← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The Battle for Somaliland, Trump takes a BITE out of DC Violence & DOJ Warned Biden Over Legally Flawed Pardons Week In Review
00:31:41
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Welcome. It is verdict with Ted Cruz Week in Review. Ben Ferguson with you. And here are three of the major stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week. First up, Senator Cruz calling out China on creating a new country in Africa. Why is the media not talking about it? Well, we have the details that you need to know. Also, DC Crime is down as Donald Trump commits to making sure that people that live in the District of Columbia are actually safe. And the data is truly staggering. Just how quick the president was able to restore law and order to a city that had been broken for decades. And finally, the auto pin. Joe Biden was actually warned by his own Department of Justice that what they were doing was problematic, yet he did it anyway. Why did he not pay attention to the warnings? And maybe it was because he wasn't actually even in charge. We'll have that for you. It's the Weekend Review and it starts right now. I want to move to this other story, and it's one realistically that probably 99% of this audience doesn't even know about this because no one's covering it. It doesn't mean that it's not an extremely important story. It is you calling out China. It's an epic fight over creating a new country in Africa. This reminds me of that story we were talking about not that long ago, about China creating an island in the middle of the ocean, based in the middle of nowhere, that we help give them air superiority. If there was a massive world event that took place, another world war, it would give them the ability to reach places they currently cannot reach. And now we're hearing that they're looking at creating a new country in Africa. You're trying to bring that to light and also stop it.
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Well, that's exactly right. So I am the chairman of the Africa Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And so I've been chairing a number of hearings, in particular focusing on the growing influence of Communist China in Africa. Africa has become a major battleground where China is trying to gain influence trying to gain power and do so at the expense of America. And so what? This last week I wrote a letter to President Trump urging the President to recognize a new country in Africa. I'm going to read you the letter. Dear President Trump, I write to urge your administration to formally recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent state with sovereignty within its 1960 borders. Somaliland first gained independence and international recognition in 1960 before voluntarily uniting with Somalia later that year. Since moving to reclaim its independence in 1991, it has functioned as a stable, self governing, democratic nation. It has held several peaceful elections since 2003, marked by strong voter turnout and peaceful transitions of power. Somaliland has emerged as a critical security and diplomatic partner for the United States, helping America advance our national security interest in the Horn of Africa and beyond. It is strategically located on the Gulf of Aden, putting it near one of the world's busiest maritime corridors. It possesses capable armed forces and contributes to regional counterterrorism and piracy operations. It has enabled the opening of a Taiwanese representative office in the capital of Hargeisa, sought to strengthen ties with Israel and voice support for the Abraham Accords. It has proposed hosting a US Military presence near the Red Sea along the Gulf of Aden and is open to critical minerals agreements that would support our supply chain resilience. The US Somaliland Partnership is robust and it is deepening. Somaliland faces mounting pressure from adversaries due in no small part to its role as a partner for the United States and our allies. The Chinese Communist Party is using economic and diplomatic coercion to punish Somaliland for its support for Taiwan as well as to undermine that support. The government of Somalia has played an unfortunate role in these efforts. In April 2025, the CCP arranged for Somalia to bar Taiwanese passport holders from transiting into Somaliland. And Chinese support to Somalia is benefiting anti Somaliland groups working to erode its sovereignty. Despite these threats, Somaliland remains committed to forging closer ties with the US and is actively engaged in enhancing military cooperation, counterterrorism efforts, and economy and trade partnerships. To do so to the greatest effect and the greatest benefit to American national security interest, it requires the status of a state. I urge you to grant it that recognition.
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This is obviously significant. What are the chances that this could move forward this way?
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Look, I'm optimistic. I think there's a real chance the President will recognize Somaliland. As I said, they've been an ally to us. They've been an ally. This is a Muslim country in a very dangerous part of Africa and they've shown real courage. They've shown real courage standing with the United States. They've shown real courage standing up to China. They've shown real courage siding with Taiwan which infuriates communist China. They've shown real courage embracing Israel and the Abraham Accords. I think Somaliland would eagerly join the Abraham Accords. And so it is in America's national security interest, I believe to recognize Somaliland. And probably the best confirmation of that is this week. China put out a public release blasting me, absolutely furious that, that I made this public call to recognize Somaliland. And, and, and here's what China put out as their statement. They said, quote, a U.S. senator in.
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A letter boasting of so called U.S.
