Ed Martin: Welcome back. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. It’s been a while. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to my friend Mike Davis, who is over at the Article III Project He’s the head over there, I guess, president. He’s a founder. And if you go to ArticleIIIProject.org, that’s article the number three project dot org, you’ll see…. Here’s the thing. There’s a lot there, a history of what’s going on, but the resources is really helpful. Judiciary tracker, the Biden short list, a conversation on some of these things. And Mike Davis is particularly active out in Twitter kind of pushing back and fighting back. So first of all, Mike, welcome back How’s it going?
Mike Davis: Thank you very much for having me Ed, and I’m doing very well.
Ed Martin: So first, people kind of miss, I say, I do I say this regularly, President Biden is actually getting a lot of judges through, isn’t he?
Mike Davis: He is. And that’s the consequence of Republicans being stupid and letting Democrats win one and not only one, both of those Georgia U.S. Senate seats. So there are consequences to elections. And Democrats controll the White House and they control the Senate. So the only thing that will stop President Biden from from appointing more judges is we’re at the mercy of senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Mike Davis: And they’ve shown to be pretty reliable liberal votes on these judges.
Ed Martin: Well, and I guess one of the reasons, one of the ways you can describe that is they actually haven’t publicized it much. Right? They just let they say to Manchin and Sinema, you’re going to fight us on other stuff. But on this, you have to be a Democrat. And, you know, it’s one of the reasons when people get too happy with either Manchin or Sinema,
Ed Martin: I say, yeah, I agree. Build Back Better would have been a disaster, but they vote a lot for these priorities. And I mean, and again, to say it clearly, Biden, Joe Biden as president has confirmed more judges than I think any president since Reagan maybe. Is that right? At this point?
Mike Davis: They’re there. They are appointing liberal judicial activists to the very fast clip.
Ed Martin: Yeah. So that’s, people missing that story, by the way. I think it’s important. So now let’s turn here now to this question of the new the nominee. I’ve talked about the Biden, the way he did it a lot. The idea of identifying he’s going to appoint a black woman, how insulting and un-American that is. But, you know, walk us through where we are and what we’re finding out.
Ed Martin: And then we got to get to, Mike, whether there’s going to be any real fight in the Republicans significant enough to do something. Again, by the way, ArticleIIIProject.org, article the number three project dot org. We’re talking with Mike Davis. So where are we with this nominee? Well, tell me about her.
Mike Davis: Yeah. So Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson is going to be the first black woman on the Supreme Court it appears. And the reason that is, is because then Senator Joe Biden, now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and now Senate number two and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin all filibustered, for two years, the nomination of Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. Circuit, the second highest court in the land.
Mike Davis: She was a conservative picked by President George W. Bush. They filibustered her for two years and then when she was put on the D.C. circuit in a deal with McCain and others, Joe Biden, then-Senator Joe Biden came out and said that he would filibuster her nomination to the Supreme Court if President George W. Bush elevated her to the Supreme Court. So that is the reason why we have, it took so long to have the first black woman nominee to the Supreme Court because the Democrats threatened to filibuster Judge Janice Rogers Brown.
Mike Davis: So there’s that number one point. They… Democrats pretend like they care about the diversity, they care about diversity on the federal bench, but they have a 30 year pattern and practice, going back to Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. They have a 30 year pattern of practice of viciously attacking and smearing women and minority judicial nominees from Republican Presidents.
Mike Davis: So this is not about diversity. This is about power. Don’t let them fool you. There were 21 federal appellate judges appointed by President Trump that included Justice Amy Coney Barrett and 20. Excuse me, diverse nominees, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett and 20 women and minority appellate court judges to the critically important circuit courts. Chuck Schumer voted against 95% of them.
Mike Davis: Dick Durbin voted against 81% of them. Sheldon Whitehouse, who belongs to an all white beach club and refuses to resign from his all white beach club, voted against 71%. So again, this is not about diversity. They don’t care about diversity. They care about power. So, there’s that.
