and I'll say it again, again, from my perspective, why don't we have documentary showing exactly what partial birth abortion looks like? Because the Democratic Party when they talk about abortion, it is fairly amorphous.
They're talking about right up to the last second. They voted on it, just a few months ago, and but for the Republicans and Manchin out of West Virginia, they would have gotten it.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been quoted before. I don't quote her because she is some kind of sage. I quote her because she is a radical leftist, or was, and she said more than once, but in 1992, in the New York University Law Review where she was interviewed, she said: "Roe versus Wade 'halted a political process that was moving in a reformed direction,' and thereby I believe prolonged divisiveness and deferred, stable settlement of the issue."
It's not the first time the Court has done that. In Dred Scott, an activist Court basically upheld slavery. It took a Civil War to undo that decision with over 700,000 casualties.
You have Plessy versus Ferguson, the advocates for Roe versus Wade who really are not advocates for Roe versus Wade, they're advocates for partial birth abortion and abortion right up to the last second -- infanticide. That's what their advocates were.
It took over half a century to overturn, separate but equal as equal in the Plessy case. That's a Supreme Court decision, with Brown versus Board of Education.
The Supreme Court in the 1940s ruled in a case called Korematsu in which Japanese-Americans and Americans of Japanese descent, up to 120,000 of them, were uprooted from their homes and businesses and moved to internment camps in the interior of the country. Their businesses were taken from them. Obviously, that was an unconstitutional decision. Ronald Reagan addressed that specifically with reparations for the property that was taken from those who are still alive or their children.
This is a grand day, because the Constitution wins for once. When the Democratic Party is trying to destroy the Court, the Court stood firm.
When you read, if you read the dissent, you will find that it is another long op-ed. It's an editorial.
There is no constitutional basis for what they wanted to do. And sadly, when you read Chief Justice John Roberts' decision, it demonstrates that he is basically a RINO on the Supreme Court. He wanted to find a middle way. Let's uphold this Mississippi legislation, but do we really have to go all the way go all the way? Go all the way? Go all the way to do what?
Those five Justices, the three appointed by Donald Trump said, we do not have this power. Again, how often have you heard an institution of the Federal government say that? They should be celebrated rather than threatened, rather than have an assassination attempt on one of the Justices, rather than have to beef up their security and put riot fences around the Supreme Court.
This would be the same Nancy Pelosi pushing this radical, violent agenda, who set up this January 6 Committee where their own sycophants on it, dragging the country through that.
But you know who we have to thank for upholding the Constitution and life? You know who we have to thank? The man that they hate, former President Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump was not immersed in this issue, before he was elected President, but he made a promise that he will put Justices on the Supreme Court whom he believed would uphold the Constitution, especially in this respect. That's what they did, all three of them.
But for the Trump presidency, this would not have happened. This is why he deserves far more appreciation than he gets. And this is why, among other reasons, he is hated and detested by the opposition to the Constitution and to the civilization who want to see him in prison.
Never forget that.
When I come back, we have two great guests: Mike Pompeo, we want to talk about Communist China and their threat to the United States and Iran. And Brett Tolman, former US Attorney. We will continue this discussion on the Supreme Court's decision in this case and others.
I'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Welcome back, America. It's great to have former Secretary of State, former CIA Chief, Mike Pompeo with us, but also Mike Pompeo, even though he is sort of boxed in, in many people's minds on foreign policy actually has a breadth of knowledge when it comes to domestic policy and the law. So, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, Mr. Secretary, what do you make of this Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case?
MIKE POMPEO, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, it's a good decision. It's a good decision because it's deeply grounded in our Constitution and in America's founding and its history.
It's a lovely thing to -- it'll protect more human lives. It'll return this debate to the states, where it was for goodness, a hundred fifty to two hundred years.
We should be proud of that decision today because the Court got it right. I hope everybody who is talking about the Constitution and making sure that the liberty and democracy stand recognizes that this decision certainly did that. They gave power back to the states. They didn't pull it into the Courts. They let the political processes be where they ought to be.
