 the 13th, 2022, time for What Now America? I'm Tim Apachele, your host. And today's title is, Cheney, a January 6th criminal referral to the Department of Justice. You know, a criminal referral from the House Select Committee is, it bears no legal weight, but what it is, it's a suggestion. It's a suggestion to the Department of Justice that they have something that they think is worthy of taking a look at, more than taking a look at perhaps investigation or an indictment. But be as it may, right now, the House Select Committee is debating whether or not there should be a referral from that committee to the Attorney General, Merrick Garland. And to discuss that debate, I have with me today Jay Fidel and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning. Good morning, Tim. Cynthia. Jay, as you know, Liz Cheney feels very adamant that there is enough evidence of criminal activity from both Donald Trump and his attorney, John Eastman, that there was a blueprint, if you will, on how to disrupt the electoral counting of votes for January 6th. And part of that is would be a conspiracy, a conspiracy to commit a crime because you're not supposed to interrupt the business and activity of Congress but certainly that's what they were intended to do on January 6th, which actually did happen. They were interrupted from doing their duty, their legal business. So here's the question. What are the pros and cons of the House Select Committee of actually referring a referral of criminal activity of Donald Trump and Eastman? I mean, what the discussion is behind closed doors on whether or not to do that. I mean, it's closed doors. We really don't know what they're hung up on. But you're right. We can probably at least figure some of the things they might be hung up on. One is, I mean, the fear, and it would be an abject fear that they would make this referral to the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice wouldn't do anything about it. You've seen that in meadows. They're still sitting on meadows, not a word, not yes, not no, not maybe, not a word. And so we could get that gap and that may terrify them to have that kind of vacuum there. So that's one reason. And another reason is that although there's chainy, it feels that there's enough evidence. There may be others on the committee and there are some very qualified people on that committee who don't feel there's enough evidence and they want more. They want it all with a little bow on the top. And they may have some, but they're looking at others and they wanna finish their work on those others. So those are the kinds of things, or maybe they just have some kind of basic congressional, empty debate, meaningless debate, just demonstrating again that nobody can get together and find consensus in Congress, even with Democrats. Let me throw out a suggestion is that they're concerned about the politicization of this investigation by the Congress. And they're worried that it will be politicized once they refer to the DOJ. And it gets wrapped up in the witch hunt discussion that Trump so much loves to use. That will always be applicable, always and always and always. If that's what scares them, it's ridiculous. They shouldn't give a second for that because they're gonna be going to be attacked for that no matter when they turn over to DOJ. Well, the other thing is whether the House refers this for criminal referral, let's not forget what's going on in Georgia. And remember, there's the investigation of the Secretary of State, Brad Rothenberger, and the thing that I need to 11,780 votes, that investigation. So regardless of what Congress does, there's a parallel track. Assumably, presumably that there's also- It's not really a parallel though, because the Raffensperger thing is one instance in one state with one official, the select committee is talking about the insurrection, which is much broader and more important really, in my view, and maybe in their view, than just this one Raffensperger issue. Both were criminal, no doubt. But the one on January 6th was serious because it got part of the way home to disrupt the democracy and essentially overthrow the government. That's what it was, overthrow the government. But I wanna add, there are points to suggest the other side of that argument that's going on in the select committee. This is a good time to do it because everybody is waiting. They're gonna be blamed for political timing no matter what, but right now, the whole country is waiting. And people are losing confidence. I don't know if you saw Winston's latest brain food link that he sent around this morning, I think, about apathy in this country. People are really getting apathetic, they're getting complacent because they're waiting and there's no, we're not going to the next inning. We don't get there. We're waiting on the select committee. We're waiting on the Department of Justice. We're sitting here in a kind of time warp. And I think that if you're playing to the public, you can't do that. You have to tell them at least what's going on. We had this discussion before and I thought it was a very good discussion, namely, Joe Biden said at the outset that he wasn't gonna tell his Attorney General what to do, that he should indict or not indict full of grand jury, not full of grand jury, investigate none of it. But he certainly can and should say, ask his Attorney General to say what's going on. It's all, it's a black box, it's a curtain and we don't know and we cannot be excited or even feel that there's something happening if nobody tells us that there's anything happening. This is a real problem and Joe Biden set this up for himself. And now he has to, well, he thinks he has to live with it. But I think he's wrong. I think he should be telling. You wouldn't be the first president to change his mind about something. That's right. I recall the previous president doing it about 1,050 times, you know, it's... But