Ed Martin: Yeah, but tell me about tell me about this this justice. I mean, one of the things that, again, I can tell in your voice and how you’re talking about it, that the likelihood of being able to stop it seems the chances seem slim. Of course, it didn’t look like they could do anything about Justice Kavanaugh. Now Justice Kavanaugh.
Ed Martin: And then at the end, they lied and the media went wild for it. They won’t do that again. The media won’t allow us to lie. Conservatives to lie, first of all we won’t lie. But then they won’t allow… But there’s some real there’s some real issues here that this justice, this justice to be or this judge has had in the past.
Ed Martin: Walk us through some of that. People should know about this, right? This is who she who she is and what she did.
Mike Davis: Yeah. She’s I mean, she’s a radical left wing judicial activist. And that’s been her entire career. Yeah. She went to Harvard. She went to Harvard Law School. She clerked on the Supreme Court. She has those Ivy League sterling credentials. But if you look at her, look at her, what she’s done with her legal career, she went to become a federal public defender.
Mike Davis: Okay. That’s, you know, criminal defendants need defense lawyers as well. She defended Gitmo terrorists while a federal public defender. Democrats may argue, well, she’s a federal public defender. She doesn’t get to pick her clients. I don’t think that’s the case. I think she sought them out. But even if she didn’t, when she left government and went to a big law firm MoFo, she has limited time.
Mike Davis: If you’re in the private practice of law, the law firm like I used to do for too many years, you have very limited time. And the limited time that you’re going to spend on pro bono, on free representation on matters, on clients, you’re going to want to agree with them or support them generally. You’re not going to go out of your way to provide free pro-bono representation to white supremacists who are you know, who are trying to lynch black people.
Mike Davis: That would that would not be a good idea if you’re a pro bono attorney. So what did who did Kentanji Brown Jackson decide to represent while in private practice at MoFo? Gitmo terrorists. Right? So she provided her sterling credentials, her sterling Supreme Court clerkship, and she represented Gitmo terrorists all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Mike Davis: And in 2008 Justice Kennedy joined the four liberals to essentially rule that these Gitmo terrorists had a right, had habeas rights that they did not have. They invented this, they said that they have rights to habeas. And so since that time, 729 of these detainees have been released. And this is according to the Office of National Intelligence Report published in the New York Post last year.
Mike Davis: Of those, 729 released, 229 of them have returned to terrorist activities, and 12 of them have killed six American soldiers and civilians. So you have to ask if Democrats think it’s fair game to try to disbar over 100 Republican attorneys for representing election challengers in 2020. How the hell is it not fair game to grill Ketanji Brown Jackson, Judge Jackson, on her choice, her decision to go out of her way to provide free legal services to Gitmo terrorists who went on to kill Americans after she successfully represented them all the way to the Supreme Court.
Mike Davis: So that’s number one. You have to look at her record as a district court judge. She’s been a district court. She was a district court judge for years. She wrote 500 opinions. She had one of the higher reversal rates on the district court, meaning it went to the D.C. Circuit. And even with the Democrat appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit, she was reversed a lot more often than she should have been.
Mike Davis: Right? And let’s look at a couple of those cases that shows that she may be a political activist, instead of a dispassionate judge. Right? 2015, there’s a case where Hillary Clinton’s press secretary, press aide, was using his personal email to do official business when she was the secretary of state. Those emails are clearly subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Mike Davis: But Judge Jackson convoluted the Freedom of Information Act to protect from public disclosure, Hillary Clinton’s aide’s embarrassing emails, that’s number one. Four years later, 2019, Judge Jackson eviscerates 230 years of constitutional law on executive privilege to force White House counsel Don McGahn to testify against Donald Trump. Now, if you know anything about executive privilege, as you do Ed, it goes all the way back to George Washington.
Mike Davis: If you, if anyone in the White House has the right to have candid discussions with the President of the United States it’s the chief of staff and the White House counsel. Judge Jackson was reversed on appeal in this case, but it shows that wait… So Freedom of Information Act protects clearly disclosable emails from Democrats, but 230 years of constitutional law thrown out the door to get Trump.