And for that, it is a remarkable decision overturning a horrible decision from 1973.
LEVIN: How often have you seen in your time in Washington or observing government an institutions say, "We don't have power? We don't have the authority. Give it back to the people in the States."
I've never seen it before.
POMPEO: Yes, it is -- if it's happened before, we'll have to go look pretty hard for it, Mark.
The only thing I've ever seen that is kind of like that is actually a sad example of it, where I saw Members of Congress say they didn't have power that they actually had, because they didn't want to take responsibility for their actions, right?
They had the responsibility to their constituents, and they said, no, no, we're going to let the Courts sort that out. This is just the reverse of that.
They got their institutional power exactly right. They honored our founders and our nation and our Judeo-Christian heritage. And at the same time, it will give the opportunity for those of us who believe that each one of these babies is precious the chance to go out and make that case to the American people.
LEVIN: Secretary Mike Pompeo, it is my contention and I might be wrong, I'm curious about your opinion. You wrote a fantastic piece in "The National Interest" called "China and economic security in the shadow of Ukraine" and it's much broader than that, going in about how they're building up their military, how we're kind of flatlining in this regard.
My concern is China, as you point out, is preparing for war and we are preparing for nothing. What do you make of this?
POMPEO: Yes, Mark. I think that's true, in some sense. And in some places, I actually think it's worse than that. We're moving backwards.
We've moved wokeism, diversity and inclusion into the top of our national security interests, right? We've put climate change at the top of that, instead of actually doing what we did, remarkably, for four years.
We protected the United States of America without resorting to the use of our military power to do that in a way that had been done 20 years, 30 years before that. We got deterrence right in the classic model of peace through strength that came from President Reagan in how we took down the Soviet Union in the 1980s and early 1990s.
That is a historic precedent that America has walked away from, frankly, under Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans too prepared to send the 82nd Airborne to hard places, instead of using the real power of America. That's what I wrote about in this piece.
The threat from the Chinese Communist Party is perhaps even greater than that from the Soviet Union. The fight in Ukraine today is connected to that deeply and our economic interest.
If you're a machine shop worker in Wichita, Kansas when I ran a small company there making machine parts, or you sit in Des Moines, or Manchester, these things really impact you. What happens in Kyiv or Moscow doesn't stay there. We have to get this right on both to protect our nation and make sure that we have the opportunity to continue to be prosperous in the way we have for the last couple hundred years.
LEVIN: But Mr. Secretary, we have a President who doesn't rally the nation. We have a President that doesn't work with Congress to build up our military. Congress on its own is trying to build up the military.
You can see China is on the move. I mean, unless you're an ostrich and have your head in the sand, whether it's West Africa, whether it's the Solomon Islands, whether it is the Panama Canal, the South China Sea, which they have really an Iron Fist on right now, they are preparing to invade Taiwan, they've destroyed Hong Kong.
They're putting a lot of resources into a lot of countries in order to take their ports if they can. They're threatening the Philippines and Vietnam. They're threatening South Korea. They're threatening Japan.
What is it about this administration? Are they really that stupid?
POMPEO: Boy, President Obama talked about pivoting to Asia, did nothing. This President says "We're back." They are indeed back to the fecklessness when it comes to challenging the Chinese Communist Party.
You know, I think there is -- on this one, Mark, I think there's three things. First, I think you have a President who is unwilling to use the power that America has, our economic might to protect the things that matter.
So you, you rip through a list of things all across the world. Ports in Africa and Asia, Southeast Asia, South Pacific, that is all true. Don't forget the decimation that's been inflicted on the world because of the Wuhan virus and we shouldn't forget the billions of dollars in wealth that have been stolen by the Chinese Communist Party right here at home and the millions of American jobs that flood from that.
