The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome and welcome. Welcome. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Tons happening, tons happening. Thank you for being with us and checking things out. Please visit proamericareport.com proamericareport.com. We actually are streaming live from the courthouse in downtown New York City, our friend Paul Ingrassia is down there and we’ve had some coverage down there. We’re gonna have more later on on Tuesday and Wednesday in particular, the Pro America Report. We’ve got a TV version of the Pro America Report that is over at on Rumble, the Rumble DC studio, this DC studio of Rumble has been very kind and has encouraged me to do my program, a TV program in their studios and Congressman Barry Loudermilk is a recent guest, so you wanna go there, go to Rumble and then track down Pro America Report with Ed Martin at Eagle Ed Martin is my channel and you could check it out. So gonna be it’s gonna be a great ongoing presence. And like I said, Ingrassia is down. At the at the courthouse in New York City. Alright.
But I don’t wanna spend too much time on the lawfare against Donald Trump. We got a lot to cover over there, but I instead I wanna spend a few minutes catching up on the so-called 1512C charge.
We have been so close to this for so long, it’s important to stop and explain it back and and slow down because I’ve been in in, you know, 3 1/2 years now. The January 6 defendants the January 6th prisoners. Many of them have been charged with this special 1512 C charge, and I’ll put up on social media the best explainer about this right now because the case has gone to the Supreme Court.
Earlier on Tuesday, the case was argued before the Supreme Court, and I listened to much of the argument. It sounds like the Supreme Court. Is is very critical probably. I’d say at least a 5 to 4 majority, but maybe six to three seem to be, you know, saying what are you doing here? Because 1512 in that case, by the way, is Fischer V United States Fisher Fischer the the, the the challenge here is that 18 USC 1512 C. Is part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and it has been used to charge hundreds and hundreds of the January 6 defendants in such a way that it’s a felony with a 20 year maximum penalty.
And so when you get charged with misdemeanor, misdemeanor, misdemeanor for, say, vandalism or for trespass in the wrong place or things like that. Then you are in a in a position where you know you’re not gonna go to jail, you’re gonna pay a fine. And then whammo, you get this 1512 felony added to it. And most people, I think many people say, hey, that provision. It’s about. It’s about obstruction of and destruction of evidence. Is it really meant to cover what happened on January 6 or are they overcharging.
And I can tell you as a practical matter. Many of the people who were charged with you know, misdemeanor, misdemeanor, misdemeanor and then this felony. They were in such a position that they took deals, they took plea deals, they they went to trial and lost because it was just a hard, hard charge and such a big penalty. That’s why the plea deals happened. So our our friend Carrie Severino, who’s really very. Very, very bright and good writer. She has written up over a National Review of what’s called a bench memo and explains this all out. I’ll put a link to that and I hopefully it is available or sometimes it gets behind a paywall. But here’s the thing.
When I listen to the justices of the US Supreme Court, they basically were saying, hey, wait a second, you you’ve construed this, you use this, and you’re asking us to construe this in a way that goes beyond what it was intended. And it one of the lower court judges said that and that that’s how this got up to the Supreme Court because one of the lower court judges, Judge Nichols said, hey, you know, I’m gonna dismiss this cause I don’t quite think that it’s supposed to be there. The language is not is not quite there. And here’s what I have to tell you.
In my mantra Distrust. Then verify you know that the starting point is that you cannot trust what’s going on in our with our government that you just cannot. You just cannot operate from what was the old instinct of trusting that they were doing the right thing, that the government. Was gonna be, you know. That they were gonna deal straight with you, that they were gonna somehow give you the right truth and you could operate from it.
No, the the opposite is true. The opposite is true, that you have to. You have to distrust starting point. And when I see and when I look closely. At the the the the prosecution in this in these cases and how they handled it and what they did in terms of the way that they treated. these citizens and the way that they use the narrative to say something more dramatic, to say something, you know, heightening the the the not just the drama but the tension and called it insurrectionist and all that, and used a 20 year. Maximum penalty in prison as a way just to bludgeon people. It’s it’s really hard to do anything other than feel like you can’t trust them at all. You cannot trust him at all. That’s what it feels like.