he could do it without doing it, you know? He'd say, look, I'm gonna tell him whether it would indict or not indict, but I'm gonna tell him he has to tell the public what's going on or if not tell me what's going on and I will tell the public. Well, and I guess that's a great point is regardless if this goes forward as a criminal referral to the DOJ or not, doesn't it accomplish the one thing and that is the spotlight on Merrick Garling and saying, what's up? K-PASA? Yeah, I mean, we sat around watching the emperor's new clothes for Bob Mueller for years. And at the end of the day, nothing burger. I think the word was invented for Bob Mueller. And now we get nothing burger again. And you can try to justify and tell me what great credentials Merrick has and that his heart is in the right place. But, you know, in these times with the threat on our democracy, with the failure of so many government institutions, he cannot afford this Bob Mueller type of science. I mean, silence, it is very dangerous silence, especially now in the prospect of an election six months away, especially now with the Republicans trying to destroy the system with their voting changes around the country. He cannot afford to do that. And not only because people would be apathetic, but because it emboldens those who are thinking about another insurrection, namely Trump. If you can get away with it one time, why not a second? You know, this goes to the heart of the stability of the Republic. And he's not doing anything. It's interesting that a man could have all these great credentials and be a judge and be considered by the Supreme Court and not understand that. Good points. To follow on this line of inquiry, Cynthia, you know, not long ago, Merritt Garling got in front of the podium in front of the microphone and was quite resolute when he said, I'm gonna follow this no matter how high it goes up. But do we even know that there's an investigation occurring within the DOJ or not? I don't know if he formally announced there is an investigation. I don't think he did. No, he didn't. He did not. I mean, so on one hand, he makes a statement going, this will follow this to no matter who's involved and how high it goes up, I will not be deterred. But then there's no announcement of an investigation. So to you, Cynthia, is Merritt Garling, our U.S. Attorney General, waiting for something from the House Select Committee before he can get off out of his chair and act. He doesn't need it. Like I said, the referral has no legal weight to it. It's merely a suggestion. So what is Merritt Garling waiting for in your opinion? Who? You just answered, nevermind. You just answered the question. Thank you for that brilliant answer, Cynthia. Hey, necessary sound effects, okay? I think he is a federalist at heart. That's where his roots are. And I know I've said this before so I don't wanna sound like a broken record, but he's an academic. Academics move slowly. And I disagree with you guys. I thought he did say that there was an investigation and he was not going to comment on it. I think it's a tense thing, Cynthia. He said something like there would be that he will follow. But he didn't say we have something going on right now today. I thought he said very specifically that there is an investigation, but I am not going to talk about in any investigations. But I reassure you that we will follow it up to as high as it goes. Well, I'm sure by the end of the Biden administration we'll find out something. That's the problem. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So how are we supposed to have a fair election coming up in 2022 when all these Republicans have filled all the Secretary of State positions and we have so many Republican legislatures all over the place that have already shown that they are perfectly willing to break the law, to go against what the voters say, which is against the law. But they're willing to do it. So I almost don't know if it's gonna make any difference if we come out and give Trump a good little perp walk out of Mar-a-Lago. Is that gonna make a difference? I think it just goes so much deeper than Trump. But you know, I have a quote from Liz Cheney about this whole thing about there's a dispute amongst them. She claims that there is no dispute amongst them. There is not really a dispute on the committee. The committee is working in a really collaborative way to discuss these issues as we are with all of the issues we're addressing. And we're continuing to work together to do so. I would not characterize there being a dispute on the committee. I think it is the single most collaborative committee on which I've ever served. Which I thought was- Interesting. But they don't agree with her that it should be referred. Oh, I think it should be referred. They don't agree with her. Well- The committee cannot- We don't know that yet, Jay. We don't know that. She is saying that it's not, that the committee doesn't agree with her. This is what she says. I think that we have seen, what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort to use multiple tools to try to overturn the election. That is what she said. And so if they're all on the same page, they all believe that he did it and there's enough evidence. So really the only question now is whether or not they're going to refer it. But it doesn't mean that they're like one person agrees and the other one doesn't. I don't think that's, she was trying to say that's not the dynamic. That's what the media seems to be- I think you're- But he's- I think she's spinning words here, Cynthia. I mean, either they agree it should be referred or they don't. Well, they're trying to weigh all the different things. So they're afraid that if there's an investigation already, this could interfere with that investigation because it starts a whole other one. You don't know if it can be incorporated into any investigation that he's already