This administration doesn't see that. I think, in part it is because of the climate change folks who put that as their top priority. The first person to go meet with Xi Jinping from this administration wasn't Secretary Blinken, it wasn't Secretary Austin. It wasn't President Biden.
It was former Secretary of State Kerry, the climate guy who was sent to Beijing to tell them this is what America demands, not something that remotely gives Xi Jinping any heartburn to lie to John Kerry.
And second, I think they're in the thrall of big institutions in the United States of America. There are a lot of greedy companies making a lot of money working alongside the Chinese Communist Party today and whether it's Hollywood, whether it's our technology companies, or even financial institutions, they are working in China in ways that are deeply detrimental to the people of the United States of America and I think the Biden administration as allowing them to do that in ways that they have to know, they have to know hurt ordinary Americans.
LEVIN: You know, Mr. Secretary, maybe I'm getting too old, but I remember a day when corporations were patriotic, and I remember a day when athletes would leave their positions on a team to join the United States military.
Today, they trash the country. Today, they make a fortune with our enemy, China, whether it is sneakers or jerseys or whatever it is, same with corporations like Apple, Coca-Cola, and many, many others.
When they come back, here's the big question I'd like to ask you. If we were to have a confrontation with China in the next several weeks, who would win?
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JON SCOTT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR: Welcome to "FOX News Live." I'm Jon Scott in New York.
Legal observers tell us the Supreme Court's overturn of Roe v. Wade could be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to future controversial decisions by the High Court. Those decisions could include rulings on matters of immigration, environmental protection, and religious freedom and they could come down as soon as this week.
The decision to strike down abortion rights triggered a number of protests across the country this weekend, most of them peaceful.
President Biden is in Germany urging fellow G7 leaders to remain united with Ukraine. Mr. Biden says the group has already agreed to ban Russian gold imports.
The Russian invasion is a key focus of the meetings which will stretch over the next two days. G7 leaders also will discuss how to combat skyrocketing oil prices and inflation.
I'm Jon Scott. Back now to LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN.
LEVIN: Welcome back, America.
We're with the former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who was a fantastically successful Secretary of State.
But Mr. Secretary, China versus the United States. Who would win?
POMPEO: We will win. We will win.
But unfortunately, if we could ask that question five years or 10 years from now, and we continue to follow the same policy of weakness that the Biden administration has put forth, I'm not confident that I would be able to answer that same way.
This struggle, by the way, it won't just be military, it won't be about just ships and tanks. I'm a former M-1 tank guy from a long time ago. This will be fight economically. In fact, I would argue the Chinese Communist Party has been at war with the American people economically for two decades and we just took it, we turned the other cheek and lots of companies did make a lot of money.
But the fight will be fought not only economically, but in cyber, and in space. Today, we would prevail. But this is not a given. The Chinese Communist Party is intent on making sure that the next American Secretary of State or the one after that will answer that question differently and everything turns on American leadership.
And if we are prepared to do the things that we know we must do to protect and defend America the same way President Reagan did in the 1980s, we've got to do the same thing here in the 2020s to protect and preserve American prosperity.
LEVIN: In the few minutes we have left, Mr. Secretary, Iran. Could the Iran situation been bungled worse than it has been under Joe Biden who took President Trump's policies, turned them inside out. We had Iran on the run. The leadership, they are on the run. The people hate their leadership, their so-called leadership.
And now they're at Ground Zero with nuclear weapons.
POMPEO: The only thing that I think is worse that he has done was what happened in Afghanistan. Thirteen American lives, left Americans behind, that sent a signal to the world that America was weak and no longer prepared to do the basic things that we've always done to protect our own.
Iran is a perfect example. We had isolated them like never before. We built out the Abraham Accords. We had a great partnership with the nation of Israel, an important friend and ally in the region and Biden team, the same game -- Wendy Sherman, Susan Rice -- the whole gang came back and just ripped it up.
And now, in the Middle East, folks won't take our phone calls. The Israelis now have some doubt about whether we'll really support them if they have to do something really difficult.