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Recognition of Somaliland region launched baseless attacks against China and China. Somalia relations. The Chinese embassy in Somalia firmly opposes this misconduct. This coercive letter constitutes serious interference in the internal affairs of Somalia and further exposes the hegemonic and bullying attitude of certain US politicians to the Somali people. Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and non interference in each other's internal affairs are enshrined in the UN Charter as basic norms governing international relations for safeguarding world peace and stability. China never interferes in other countries internal affairs and absolutely does not accept meddling in its own internal affairs by any countries. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. This is history and this is reality. China firmly opposes Taiwan independence, separatism and external interference and possesses the legitimate right to take measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The fact that China is freaking out, the fact that they are this pissed off from my perspective, confirms that I was exactly right and is yet another argument why President Trump should recognize Somaliland as an ally to America and as a country in Africa willing to stand up to communist China.
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Now if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now on to story number two. You talk about the President having leverage. Let's move to Washington D.C. and everyone that said the President was like being a dictator and a tyrant by sending in the National Guard actually trying to fight crime. They said this was just him being a, a bully. He was obsessed with the media. This is what tyrants and dictators do. He's going to roll the National Guard and militarize every city in America that he doesn't like. That was the narrative. Well, guess what, they got it wrong again. DC Crime since the announcement of the federal control versus the seven day prior to that, we have that Data. Now, Senator, please, for everyone that's listening, go through every category of a shock. Right. I say that sarcastically. More law enforcement on the street, law and order. What happens? Less crime.
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Yeah. It turns out when you arrest criminals, you get less crime. I know that's a shocking outcome. It's one Democrats don't understand and the media doesn't understand. But, but everyone whose head is not fully inserted up their rear end gets that point. Here is a Tweet from the D.C. police union. D.C. crime since the announcement of federal control versus the seven days prior. Robbery down 46%. Carjacking down 83%. Car theft down 21%. Violent crime down 22%. Property crime down 6%. And all crimes down 8%. That is in one week, in seven days. And, and, and, and if you hear a wailing in the distance, that is the collective whale of pain and unhappiness of Democrats in the media. Because, understood, this is not hyperbole. They are rooting for the criminals. They do not want crime to go down. Because if crime goes down, it vindicates President Trump exercising his constitutional authority to concerning DC and exercising his authority as explicit statutory authority under the D.C. home Rule Act. The Democrats do not want that.
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No, they don't. And there's also another aspect of the story, and that is we now have the Justice Department that's investigating whether Washington, D.C. police manipulated their crime data. Remember, I, I was. Shoot, I was on CNN a week and a half, two weeks ago, and they're like, your stats are wrong. Crime is way down. The President doesn't need to do this. Everything's moving the right direction. Well, it may have looked like crime was down, but now the Justice Department is investigating whether D.C. police purposely willfully manipulate the crime data to basically fake people out, lie to the citizens of D.C. and they say, oh, no, no, everything's getting better from last year when it's really, really, really bad. Now it's not as bad. And apparently they may have manipulated the numbers, including a whistleblower that they've settled with.
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Yeah, look, I can tell you from someone who works in D.C. so, so most weeks I am in D.C. in the Senate when the Senate's in session. And, and in the last four years under Joe Biden, the violence in D.C. has gotten much worse. We've seen Rand Paul had a staffer who was stabbed on a public street at like, four in the afternoon, stabbed in the gut. Uh, there, there, there was a guy who served in the first Trump administration who was shot in the head at, killed at about 5pm sitting in his car on a street in D.C. this is not 2 in the morning in a rough neighborhood. This is in a major metropolitan street. Uh, we, we had, you know, not long ago we, we had two Israelis murdered by a radical, pro Hamas, pro Palestinian, leftist zealot From Chicago and D.C. as someone who works there, you know, it used to be when I started in the Senate, you know, I would, as you know, I love movies. We've done a couple of podcasts where we talk about movies. When I started in the Senate, I used to sometimes if there was a night that I was done, let's say I was done at 8 or 9 o' clock at night, there's a movie theater about five blocks from my house. I used to routinely walk up to the movie theater and just go see a movie. I don't do that now. I mean frankly, at 9 o' clock.
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At night I know it's movie theater. Talking about. Yeah, no way you do that now.
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At nine o' clock at night. You don't walk five blocks in D.C. i'll tell you. I've got a guy in my security detail in Washington who's a tough guy. He's been in some pretty rough combat situations, you bet him. And he was walking back to the Capitol at 10pm and he had two guys, two teenagers jump him and try to rob him. Now, now Mark's a pretty tough guy. So he picked, picked up one of them and body slammed them into the back of a car and the two of them ran off. But, but the violence in D.C. has gotten really significantly worse. And, and you know, it's been interesting.
