Rumors have spread that prison officials in Washington DC are refusing to release many January 6th prisoners, despite President Trump’s pardons for 1500 of them. Sen. Mike Lee tells Glenn that this appears to be true. He explains how he has looked into the situation and argues, “from what we can tell, they haven’t complied with it yet. It’s yet another reason to revisit DC’s Home Rule, which I think should be repealed.” Sen. Lee also weighs in on why he believes Biden’s decision to pardon members of the Jan. 6 Committee will be GOOD for the Republic: since they can no longer plead the 5th, “we can finally get to the bottom of exactly what happened.” So, will Congress “subpoena the heck out of” them?
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: So I wanted to ask you, you tweeted something last night. Is DC ignoring Trump's pardons? If it is, then this is definitely a time to repeal DC home rule.
You had me at the word "repeal." DC's government has no right to exist constitutionally. Congress shouldn't have delegated its law-making authority over DC. It's time to take it back.
I love you. Okay. Tell me what this means.
MIKE: What this means is that Congress needs to do its job. We've had a problem for a long time with Congress delegating its lawmaking power to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.
We've got a corresponding problem, in that, we're supposed to be the lawmaker for the District of Columbia. Article one, section eight, clause 17, sometimes known as the enclave clause, gives us that power.
We've been delegating that to the DC government for about a half century. The results have been disastrous. The results have been a government that doesn't serve the interest of the people well. It's a radical leftist regime that runs it. Our schools are failing. Crime rates are soring.
And last night, from what we can tell, after Trump issued a pardon for a number of prisoners involved with January 6, there were only two released last night. And I spoke to someone last night. Who had gone down personally to the DC jail. Saw that only two of them had been released. And jail officials at the DC jail, announced that they would be releasing any more last night.
Now, this is not hard, Glenn. Did he have names? And they have pardons. They can identify those prisoners who have been pardoned.
Trump's direct influence is that they were to be released immediately, as one should, when one sees that somebody has been pardoned.
And they still weren't out. So we're still trying to get names, numbers. And verify it, how this is happening. But from what we can tell. They haven't complied with it, yet.
It's yet another reason to revisit DC's home rule. Which I think should be repealed.
GLENN: That's extraordinary.
That they would be that bold and say, because everybody was watching them. Last night.
I haven't heard this reported, I mean, CNN is the only thing I can get in this hotel. By the way, if anybody on my staff, books me at a hipster hotel one more time, heads will roll! I want actual furniture, not bean bags. Thank you.
STU: The hipster hotel feels exactly the same way, by the way.
GLENN: What did you say?
MIKE: They were very popular with the deputies. I will say.
GLENN: Oh, they're very popular. And who wouldn't love them. I'm not 18 years old anymore, please book me in an adult room.
Anyway, I was watching CNN last night, and they had, you know, people stationed out there. And they were just complaining that criminals that had killed police officers on January 6th were just being released. You're saying that there's only two that were released last night?
And nothing yet this morning, that you know of?
MIKE: That's right.
Former staffer Sean Peterson was down at the DC jail. And he said, that they released two of them through a back door, and then a jail official said, we're not releasing any more tonight. Even though, there were apparently many more to be released.
Now, again, Trump did -- Glenn, these are people, who have been pardoned. And this is a government that has done like -- things like this for a long time.
I've got story after story, of horrible things. You know, DC allows noncitizens voting in your local elections. You know how difficult that can be. To disentangle people who were casting votes in local elections. From those who were voting in true federal elections.
That is a problem in and of itself. You've also got the fact that they've just -- time after time.
They've taken positions that harm the people of DC. Make everything more expensive.
These guys have high tax rates. They spend like crazy. In education. Yet, they have one of those failing school systems in the entire country.
You want to know something interesting. Four years ago, an elite unit from the Utah National Guard was out here in DC. Protecting DC. Protecting the White House from the violence that was erupting in the summer of 2020, in the city.