This is bad for Israel, bad for the Arab States, bad for the Gulf, bad for America and all they had to do was continue our policy. We had the Iranian leadership, the kleptocrats, the theocrats running that place. We had him in a bad place, we had given a lot of power to the Iranian people, and they just threw it all away.
LEVIN: When you look at the world, when you look at foreign policy. Do you see anything this administration is doing right? I don't. It's like, where can we go in the world today to kick over every bucket that we see? Is it an ideological thing? A competence issue? What is it?
POMPEO: I think it is ideology and incompetence. I've been surprised by that. These are the professional government people, Mark, you know, these folks love government that's the left. I thought at least they would have bad policies executed competently, they've proven to have terrible policies executed horribly.
I can't think of a place, I can't think of a nation that respects us more, or wants to be our ally or an adversary who fears us less than just, what, 18 months ago. That saddens me. That's not political.
For me, this is about America and my kids and all of our grandkids. I pray that they figure this out and get it right, but they've put ideology and climate change at the top of their list and they have executed so poorly that frankly, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines around the world are more at risk too and that really, really breaks my heart.
LEVIN: And something like gas and diesel fuel, with the prices going through the roof and potential shortages. Doesn't that have an incredibly negative impact on the United States military and its ability to physically and mechanically operate?
POMPEO: Of course. Remember, President Biden said he was going to move to make all of our military equipment run on green energy. That's nuts, Mark. It is unfounded.
We talk about the party of science. Sign me up for being part of that. We all know they're going to continue to use fossil fuels and the fact that they're now twice as expensive, three times as expensive means probably fewer training hours for the capability for the young soldier or the young Marine to actually go train and be prepared. No, you're absolutely right.
It puts our military more at risk as well and not having American energy produced here, when we have to go ask some knucklehead in Venezuela or some Iranian or some Russian for energy. That's really risky for our military as well.
LEVIN: Well, Mr. Secretary, I want to thank you for your service, starting with your military service all the way up to Secretary State. I want to thank you for the clarity of your voice and I want to thank you for being a very loyal gentleman. I mean, you haven't written a tell-all book or done any of those things and God bless you, sir. Appreciate it.
POMPEO: Thank you Mark. Bless you, too. Have a great day.
LEVIN: We'll be right back
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Welcome back, America.
We have wonderful a guest, Brett Tolman, former United States Attorney from Utah, with the Tolman Group, a former Federal prosecutor, but a good former Federal prosecutor. We have a lot of former Federal prosecutors out there, many of whom talk and don't know what they're talking about, but you do, Brett Tolman.
Brett, first things first: The decision coming out of the Supreme Court. First of all, the decision on school choice, the decision on the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the decision when it comes to abortion. Don't we see now a Court or a working majority on this Court that believes in complying with the Constitution and leaving all the rest to the other branches, to the other entities, the states and to the people thereof?
Isn't that exactly what the framers intended?
BRETT TOLMAN, FORMER UNITED STATES ATTORNEY FROM UTAH: Well, Mark, it is and it's so overdue that we became accustomed as a country of not having a Supreme Court that guided us in a fashion that was steady and that was consistent with the underpinnings of the Constitution and the intention of the framers was so substantial in regard to what the government would grant and what it would not grant for purposes of rights.
I look at the decisions coming out, and then for the first time in my lifetime, really, I am 52 years old now, first time in my lifetime I see that the Supreme Court is reining in its activism and that should give a lot of comfort.
I know that the country is divided, but reining in activism on the Supreme Court is something we've all hoped would happen at some point.
LEVIN: Yes, it is an amazing thing to watch the critics, is it not? First of all, they have no sensible arguments. On the one hand, they want an activist Court. On the other hand, they don't want an activist Court. If this Court had ruled that abortion is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause, they wouldn't have liked that. That kind of an activist Court.