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The police union chairman, what he said about it.
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Yet the reporters that are honest who are interviewing D.C. residents, many of whom, most of whom are African American, the residents are saying, thank God, we think this is great. Lock these criminals up. Look, the D.C. residents don't like living with the risk of drive by shootings. Henry Cuellar, who is a Democrat congressman, was carjacked again in the early evening. He was coming home with dinner to his apartment was apartment building apparently five other congressmen lived in, carjacked right out in the front of it. And here's what Greg Pemberton, I want you to listen to Greg Pemberton, who was the D.C. police union chairman, what he said about the security of D.C. under Democrats. Give a listen.
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The criminal justice system here in the District of Columbia is broken. Every aspect of it is broken. Whether that's policing, prosecution, judges and trials, sentencing and supervision, all of it is broken. And you can trace every aspect of it back to a piece of legislation that was passed by the Council. They have destroyed policing, they have destroyed prosecutions, they have destroyed the way that the courts are allowed to operate, and they've destroyed our ability to sentence criminals to sentences that are commensurate with the crimes they've committed. And so the only way to fix this holistically is to go back and look at all of this legislation that the Council passed back in 2020 when there was all of this anti police rhetoric and work to undo that. I know from my experiences the D.C. council will never do that on their own. And so what we're hoping over the course of the next 30 days is that whether that's the White House, whether that's these federal law enforcement agencies, whether that's Congress, that people get an insight into exactly how the system got so broken. Because the only way to fix it is if we can get rid of that legislation. And my main concern is that 30 days are going to go by, all of these folks are going to go about their merry way and we're still going to be stuck with all this bad law.
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He's like, we know what's wrong, we know what's wrong. We know exactly what's wrong. And, and if they don't fix it, we're going to be back here. Thank goodness the President stepped in here. And the citizens, I go back to the media narrative here, Senator. The citizens overwhelmingly trust Donald Trump to fight crime more than they trusted Joe Biden. And the citizens in Washington, D.C. overwhelmingly are trusting the strategy of Donald Trump, then their own city council members and their mayor. And that is a threat, I think, to all these other high crime cities, Memphis, Baltimore, Detroit, you know, you, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Louisiana. Because, yeah, if this works, how do you then say no when the President offers you help or National Guard?
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So understand this is the same principle.
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With securing the border.
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So a year ago, at the State of the Union address, Joe Biden said he could not secure the border. He needed new legislation from Congress in order to secure the border. We had at the time, the highest rate of illegal immigration in our nation's history. We had criminals and murderers and gang members and rapists and child molesters and terrorists streaming across the border. And he said he was helpless to fix it. Donald Trump came in and the rate of illegal border crossings dropped over 99%. As President Trump said in the most recent State of the Union address, it turns out we didn't need new legislation, we just needed a new President, the same is true in D.C. if we see violent crime numbers continue to go down and stay down, that demonstrates we can solve crime in other cities too. And the reason residents of your city are being murdered is because the Democrat mayors and the Democrat city councils care more about the radical leftists who hate the police, who want to defund the police, who want to abolish the police, than they care about your family and your children. Look, it spoke volumes when China's President Xi came to visit San Francisco a few years ago and Gavin Newsom came in and cleaned up San Francisco and took out the homeless people and took out the drug addicts and the streets were sparkling. And I got to say, even if you are a left wing Bolshevik in San Francisco, a tiny voice in the back of your head must have said, wait a second, if they could clean up the streets today, why didn't they clean up the streets last week? Why do my kids matter less.
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Yeah.
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Than the President of China. And so this is an existential threat to Democrats who want to say, we're helpless, we can't stop crime. And by the way, part of their message is the only way to stop crime is to disarm law abiding citizens. That gun control doesn't solve it, but locking up violent criminals does. And spoiler alert, that is what works in stopping violent crime. Then the Democrats have a massive challenge. And I want you to listen to Caroline Levitt talking about some of the results we've seen in just one week in DC.
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Give a listen.