got or if it creates a new one. And these are the kind of- You know what I get out of this, Tim, is that we're having a conversation that's based on insufficient information to the public. Neither Joe Biden nor the committee, nor for that matter, of course, Merrick Garland is telling us what is going on, what they are doing, where they wanna go, what they have, what they don't have. They're not telling us very much. And so we're left here, we're arguing about, and I shouldn't say argue, because we never argue about anything here. Oh, no. I'd rather argue than quarrel. I'd rather have an argument than a quarrel any day. We can't come to terms with this because we are insufficiently informed, insufficiently informed by the president of the committee or the attorney general. Okay, so I'm sorry. I have to chime in with Steven Colbert thing that he said. When he said, so they've said that they've got plenty of evidence about what Trump did and they're ready to have some sort of criminal referral. So now they are presenting to the DOJ all the things that we've been watching on TV for the last six months. And I thought, yeah, evidence, that they had to go, we've had it on the television. There's another point, you know, is that they don't have a burden of showing it beyond a preponderance or beyond a reasonable doubt. Right. The test is way lower than that, is we think there's enough here, Merrick, so that you should investigate. And we expect you'll find more than we will. You have the powers of the FBI and subpoena powers that work better than our subpoena powers do. So, hey, go for it and see if you can do better than we can. This is a low bar. Right. You might have already suggested earlier in your comment exactly what's going on. And that is, what kind of damage is the torpedo of inaction from the DOJ could do to the ship of democracy if Merrick Garland does nothing? I think whether we have all the details or not from the select committee, I think by raising that question, what you've done may be the real tell-tale sign of why we aren't seeing a referral. My God, what would happen if Merrick Garland does nothing with it? I bet you're right. I have a question right. And I'm saying that not only because I bet you're right, but because you're saying what I'm saying. So I have a question right. Of course, humility strikes the day. Doesn't the Congress, doesn't this committee and doesn't Congress have the power to issue not just subpoenas, but to issue a criminal indictment? Can't they do- No, no, stop. No, no. No, that is DOJ and DOJ alone. You can have hearings, which goes my next question, Cynthia. Thank you for that transition. Jay, do we see hearings here shortly from the select committee? Do we see open public hearings? Yeah, but first I want to go to what the DOJ can do. It can initiate a grand jury. And that's not a secret. You know, what happens to the grand jury, that is a secret, should be a secret. But look at, for example, the case in Georgia that you mentioned, Tim, we all know there's a grand jury sitting. The prosecutor organized a grand jury. Got an order for one. Merrick Garland hasn't told us. So I'll assume that he hasn't organized a grand jury. And a grand jury is the one that does the, what do you want to call it? Prosecutorial type investigation. Anyway, you were asking something else. I lost it. What was it? Hearings. Well, again, hearings. They could have made these hearings public a long time ago. I think the, you know, their timidity about that is they don't want to get pasted for doing political television, you know? As we have seen in the past, they want to do most of the job or maybe all of the job. Well, how does America find out what's going on? If they don't have hearings? Well, I'm reminded of what I thought was a pretty good job with respect to the shooting in Brooklyn yesterday. Immediately the governor of the state, she's not necessarily concerned with what happens in Brooklyn, that's a city issue. She gets up and says, we are going to follow him. We're going to find him, you know, all that stuff. And the mayor gets up. And the police people get up. And they all, on the same page, they say, we are not letting a minute go by without, you know, using the full resources of our various instrumentalities. I thought that was good, okay? Why can we not have that from the committee? Why can we not have that from Congress and from Biden? How hard would it be to have a communications person get up and tell us what's going on? When they pop out and say, oh yeah, we've examined 750 witnesses so far, but we're not telling you exactly who or what they're saying or even what we ask them about. I'm saying, you know, that's a failure of communications. What they should have is somebody like the governor of the state of New York getting up there and telling us day by day how it's going. And then by the way, they succeeded this morning and there were more statements from governmental agencies in New York. And the whole thing rings well. But it's not ringing well either in the select committee or certainly in the attorney general. All right, thanks Jay. You know, Cynthia, I hesitate to ask this question because I'm afraid to know what the answer might be. Is the House select committee gonna do a deja vu repeat of the Mueller report where he plops it on a desk and goes, there it is. And the American public goes, I'm not waiting through 750 pages of documents. What is it? You tell me what it is. Are we gonna have a repeat of the Mueller report that goes nowhere? And as Jay has actually described it as a nothing burger? Let's get Bill Barr back. That's what I was gonna say. Whenever a report comes out, let's get Bill Barr back. I was getting, we don't have Bill Barr. So of course it won't go the same. And really the Mueller report wasn't a nothing burger. It was only a nothing burger because Bill Barr destroyed it and changed it and made it seem like it