In the middle of the night, after they had gone through a 36-hour shift. None of these guys had slept in 36 hours. They had worked all night and all day. And all day the next day.
They were evicted by the opposite of the mayor of the DC government. These are the kind of people these are. And they've been begging --
GLENN: Well.
MIKE: For a long time. We need it now. They've been begging for it, by the terrible things they do.
GLENN: I want to cut the mayor of DC some slack. Because they might have been high on crack. And -- and I think that -- because that is a tradition, isn't it, Stu?
For DC mayors to be high on crack.
STU: Yeah. I think it's part of the job subscription.
GLENN: Part of the deal.
You have to at least be high on crack occasionally, at least.
So, Mike, is this going to gain any traction?
What are you going to do?
MIKE: Well, the first thing we have to do is make sure that these prisoners who have been pardoned are, in fact, released.
But I think the word needs to spread. Obviously, this is a niche issue. It really is a local issue, and it's an issue that is very emotional for many of the people who live and around the area.
But I think more and more residents of DC are getting wise to the fact, that something is not working right.
GLENN: Well, hang on. What would this mean for the judicial system?
Because you can't get a fair trial here, in Washington, DC.
And, you know, anything goes wrong in Washington, DC. Anybody commits any crimes, in the Capitol, or in the White House. It's all tried here, in Washington, DC.
And it's so corrupt. It's got to stop. What would this mean, for that system?
MIKE: Well, look, at least for the system of deciding who will be prosecuted. Who will be running the city, would change.
And you would start to see people prosecuted for more things like property crimes.
Sort of the Soros-funded prosecutor of the county has infected this city. And it shows. I lost count of how many members of Congress.
And how many staff members, of members of Congress. People I interact with most when I'm in Washington, of course. Have been assaulted. Have been carjacked. Have been stabbed.
Have been robbed. Often in broad daylight. Often within a block or two, of the US Capitol. Which is one of the more heavily policed. Heavily secured locations anywhere in America.
And yet, this happens here. Because there is an environment of lawlessness. The more this happens, the more members of Congress are seeing that this isn't working. This is our Capitol city. It should be a shining city on a hill. We can't let it flip into this state of disrepair and other lawlessness.
GLENN: It would -- it would be helpful if people started tweeting. And started calling the senator or House member, and started some grassroot effort to repeal DC home rule. It might gather some attention. If people started doing that today.
Mike, let me ask you --
MIKE: I've been tweeting from my at base Mike Lee account. Repeal DC home rule.
So if people want to join in on this, you can retweet me. You can tweet on your own.
Send out a post on X, on any other social media platform. Contact your members of Congress, and tell them. Message is very simple: Repeal DC home rule.
GLENN: Mike, the idea that we can no longer go after Fauci or any of the people on January 6th.
What does that mean, to you?
MIKE: Well, what it means to me, first of all, is that these guys will have a hard time, perhaps an impossible time, invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Not if, but when. They're subpoenaed to testify with Congressional hearings.
Because if they've been pardoned, then one can rationally, logically conclude, that there's no risk of prosecution. And if that's the case, I don't think they can invoke their fifth amendment rights to remain silent.
And we can finally get to the bottom of exactly what happened.
It also means, that there was an understanding, that some things happened.
Some things happened, that would otherwise, likely be likely to lead to an investigation, if not criminal charges to be brought against some of these people.
GLENN: What are you -- because I watched enough CNN yesterday.
I watched CNN enough yesterday, to know that they're spinning this as, they're just doing this, as preemptive against Trump. Because he will go after these poor people.
MIKE: Yeah. So if you believe that, then you're likely somebody who believes Fauci in the first place. And you're quite possibly somebody who even after Anthony Fauci was caught repeatedly lying, in some cases under oath, to Rand Paul, and to -- and others who asked them questions.
But remember, Rand Paul was raising the question very early on. About gain-of-function research.
GLENN: Uh-huh.
MIKE: Tony Fauci repeatedly denied, that there was gain-of-function research happening. Of course, there was all the time.