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President Trump's efforts to make DC Safe again are working. There have been a total of 465 arrests since the start of this operation on Thursday, August 7th. Last night there were a total of 52 arrests, including the arrest of an illegal alien, Ms. 13 gang member with convictions for DWI and drug possession. Thanks to President Trump's leadership and the outstanding work of both federal and local law enforcement, dangerous gang members like the one picked up last night will not be allowed on the streets of our nation's capital. Other arrests last night included assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing, parole violation for robbery, murder, outstanding warrant for attempted murder, assault on federal law enforcement officer and felony assault. Four more homeless encampments were also removed during yesterday's reporting period. To date, A total of 48 homeless encampments have been cleared in Washington D.C. by multi agency teams. MPD patrol units are actively working with city officials to locate and clear additional encampments and and remove homeless residents off of Washington's streets. And despite fake narratives from the media again, a significant number of the arrests have been in high crime areas of D.C. in fact, nearly half of all of the non illegal alien related arrests have occurred in Wards 7 and 8, the two wards that have the highest number of violent crime as well as homicides and assaults with dangerous weapons last year. So while Democrats continue to coddle violent criminals, President Trump and this administration are focused on putting them behind bars and unapologetically standing up for the safety of law abiding American citizens. And the White House will continue to provide all of you with the results of this operation in the days ahead.
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By the way, this goes back to the narrative when this was announced, the President was going to do this that night. I was doing Abby Phillips show on CNN and all of the panelists are losing their minds saying Donald Trump this was going to do nothing. They said he's putting them on the National Mall where there's no crime, he's a dictator. They're not going to put the law enforcement where the real crime is. That's why this is a waste of resources. This is just him showing and flexing his muscles that he can do this because the president, this is what a dictator does. Yet you're the crime sets there. Where are they fighting crime where the criminals are. And I said it. Then I'll say it again. It's amazing how much the left and the media hates Donald Trump so much. They don't even care if they're able to save lives through this. They just hate the fact that Donald Trump wants to fight crime. So whatever he says he wants to do, we're going to fight it and lie and slander him and regardless of how many people lose their lives in D.C. or any other city when this comes out.
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Yeah, look, that is exactly right.
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And I will point out those very.
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High crime neighborhoods in D.C. are overwhelmingly African American. And the woke left wing Democrat mayor painted the words black lives matter on the street in a giant mural. They've removed that now. But when it comes to actually protecting black lives, understand that a very significant percentage of the murder victims from these violent criminals are African Americans. And so Donald Trump and Republicans are stepping in and saving black lives. And the position of Democrats in the media is those black lives do not matter. They'd rather they be victims of murder than actually have law enforcement put violent criminals in jail. And Ben, when I say that that sounds unbelievably harsh. But, but, but I want to ask you seriously, give me an alternative explanation. If the explanation is not sure that the Democrats do not give a damn about whether black lives matter and whether, whether they're saving African Americans from being victims of homicide. Then why are they so adamantly opposed to supporting law enforcement putting violent criminals in jail?
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Yeah, no, this is the Democratic Party now. They'd rather see Donald Trump fail than actually save American lives. Don't forget, we do the show Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Also, this episode is up on YouTube. So if you want to watch it, we, we put it up there on YouTube as well. Hit that subscriber auto download button. We're going to keep giving you the stats out of DC Because I promise you the media is not going to do it. We cover these stories, give you the facts. Please share it wherever you can on social media and the senator and I will see you back here on Friday morning as before. If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week. You may have missed one other big story we got to get in here, Senator is Biden's auto pen. We've got a new big update on this story. And apparently Joe Biden deliberately ignored his own Department of Justice's warnings over legally flawed auto pen pardons. And we also found out about how many pardons they were giving out and they claimed from the White House podium that these are all nonviolent offenders. That was also a huge lie.
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Well, that's right.
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And I will say this is the sort of story why we do Verdict as a podcast, why we do it as a radio show, because this is the kind of story you will never see on cnn. You won't see it on MSNBC or abc, NBC, cbs. It will not be covered by the corporate media because it is inconvenient. We have talked about at length the problems with Joe Biden's auto pen, that the president does not have the authority to delegate presidential power to another staff member. And when it comes to an auto pen, the critical question whether a statute signed in law by an auto pan, an executive order signed by an auto pan, or a pardon or commutation signed by an auto pen, the critical question for whether it is legally valid is whether the president personally and directly authorized it, whether the president made the decision. If it's a staffer who made the decision, it is not valid and is legally void. Well, what broke is recently is this week is, is that at the time that Joe Biden was using the auto pen, or rather The White House staffers were using the auto pen. A senior career staffer in the Biden Department of Justice was raising real legal questions about it. Here's the story on Fox News headline Biden's Auto Pen Pardons Disturbed DOJ Brass Doc Show Raising questions whether they Are Legally binding New documents and communications between Biden White House staff and career officials at the Justice Department prompted scrutiny of the legality of former President Joe Biden's thousands of last minute pardons. The Oversight Oversight Project shared documents obtained from the Trump DOJ with Fox News Digital showing that a career prosecutor warned Biden's inner circle that the administration's pardon process was unorthodox and legally troubling. In the most scrutinized email, then Assistant Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer wrote a group email to several executive office staff members on January 18th asking questions about the more than 2,500 pardons.