was nothing. When in reality, and I was just looking at this this morning even Mueller said, if there was a way to clear him, if there was evidence that said he was not guilty, we would have said so. There is nine counts of obstruction that can be charged but we can't charge them. And then of course Bill Barr took all that away. So I don't know as Mueller did such a bad job. And then when they did break in to interview him, he sat there and they asked, you wouldn't give him any details, but he would say, yes, that's right. Yes, I said that. Yes, that's right. And so I think that's important because he did come out and say that his report was correct and they didn't find evidence to exonerate him. Well, doesn't the House committee have some obligation of messaging or we won't call it messaging because that sounds political? How about communication to the American public of their findings? Don't they have some obligation to do that other than a slapping down a multi-page report? Yes. That's the question. I do. I absolutely believe that they do owe the American people on answers. We need answers. It's been a year and a half for goodness sakes. We need answers to these questions and they need to have hearings. I think they definitely, hopefully, will have hearings where they bring in these people and show the American people, but why do we have to wait for a hearing? I wanna see some stuff now. If they're willing to come out and you'll have Liz Cheney come out and say, yes. Well, because that would make it look political. Wouldn't that politicize to have some kind of a partial report before you had the hearings? Well, maybe, but I would like to see a partial report, but I don't know if we have that on one. Oh, yeah. We're tired. We're waiting for Godot. All right, I'm gonna switch. I'm gonna switch topics, I guess more news at 11 regarding the referral or the lack thereof. Jay, two major news breaks here on the invasion of Ukraine and one being that Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has suggested that there may be a strong possibility of the use of chemical weapons. And then the other rather definitive statement from President Joe Biden was he believes that genocide is now part of this Putin's war, Putin's invasion. Your thoughts about either or of those comments from either Blinken or President Biden? Well, let's go to the first one first. My reading is that there's no hard evidence yet. There's no forensic evidence saying we've found chemicals on a given shell, but they're looking. And there were teams of chemists looking right now. He may have been leading too fast. And maybe he did that for... That was my question. Was he out in front of the diving board? I think he was. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, we'll know in hours or days, we'll know. And who knows what the Russians are doing. Maybe they had one shell with some kind of chemical in it and just to terrify everybody. That's one thing. And the other thing was, I forgot, what was your other? The genocide comment from President Biden. Yeah, when did he finally notice that? You know, when do you have genocide? You have it at 5,000 people under the rubble being crushed, 10,000, 20,000? I mean, I think genocide started a long time ago. You know, we know clearly, and it's not even retrospective, that the Russians don't care. They blow up people who were there in a geographical location. That's the way they do war. That's the way they do Chechnya and their last attack in the south of Ukraine. They're gonna continue to do that. That's their playbook. And it is genocide for sure. And if we didn't notice it in Aleppo, in Syria, the Russians were doing the same thing there, bombings, civilians. And in that case, they were using chemical weapons for sure. So I mean, I don't know what the hesitation is. We have it, it's on us. And I don't know why we don't recognize it. The problem is, nice to recognize it, nice to finally get the conclusion that we have atrocities and war crimes and genocide. But what are we gonna do about it? When you have this kind of thing, it's very hard to stop it. There's a great movie on TV called The Promise. And it's the story of the genocide of the Armenians at the start of World War I in Turkey, where the Turks murdered them with the specific intention of killing them all, and they murdered 1.5 million of them. That's what the movie is about. Very, very troubling. How do you stop that? And there was an article, I think it was David Brooks in The Times a week ago, and said, look, if a guy is doing war crimes and atrocities and genocide, if he is in fact a war criminal, the only way to stop him really is with violence, because if he remains in power, he's not gonna stop by virtue of the, what do you call it, public opinion policy, determinations within that country. Nobody in Russia is going to stop Putin from doing this. It has to be an external force that stops him. And, you know, Biden's not willing to discuss that, nor is NATO, nor is the coalition. Yeah, well, I'll go to Cynthia based on your comment here. Cynthia, it seems to me that we've been in an incremental increase of support to Ukraine based on, you know, the development of Putin's atrocities. So the greater the atrocities, the more daring NATO and President Biden has been willing to say, okay, now that we see this, we're gonna do X, Y, Z. We're gonna give them more efficient weapons or better weapons, but we weren't willing to do it before because we didn't wanna engage in an acceleration of war. So if there is evidence of chemical warfare, would you expect to see an increase of NATO support, the United States support for Ukraine as far as the sophistication of weapons and or I can't imagine what other sanctions we can implement, but additional sanctions? I think that we need to be personally involved once it reaches the chemical level. Now I think we should be involved already. I realize