They were covering it up.
They tried to use a different name to characterize it. It was still gain-of-function research.
Tony Fauci also spread the false rumor, that this was the result of, I don't know, haggling at a monkey, holding hands in a park somewhere, in Wuhan, and that produced the virus.
(laughter)
MIKE: And, you know, a lot of people were harmed as a result of this. The COVID deaths and illnesses, in and of themselves, were bad enough. And the predictable, foreseeable outcome of the US government funding gain of research activities, in places like Wuhan, a place that was known, to have a horrible hygiene record.
And that's how things like this happened.
People get hurt.
And then the country overreacts, and more bad things happen all over the place.
Yeah. This has got to be investigated.
And, yeah. President Biden to Tony Fauci placed real problems here. That's why Trump needed to act. And I'm glad that Trump is going to see to it, the truth comes out.
Biden may well be able to pardon. And he, in fact, did. But in some ways, that helps us get to the bottom of the truth. We've got to subpoena the heck out of these guys, and get the truth out of them.
GLENN: Because if they -- if they tell a lie on the witness stand.
If they know it what we now know, because of documents, to be the truth, they can be prosecuted for that lie, can they not?
MIKE: Yes. Yes.
Of course. Look, the whole point here, is we can't undo the damage these guys did.
And the point here is not to torment them for the sake of tormenting them. The bottom is that we've got to get to the bottom of the truth. Otherwise, this kind of pattern of abusive government continues to happen.
And I will flag here the fact, that if we understood the nature of the federal government. If we read the Constitution and understood the twin structural protections at the heart of it, the vertical protection that we call the federalism, the horizontal separation, we would call separation of powers.
This crap would end!
And so we've got to -- we've got to restore the movement in America.
Getting people to read and understand the Constitution.
Particularly, the structural Constitution, which has been badly neglected and bastardized over the last 80 years.
STU: Senator, somewhat related question, there was a Friday news dump from the New York Times, that outlined the six people who basically covered Joe Biden's decline, mentally over the past three years.
They identify them. They talk about them. And their motivations. And their tactics.
While -- you know, the way they describe it to the Times. It seems really, really bad. Maybe it's not illegal. But my if we say is there's a lot of texts and discovery that would lead us to a different conclusion on that. Is there a possibility that we look into that?
Is that the type of thing that we could do?
MIKE: It's certainly something that ought to be the topic of congressional investigations.
You know, whether or not people will testify, whether or not they will be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Privilege and self-incrimination.
Whether or not we'll find anything that is a game changer. Remains to be seen.
But we need to try. We need to ask questions. Because there's enough just on the face of things.
A lot of us saw the mental decline unfolding in real time, in slow motion. Only we saw just the small sliver of what was actually going on.
And then when you add to that, the fact that there was this sham debate, set up in June.
What was it?
Like the fourth week of June.
That was very curious.
That they were agreeing to a general election debate, before either candidate has gone through his national convention phase.
Before either candidate was officially the party nominee. And normally, you don't do that. Until the week before the general election.
And if they were doing this, I thought that was really curious, in and of itself.
But I think the fact that they scheduled it for June, without precedent in modern history. Is just as far as I can remember, indicates that there was some people, on the inside. Including on the inside of the White House.
Who knew there was a problem.
They needed a way to elbow Joe Biden out.
So if they knew that, at least by then, certainly they knew of more things that were happening.
And yet, nobody in the White House, nobody in the administration, was willing to support a 25th Amendment type of discussion. They just covered it up, and that's a real problem, especially when you look at all the problems that the Biden administration was creating. And the fact that we now have plenty of reasons to doubt, whether Biden was even conscious of all these decisions he was making. Somebody was doing that. Somebody was messing with America. But we need to know why, and how, and from whom?
GLENN: And who? And who?
You know, the revelation that came out from Mike Johnson about having -- Joe Biden having no idea what he was doing with natural gas is really very disturbing.