Mike Davis: And so those are very fair game inquiries against Judge Jackson to show that she’s a political activist and not an independent judge.
Ed Martin: So, Mike, we’re talking with Mike Davis and Mike is the founder and the president of the Article III Project, Article number three project dot org, there’s a lot more there on Joe Biden’s picks and all. But. Okay, Mike, so you laid it out. There’s a lot to talk about. Actual talk about record and and mindset. There’s something to talk about.
Ed Martin: About what? You know, I don’t know if she would ever answer, but what does it feel like to be picked in a way that makes it clear you’re not picked by being the best in the country? She might be, but she was picked because she’s an African-American woman. I mean, you have that conversation. I think most Americans would be interested right now whether you’re an Asian-American who wanted your kid to go to Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia and you were told by the Democrats, you can’t do that because it doesn’t matter how hard you study. We’re going to we’re going to spread the wealth based on the hyphenated. And you’re not one of the hyphenated. There’s a lot of things. But and then you brig up this record of her positions. What is the likelihood that the Republicans have a have a willingness to fight, if only to lay the record out there?
Ed Martin: What do you sense?
Mike Davis: So, look, they have a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent, meaning they they have a constitutional duty to fully vet her, thoroughly vet her, and not vet her any differently than they would with any other nominee. Right? So they have to do that. Now, that doesn’t mean they should be stupid and do the scorched earth approach that Democrats did during the Kavanaugh confirmation
Mike Davis: and it backfired on them spectacularly when they lost four Democrat incumbents in a year when they won House seats. So I’m not suggesting that they take the scorched earth approach. They don’t have to be personally vicious. They don’t have to attack her. They don’t have to attack her family like they did with Justice Amy Coney, Democrats did to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s family.
Mike Davis: They shouldn’t do that, but they should absolutely, thoroughly look at her record. Chuck Schumer back in 2005 with John Roberts’s confirmation said the most crucial qualification for a Supreme Court nominee is their judicial philosophy and ideology. And Dick Durbin, now the number two Senate Democrat and the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, said that it is fair game to go, to look ino to these nominees positions on key issues like executive power to see and abortion to see if they’re outside of the judicial mainstream.
Mike Davis: So if we use the the Schumer standard and the Durbin standard, there should be a rigorous vetting of Judge Jackson’s record, her judicial philosophy, her activism, her ideology, her her personal beliefs, why she thought it was so important to provide to provide her free legal services her limited free legal services to terrorists and Gitmo who went on to kill Americans.
Mike Davis: You also you also have to look at her record when she was at Harvard Law School and on the Sentencing Commission. Just this week… She has this weird pattern. She wrote a note at Harvard Law School about how the sex offender notification laws, when there’s a sex offender that who moves into your neighborhood and you have to notify your neighbors,
Mike Davis: so, you know, you’re, you know, for your for wife and kids know that there’s a sex offender next door. She wrote a note at Harvard Law School saying that this was unconstitutionally punitive. And then you see that pattern throughout her career, including on the Sentencing Commission, right? When she was on a sentencing commission she thought that the sentencing guidelines, the recommended sentences for child sex predators was too tough.
Mike Davis: Right? So there is a weird pattern of Judge Jackson providing her elite legal skills and credentials to terrorists who kill Americans and child sex offenders.
Ed Martin: Well, I tell you, the thing is, Mike, I hope that we see the Republicans use the opportunity to at least sort of educate the public on this. I wonder if they will. I think that, you know, you watch the media condition them to stop, you know, anything that will sound like you… You’ll be accused of being a racist if you ask a hard question.
Ed Martin: So we’ll see. All right. Mike Davis, I’ve got to run, though. Mike Davis, ArticleIIIProject.org, article the number three project dot org. Check it out there. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate your time.
Mike Davis: Thank you, Ed.
Ed Martin: All right. We’ll take a break, everybody. We’ll be right back. It’s Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report. Back in a moment.