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Quote, the White House has described those.
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Who received commutations as people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading. That's what DOJ said to the Biden White House. Mind you, they didn't stop it. They continued to be untrue and misleading. He continued, quote, as you know, even with the exceedingly limited review we were permitted to do of the individuals we believed you might be considering for commutation action, we initially identified 19 that were highly problematic. He continued, he cited convicts Terrence Richardson and Pharone Claiborne, who were included in the clemency grants and noted that the DOJ received voluminous objections from the victim's families and law enforcement as the men had been sentenced to life imprisonment for drug trafficking offenses during which a police officer was killed. Mind you, this is what the Biden White House said was a non violent offense, drug trafficking where a police officer was killed. And beyond that, according to Oversight Project Vice President Kyle Brosnan shows that DOJ was concerned about the, quote, vague construct of Biden's pardons and how they appeared.
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To be, quote, illegally delegated to staff.
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That left the DOJ wondering at times which offenses for people with multiple convictions were specifically being expunged. Later in the email he was like.
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Quote, look, I read the statement you.
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Put out in the President's name saying you've released a bunch of nonviolent drug offenders. You've got murderers on your list today.
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So I'm trying to figure out what.
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The president wants here for this funky warrant.
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That is incredible, isn't it? I mean, funky warrant. And that's coming again from his own DOJ saying, we don't know what he wants, we don't know what he's doing. It doesn't make sense.
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Yeah, this is the Biden doj. Weinsheimer continued, quote, I think it is.
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Best that we receive a statement or.
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Direction from the President as to the meaning of the warrant, language that will.
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Allow us to give full effect to.
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The commutation warrant in the manner intended by the President. And there was ultimately no, no explanation for what the offenses or the, or the proverbial descriptions were according to document tranche. And instead there was simply a spreadsheet of convicts attached to one of the emails that came from the U.S. sentencing Commission. But only the President has the power to grant pardons, not the Sentencing Commission. Treating it otherwise would be an illegal delegation of presidential authority.
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When you look at this, what does this mean moving forward for the investigation into the President's use of the auto pen and many things he may have signed that he didn't know about? Right. This was just anybody at the White House pretty much that had any type of power could just walk in there and get things done. And what does this mean for all of the. They claimed non violent offenders that they were, they were pardoning. We've also found out a bunch of them very violent. It was a lie.
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Yeah, it was a lie.
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They knew it was a lie.
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Their own Department of Justice told them it was a lie. They didn't care. It was a lie. They continued lying to the American people. They knew that the New York Times would never call them out. They knew that the corrupt media would never call them out. So they could lie and lie and lie and know that, no, nobody would know about it. And, and as a legal matter, the, the Brosnan from the Oversight Project said, quote, biden did not pardon individual people, but laid out categories of types of people to release and left it to.
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Staff to figure out who meets that criteria.
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Attorney Sam Dewey told Fox News Digital that, quote, literally no one, including DOJ officials, understands what the aforementioned pardon criteria are. And he continued, quote, you generally don't see people write emails like this. This isn't a cya. This is I'm going to do a Pontius pilot routine because this is a drug deal and I want to make sure it doesn't come back on me. And the consequence of that is that the pardons, if they were not authorized by the President of the United States, they are invalid. And so what I have urged the White House to do What I've urged the Department of Justice to do is to go through the records of everything that was auto penned and determine there may be some the president does have the authority to direct someone to auto pen something that he's signing, whether a law or an executive order or pardon. And if the the president who's making the decision, the prevailing Department of Justice interpretation is that is legal and binding. But if the president didn't make the decision, if it's a staffer who's making the decision, then it has no binding force. And so what I've encouraged both the White House and the Department of Justice is to find those pardons, those executive orders, those statutes that were auto penned for which there is a clear lack of evidence that Joe Biden had awareness of it, made a decision about it, and then formulate and carry out a legal strategy to challenge and end up concluding that those statutes, executive orders, pardons and commutations are invalid. I think the possibility of a legal determination of that is rising significantly. And the fact that you had senior career DOJ officials in the Biden administration ringing the alarm bells and saying you're lying to the American people and what you're doing is lawless. That is yet another stunning revelation that has come out this week.
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As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards. I'd love to have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson Podcast. And we will see you back here on Monday morning. This is an I Heart Podcast.