Ben Ferguson (3:42)

Morning Update and it starts right now.

Ben Ferguson (3:45)

Story number one, we have new breaking.

Ben Ferguson (3:47)

News and it deals with former President Joe Biden. He ignored, we're now being told, the Department of Justice's warnings over legally flawed auto pin pardons. Senior Justice Department officials were left scrambling to, quote, interpret the sweeping clemency orders former President Joe Biden approved for thousands of federal convicts in his final days and final hours in office. And they chastised the White House for falsely portraying the releases of as limited to, quote, non violent offenders. This, according to internal emails, have now been revealed. The records obtained by the Oversight Project and reviewed by the Washington examiner now reveal that former Associate Deputy Attorney General, the department's top career official at the time, Bradley Weinsheimer, raised alarms immediately after Biden issued three auto pin signed warrants on January 17th covering nearly 2,500 inmates were now learning. In a January 18th message to the White House counsel and the Department of Justice Office of the Pardon, attorney Weinsheimer wrote that one warrant granted clemency for offenses described to the Department of Justice was so vague it could not be lawfully even carried out, quote, unquote. He went on to say at the time, I think the language is highly problematic, adding that to interpret the document properly, we will need a statement or direction from President Biden. He also suggested that Biden provide a list as to each inmate listing the offenses that are covered by the commutation, which he described as the clearest and least problematic alternative. Moving forward, Weinsheimer and Biden needed to clarify the meaning of the warrant language, quote unquote, so the DOJ could implement it in the manner intended they claim by President Joe Biden. Here is an exact quote from the email. It said this. Given the above, I think it is best that we receive a direct statement on direction from President Biden as to the meaning of the warrant language. This will then allow us to give full effect to the commutation warrant in the manner intended by the President. In the absence of such a statement or direction, I AM concerned option 3 above will be the interpretation that is given to the warrant. While that is a logical construction, legally it can't possibly be what the President intended. So I would like to avoid that outcome. One other important note, the email says in communication about the commutations. The White House has described those who receive commutations as people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading. As you know, even with the exceedingly limited review we were permitted to do of the individuals we believe you might be considering for commutation action, we initially identified 19 that were, quote, highly problematic. That was based only upon running our initial priority list against the list of those who had submitted clemency petitions, a small percentage of the overall total from the White House. Even in that number, we identified violent offenders, including those who committed acts of violence during the offense. Now this is a screenshot of a much longer email exchange. This email was directly warning the Biden White House that its language about clemency subjects was, quote, untrue or at least misleading. Weinsheimer also warned the ambiguous order could unintentionally wipe away convictions for many violent felons. He pushed back against the White House messaging that the clemency recipients were only nonviolent drug offenders. That's not true. Among them, for example, was Russell McIntosh. Now this is not someone you would ever describe as a, quote, nonviolent drug offender. How do we know this? Russell killed a woman and her two year old child to protect his drug business. Stephen Fowler, whose enforcer tortured an informant with a butane torch and plays Anderson, a Gangster's Disciple member, was implicated in multiple murders and multiple kidnappings. This according to a commutations receipt page from the Department of Justice. Now, all of the people I just named, those are not nonviolent drug offenders as the White House claimed. And despite these warnings, the White House released a statement in Biden's name touting the mass commutations as relief for, quote, non violent drug offenses and saying it was the largest clemency action in U.S. history that we apparently were supposed to celebrate it. Well, in July, in the interview with the New York Times, I want to remind you Biden insisted he personally made all clemency decisions, calling Republican claims that aides misused the auto pin ridiculous and quote, false. Now, amid scrutiny of his aides use of the automated signature device to place his name on the pardon documents, Biden said he approved broad categories of inmates and left staff to apply those standards, defending using an auto pin as a practical tool to process the sheer volume of cases. However, the DOJ emails illustrated that inside of Biden's administration officials were at least, at the very least very uncertain about what Biden was actually ordering them to do and were forced to openly challenge the accuracy of the White House's public explanation about what they were executing. Now Weinsheimer, previously accused of loyalty to Biden administration, he's had warnings by the way, are notable. Why? Because given his long reputation as quote, a non political DOJ official, a career ethics lawyer, he was previously accused in fact by Republicans of playing a behind the scenes role in shaping what critics derived as Hunter Biden's sweetheart plea deal while his father was the President of the United States of America. So you need to know that to put it in perspective. In fact, according to multiple reports, Weinsheimer met directly with the first son, Hunter Biden's defense counsel in 2023. This is a move that raised questions about whether the DOJ's leadership was actually undermining former U.S. attorney David Wein crisis purported independence in that entire case. Now, his career at the DOJ ended with a partisan dispute in February. Shortly after Donald Trump returned to office, the administration reassigned him to a new sanctuary cities task force.