So basically, what they're pushing for, isn't it, is the end justifies the means? And if they win elections, they want to push the agenda, if they lose elections, they want the Court to push the agenda and then they have their permanent bureaucracy pushing the agenda.
In other words, they want power all the time.
TOLMAN: Yes, I was really sort of stunned by the President's comments after the decision. You know, to quote him, he indicated that this decision was inconsistent with commonsense and the Constitution. That is the exact opposite of what the Court has done in this decision and other decisions.
They have ruled consistent with commonsense and consistent with the Constitution and for the President of the United States to really be driven so angrily by politics that we no longer are giving any deference to the Supreme Court analyzing very thoughtfully what the Constitution says and what it doesn't say, is a remarkable time that we live in.
But I also saw Mark, I saw that the media has put out statements such as the Supreme Court has taken away a constitutional right.
Well, the reality is, the Constitution never granted a right to abortion. And ironically, they did grant a right to possess firearms in this country.
And so we have upside down analysis and it is as poorly done as what the President of the United States has stated.
LEVIN: You know, we get these lectures from the left. We get these lectures from the Democratic Party, from the media. We get these lectures from the January 6 Committee. They wave around the Constitution. They talk about Donald Trump. They talk about what took place and that he was trying to undermine an election and election result and conduct a coup and all the rest of it.
And yet, their very presentation and their process is about the most anti- constitutional process I've ever seen, certainly in public. No opposition, no exculpatory evidence, no contrary witnesses, no Republicans on the Committee who are actually Republicans, no ability for people to answer their accusers because they have now potential criminal charges hanging over their heads, so they have to plead the fifth.
Meanwhile, they talk about defending democracy and defending this system. What do you make of this?
TOLMAN: You know, I look at it sometimes as a trial lawyer and if the case that, you know, the Democrats and Liz Cheney and Representative Kinzinger were putting on, if this were a court of law, can you imagine that, Mark, the Judge would be holding them in contempt for manipulating evidence, for refusing to hand over exculpatory evidence, for refusal to present a fair assessment of the evidence that they have, for the grandstanding. We'd have sanctions, we'd have contempt of court, and the case would be thrown out.
But not in the court of political ideology. Instead, we see that the Democrats, the left, they can't win on the merits of the argument. And I keep saying this, I'd love for, you know, someone on the left to sit down with me and give me the arguments that they have in all of these areas that you outlined that are based, in fact, based in the law that would support the position they're in.
They can't, and so they resort to media, they resort to distortion and manipulation and we all have to sit back and watch as though there is credibility to it.
And you know, I don't find credibility to any argument they currently are pursuing.
LEVIN: You know, we have members on this January 6 Committee, Brett Tolman, who are demanding that we pack the Supreme Court, are attacking the independence and the reputation of the Court who are demanding that the Senate get rid of the filibuster so that they can control the outcome of the decisions on the Court.
We have members of this Committee who support the lawlessness on the border and do not support a President who is supposed to be enforcing the law under the Constitution, and I could go on and on and on, who basically cheered on the riots that took place in 2020.
Now, we have to listen to them go on, painfully, cringe-worthy about the Constitution and democracy as they run this Stalinist show trial with the support of "The New York Times," which covered up the Holocaust, with the support of "The Washington Post," which also covered up the Holocaust, like we have to take moral lessons from these people.
When we return, I have a question for you. We now have the Justice Department that's getting information that this Committee has gathered, gathered, in my view by violating in many respects the Bill of Rights through the backdoor because it's a quasi-criminal investigation. That's what they've said.
What do you make of that? We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Former US Attorney, Federal prosecutor, Brett Tolman. I've had, you know, discussions with Alan Dershowitz and others, and we are so thoroughly disgusted with this January 6 Committee and where we have legal analysts and others out there saying, "Today, we learned ... Today we learned."