And so the starting point is, hey, wait a second. You guys way overcharged this.
You know it it. It came out at one in one of the in one of the discussions. I don’t know if it was in a congressional hearing. If it was in in a public setting like in a in a, in a debate or in on TV. But it came out that the Mueller investigation considered charging 1512, this obstruction of official proceeding, trying to use that to charge Trump and others. In other words, if it’s as wide open as they say – any obstruction of official proceeding. Remember what in this case, what it meant was they go into the capitol and because there is an electoral count, college count happening and and Mike Pence gavels that out and says we gotta take a break because there’s all these people here, that gaveling out that, that obstruction of official proceeding is what counts as the. As the decision so you you might not have thought. Well, we’re gonna walk through the capitol. Why would you stop counting or pick another one? Basically you’re creating. A statute. A felony statute that’s so broad you can imagine enforcing it against someone who stands up at a school board, someone who interrupts at a at a a legislative session.
Now in the in the argument for the Supreme Court, I think it was Justice Alito who could have been one of the other justices, one of the conservative justices said. Well, what about if you pull a fire alarm to and disrupt the voting, which is what happened, Democrat Congressman Bowman did that. Or what if you disrupt a a legal proceeding, or even the confirmation? I don’t think he said confirmation. But Kavanaugh is obviously Justice Kavanaugh. Then Judge Kavanaugh had his confirmation disrupted. And so the what is the difference? And they they went into this mens rea, what your intention was, nexus and all.
At a certain point, what you have is an over broad statute that can be used to target your opponents if you wanna say political opponents. That feels true to me. But at the very least, you could say the opponents. Of your point of view. That you say? Well, those people aren’t allowed to say that. They can’t say that they’re so upset that our elections are not auditable and that there’s something seem to be wrong. We’re so upset. We’re saying do something about it. That’s that. That’s that’s a that’s not an acceptable viewpoint.
It is acceptable by the way, to have a viewpoint that you’re gonna obstruct an official proceeding by jumping up and yelling code pink and that Kavanaugh is a bad guy. Or a actually blocking. The golden the Golden Gate Bridge because you protest against Gaza. What if you? What if you were supposed to go across the Golden Gate Bridge to go to a a legal proceeding? You’re a prosecutor, a public defender, and the and the people. Now I think they’d say you didn’t know that mens Rea. But let’s say it differently. What if you’re supposed to go across the Golden Gate Bridge? To go to a meeting of the American Jewish Federation. And so and for a a public hearing. And so the people that don’t want that to happen obstruct that official proceeding.
Well, they’re not charged. They’re not charged. Only the January 6th folks, I I we got a text or a I was chatting back and forth with John Schlafly during the oral arguments of the Supreme Court and the government and the Supreme Court. They said they’ve only, that only 350 of the nearly 1400 January 6th defendants. Were hit with this charge as if 350. It’s OK. Well, that’s not that many. 350! You’re using this hammer against 350 people, changing their lives. So my point here is this. It looks like the Supreme Court is going to get into this. Who knows? I I don’t have a lot of confidence that they’re gonna handle it and sort of strike the whole thing down. I tend to think that they’ll look for a narrow grounds to sort of moderate what’s going on, but we’ll see.
But at the very least, we’re seeing more and more unraveling unraveling of this ridiculous. Narrative machine. That the narrative that January 6 was an insurrection and everybody one side has a white hat on and they’re acting like the heroes and the other was bad guy. Well, we’re we’ve got a hearing this week from a a, Congressman Loudermilk and his committee that that that the that there were these whistleblowers that said we tried to get. We know that Trump offered to get the military and the National Guard and and they want ’em. So it’s coming apart, right? We gotta. I’m out. I’m out of out of time. We gotta take a break.
We’ll be back. It’s Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report, that’s what you need to know. Be back in a moment.