Ben Ferguson (11:56)

Rather than accept the politically charged assignment.

Ben Ferguson (11:59)

Weinsheimer accepted a federal employee buyout, part of a broader wave of career officials who resisted what they viewed as attempts, they claim, to politicize the DOJ's work altogether. So if you look at exactly what we now know, it is clear that there were efforts that are happening right now to recover additional records related to the Oversights Project's pursuit of the internal DOJ emails to the White House. And that is ongoing. And also the email exchange that we just mentioned that was revealed on Tuesday, we now know was released by the office of Ed Martin, that is Trump's appointee serving as the US Pardon attorney and head of the DOJ anti weaponization group. So yes, even more evidence is coming out that not only did Joe Biden ignore his own department of justice warnings over his legally flawed auto pin pardons, but they just didn't care and they were giving them out to people that were violent criminals, not non violent offenders, as the White House claimed in the final days in office.

Ben Ferguson (13:07)

Now, story number two.

Ben Ferguson (13:09)

We all know the Democrats are losing their minds over the redistricting that just finally became official in Texas. But the real reason behind the gerrymandering all over the country in Democratic states may become even clearer now because of the data we're now seeing. There's a new study out that says that Democrats are losing registration race in all 30 states attract party affiliation. In fact, 4.5 million voters swing now towards the GOP. And that's exactly why you're seeing Gavin Newsom saying we're going to gerrymander our entire state. The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging support with no end in sight, according to the shocking analysis of new voter registrations. Now, this is all being fueled by President Donald Trump's big gains among men, younger voters and Latinos. In 2024, more new voters nationwide chose to be Republicans than Democrats for the first time since 2018, according to a report from the New York Times which relies on voter registration Data compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm. Perhaps more troubling for Democrats, the data suggests Democratic Party activists can no longer rely on the party's tried and true methods to reverse the trend, leaving panicked party leaders and pundits unsure how to, well, resurrect the party's electoral prospects. And the numbers are staggering. Quote, of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party affiliation, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single state between 2020 and 2024 elections, and often by a lot. Quote, that four year swing towards Republicans and added up to 4.5 million voters. A deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from. Which goes back to why are Democrats doing what they're doing now? Well, it's clear when they're this far behind, they need to change something quickly. That could include counting illegal immigrants right in the census to help them with the election map. It could also be giving them amnesty so that they could vote quickly for them. And then there's the other problem that Democrats have. Who is actually running the Democratic Party? What do they stand for? And why are they so against the American people and putting illegal immigrants ahead? These are all questions that Joe Biden should have dealt with, the Democratic Party should have dealt with, and what did they do? They alienated Americans. And so the takeaway is this. We now have the data that clearly Donald Trump was a messenger that the American people wanted. He talked about putting Americans first instead of illegal immigrants. He talked about securing the border instead of having open borders. He talked about law and order instead of having lawlessness. And that's exactly why the Democrats right now are in so much trouble with no end in sight. And even the New York Times admitting that Donald Trump fundamentally changed the election map quite possibly for years to come.

Ben Ferguson (16:43)

Thank you for listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And for more in depth news, also subscribe to the Ben Ferguson Podcast and we will see you back here tomorrow.

Podcast Announcer (17:00)

This is an iHeart podcast.