We learned nothing, because nothing that they've put out has been challenged by anybody, not even in the media, not even by most legal analysts, and now, we have a Justice Department that obviously has a grand jury. They issued a ton of subpoenas last week in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, on this issue of obstructing an election. A former senior Justice Department official, they took out the electronic devices out of his home in the middle of the morning and made him stand in the street in his pajamas.
They don't treat criminals this way, typically. They certainly don't treat Democrats this way.
You saw Peter Navarro, they put him a leg irons and in handcuffs. What's going on here?
TOLMAN: You know, for the party that has screamed for the Attorney General of the United States to be, you know, independent, and to be consistent, we have Merrick Garland, who is either a puppet or he is a very dangerous, you know, man at the helm of the Department of Justice, and either way is unacceptable.
We see inconsistent treatment of, you know, political opponents and for the first time in my career, you know, I spent many, many years over a decade as a Federal prosecutor, Mark, and have fond memories and a lot of pride in the work that we did, but it is not the same Justice Department. It is not the same FBI that I worked with.
These are individuals that are driven now by politics and agenda, and they are doing so and they're doing it blatantly. And I think they're doing it that way, because they're having difficulty winning on any of the merits.
And so they use DOJ as an arm of the executive agenda. So when you see the January 6 Committee, and them gathering evidence and manipulating that evidence, and it's very clear that they are, not giving any credibility to evidence that would contradict the narrative that they want to push.
I fear for a Department of Justice, who I think 15 years ago would have laughed at the referral to a Department of Justice who will now take it seriously.
LEVIN: Like that's a very, very important point. What about this -- this January 6 Committee, they seem to be investigating everything, but January 6th.
They said they had a thousand witnesses. How about 1,001? Like Nancy Pelosi? What the hell did she do when it comes to securing that building? And furthermore, one of the members on that Committee talks about, you know, one of the things we want to do is get rid of the Electoral College.
So they have this massive agenda. Every member has to be approved by Nancy Pelosi and they're investigating essentially the Republican Party and conservatives who supported Donald Trump in the various states, stretching the definition of obstruction of Congress, obstruction of a congressional proceeding in ways we've never heard of before trying to lay a criminal predicate to indict the former President of the United States. What do you make of that?
TOLMAN: The Commission as they so call, it is shocking to me when you compare it to our most recent Commission, the 9/11 Commission. That was a bipartisan Commission that was willing to criticize both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration for failings of national security.
They criticized the FBI. They pointed out what was done well, what was not done well, and it was something that the American public, I think had some confidence that we're at least going to get some answers.
Here January 6th, we don't know who Ray Epps is still. We don't know who put the pipe bombs there. We don't know what orders Nancy Pelosi gave, and why it appears that she refused to build up security on the recommendations of the Capitol Police.
We don't have answers to any of those that really would tell us what happened on January 6, and why it was such a monumental failing.
LEVIN: And if you're going to investigate the election, why are you just investigating Republicans? How about all the lawyers in the 600 lawsuits the Democrats brought to change the election laws right up to Election Day? How about all the state Democrat officials -- Governors, Secretaries of States, Boards of Elections, elected Supreme Courts as in Pennsylvania, who changed the election laws and violated -- in violation of the Federal Constitution and Article II? How come none of them are testifying? How come no evidence is being presented?
And the answer is exactly what you said: They don't want to know. This is just, the ends justifies the means.
Well, Brett, I want to thank you for your courage and speaking out. I want to thank you for your past service, too.
You're a fantastic lawyer. Take care of yourself.
TOLMAN: Thank you, Mark.
LEVIN: We'll be right back
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Welcome back, America.
I want to thank the five Justices on the Supreme Court, who have done their duty, faithfully executed the responsibilities under enormous political and even criminal threat and the failure of the Democratic Party and the Department of Justice to defend them in word and action.
And I'm going to close tonight's program with Ronald Reagan's famous quote which is in the last paragraph of "Liberty and Tyranny."
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same or one day, we will spend and our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free."
I couldn't say it better.
See you next time on LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN.
END
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