we don't wanna start World War III. I get all of that, but like they still don't have the migs. They haven't given them the airplanes, like that. There's so many things that we could do that President Zelensky is asking for, that stop short of engaging personally with Russia. We used the term, what are we waiting for on the previous topic of the referral to the DOJ? Can't we say that now? What are we waiting for? By the way, what is the difference between a chemical strike versus overt, obvious war crimes against humanity? What is the difference there? Well, you know, we know the difference and I'm sure that NATO knows the difference and I'm sure that they are working on where their red line is. I don't think they're just flying by the seat of their pants hoping that Russia is gonna come around. I think they have a good picture of who Putin is and what to expect from him. So I'm not sure that I- Are you waiting for the red line because they really don't wanna shut up gas and oil from Russia? Is that red line somewhere being obscured because there is concern that they will not be able to buy or before gas and oil from Russia? I think that is part of it. That is definitely in there. They've been working on the EU to stop their importing of the oil and gas. So I know that that is in there. But you know, like I read that Stalin quote not too long ago is either last week or week before and he said, death is the solution. No people, no problems, right? So we know that Putin is sort of following after Stalin. So maybe he's just thinking, all he wants is the land. He wants the resources that are in the land is all Putin wants. So of course he doesn't care. If he gets rid of all the people then there won't be a population to come up after him. Well, what he'll do is what Stalin did on the great starvation of Ukraine is starve the Ukrainians out, let them die and then repopulate the country with Russians. He'll just say you're now going to be living in Ukraine. Right. That's why there's so many Russian speaking people in Ukraine. Well, Ukraine will no longer be Ukrainian, it will be Russia. So one of the things that breaks my heart is watching all of these ancient artifacts, these incredibly beautiful buildings that are from so long ago, hundreds of years old and they're just destroyed. So so much history, not just people but history is being destroyed in the midst of all this. I was tempted, we're out of time in fact we're over time but I was tempted to ask the question, what would happen if the Ukrainians did a proactive stride on the Kremlin? Oh, I think they should. I think they should do it now. He's gonna get worse with them. How much worse can he get? They can't, he can't get worse. So I say go for it. Absolutely. You made the suggestion one time, Tim, that they just need to find somebody that they can pay enough money to to go in there and kill him. Sorry. I may or may not have said that. Okay, we have run out of time. We are out of time. Okay, last comments. I'll give you some comments. I don't think this is gonna end nicely. I think you have on the one hand, the atrocities, raise interest, raise support in Western Europe and to some extent, to a lesser extent, really in the US. But there's another factor working and that is the apathy and the complacence factor that we talked about in connection with American politics. They're getting tired of it. They're getting tired of hearing about the stories of the refugees. They're getting tired of having situations where the local countries can't afford to take care of the refugees. They're all getting tired in Europe about this and they're gonna go to complacency. And I'll tell you, I'm getting tired. We're all getting tired. And that's what Putin is banking on. And so that strengthens him. So you have these two cross factors on the chart. One is that the outrageous things that make us wanna support the Ukrainians. And two is that the continuation without secession at all, it keeps going and going like the ever ready battery and he's always doubling down. And this new general is gonna make it worse. And the atrocities in Donbass are gonna be hideous. And so he's demoralizing us at the same time. Which one of those crosshairs will prevail? It's not clear, but we three anyway, we should follow it because we'll see. It's gonna tilt. We're at a pivotal point I think right now to see what Joe Biden does, to see what Congress does, to see what France does. And France has obviously two political stories going on there and Germany. So whether this points to a successful conclusion or not, I'm not sure and I'm not particularly optimistic. All right. Cynthia, you get the last word. Okay, I'm not very optimistic either. I don't have an optimistic word for us today. I'm sorry. But I do wanna make a comment about what we were talking about in the beginning as far as the select committee and not wanting to look partisan. As Jay said, and I totally agree with him and I think this is an important thing. Who cares? They're gonna make it partisan no matter what they do. So if it's no matter what they do, then just plow forward as if the partisan part doesn't matter, just because they're Republicans doesn't mean they're not criminals, right? So I think- Quotable, Cynthia. That's quotable. So I think they need to just go forward and give this referral, this criminal referral over to the DOJ because the longer we posty foot around Putin or Trump, either one, the more we give power to that kind of autocratic dictatorship thinking. And so I think we need to not worry about that and just stand right up to him right now. That's my- All right. Last word, great words, quotable words. I'm Tim Apachello with What Now America. I'd like to thank my guest, Jay Fidel, Cynthia Leeson-Clair. Join us next Wednesday, 11 o'clock. We'll see you then. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. 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