Speaker A: What’s the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer? A bad lawyer makes your case drag on for years. A good lawyer makes it last even longer.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here, our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to put religion on trial. We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the cross examiner.

Speaker A: Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the Cross examiner. I am an atheist. I am an attorney, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, as well as the massive amount of misinformation that’s powering that rise. I started this podcast to both entertain and educate and give you the tools to push back against that information. Today, I’m going to be doing something a little different. I’m going to be reading an essay I wrote about three or four years ago that never got published. I think it’s a perfect example of a discussion that we need to have about those in power lying to us in order to get what they want, which is one of the themes of this podcast. Hey there, editing examiner. Here just a quick note to people who are only interested in religious based content. This episode is not for you. This is more about the legal system and the theme that I have in my podcast about people empower misleading people with misinformation. So it’s about skepticism, and it’s about modern political issues as they relate to the law, but it’s not necessarily about religion. So with that said, back to the essay. It also ties to something that happened in the press today. But I’ll talk about that at the end. So you’ll forgive me if you detect sort of a, uh, reading style, but that’s what I’m going to be doing. I’m going to be reading this essay. So I hope you enjoy, and we’ll discuss at the end. Here we go. The essay is entitled Meece Reborn. Never Attempt to Teach a Pig to Sing it wastes your time and annoys the pig. Robert Heinlen. Anyone who lived in the Washington, DC. Area in the late 80s likely remembers a poster that started popping up seemingly everywhere near the end of 1987. Printed in primary colors with mixed fonts and evoking, a Madison Avenue print ad of the pop art poster declared, experts agree Mese is a pig. The big question of the time was not why someone would call Edwin Meese, Attorney General under President Reagan, a pig. That had been well established by the time the posters started appearing. No, the big question was, who did this? This was a time before ubiquitous personal computers, photoshop, and print on demand. Who had designed these posters? Who paid to have them printed? Who secretly hung them all around DC. It was a 1987 version of Banksy. The bluntness of the statement was provocative at the time. The simple pop art elements in the 60s styling were eye catching. It played into the nation’s zeitgeist of the moment. But the fact that it was done anonymously created a mystery that changed it from a one and done local interest news blurb to a recurring story that spawned a fanbase following and caused discussions on Sunday talk shows. News outlets such as The Washington Post and AP ran many pieces related to the posters, reporting on stories such as the Mystery of the Poster’s authorship. T shirts with the slogan printed on it were selling out due to massive demand. How the burgeoning Washington, DC. Hardcore punk rock scene, considered one of the United States earliest and most influential punk scenes, helped spread the posters. The ACLU threatening suit when a bicycle messenger was denied access to Mises Justice Department building because the messenger was wearing such a T shirt, and the police and FBI questioning ticketing and even arresting people in relation to hanging and pasting the posters on public land a footnote here. There’s a great line in the story about the ACLU threatening to sue the Justice Department for kicking out the bike messenger. So he’s wearing the T shirt, right? He’s wearing this T shirt that says Meese is a Pig. And the line from the story says, quote, the experts manning the entrance at Justice Department decidedly did not agree about the allegedly poor sign nature of their boss, attorney General Edwin Meese II. Allegedly poor sign nature. Just had to throw that in there. Okay, back to the essay. Meese is a pig was, in short, a thing. But why? To understand that, we must review a bit of history. By that summer 1987, meese had spent nearly 25 years in public service, dating to 1958. His jobs had ranged from working in California’s District’s Attorney’s office to Chief of Staff for then Governor of California Ronald Reagan to eventually being appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Reagan. In 1985, a, uh, mere two years before the Meese is a pig posters started making their appearances. During this time in public service, meese had created a reputation for himself, much of it quite negative, in fact. For over a year, in the run up to Meese’s approval as attorney general, democrats repeatedly accused Me of unethical conduct. Archibald Cox, who had been a special prosecutor in the Watergate affair, issued a report to the Senate in which he concluded that Mies lacked, quote, ethical sensitivity and was blind, quote, to abuse of position, an opinion that would prove to be all too true. Nevertheless, the Senate approved him by a margin of 63 to 31 at the time. This was the lowest margin of approval of any attorney general since the 1920s. By the time the misesapig posters started to mysteriously appear, the public was learning the details of the Iran contra conspiracy and the related cover up Iran contra had originated seven years earlier, in July of 1981, when a group of senior Reagan administration officials decided to secretly sell weapons to Iran, initially with the intent of trading arms for hostages, and later with the intent of using the resulting money to fund the contras. A loose group of right wing rebel groups that sought to overthrow the Nicaragua government. Understanding Iran Contra is essential to understanding the mis is a pig posters. There were three main problems with what the Reagan officials did. First, it was, and still is illegal for the US. To sell weapons to Iran. In November of 1979, Iranian students invaded the American Embassy in Tehran. They took 52 Americans hostage and published confiscated United States documents by the boxful. This was part of the Iranian Revolution that established the strict theocracy that remains in place to this day. As a result, President Carter imposed an arms embargo on Iran. So that was problem number one. Selling arms to Iran was illegal. The second problem with the plan was that it would have been massively hypocritical and politically embarrassing for the Reagan administration to sell arms to Iran. Ever since the United States enacted the embargo, us. Diplomats and Foreign service personnel had worked behind the scenes to convince other countries to join in. By the spring of 1983, the United States had launched Operation Staunch. Operation Staunch was a global diplomatic effort by the United States to persuade other nations around the globe to never sell weapons to Iran, whom the United States painted as a terrorist state that would use such weapons to destabilize not only the region, but the world. It was a moral imperative, we explained to every other nation, to prevent Iran obtaining advanced weaponry at all costs. Any nation that would not agree to this was morally lacking and would be ostracized by all right thinking countries in the world we lectured. So that was problem number two. If discovered, such arm sales would severely damage the United States ability to influence other countries for generations to come. The third problem with Iran Contra was that it was illegal to fund the Contras. The world had learned that the Contras used terrorist tactics and regularly committed numerous human rights violations in their attempts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. As a result, Congress had banned all US. Funding of the Contras in a set of amendments called the Boland Amendments. The first Boland Amendment was attached to the Defense Appropriation Act of 1982, which passed unanimously in the House, 411 to zero. Reagan signed the bill into law on December 20, 182. From that point forward, it was illegal for the United States to fund the Contras in support of the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government. So, to sum up, selling arms to Iran was illegal. Selling arms to Iran would massively undermine the trustworthiness of the United States on the world stage, and funding the Contras was illegal. As we all know, senior Reagan administration officials decided to move forward with their conspiracy anyway, knowing full well that they were violating their oaths of office, committing multiple felonies and weakening America’s position in global politics. In the process. In toto the conspiracy resulted in nine different arms transactions that we know of, netting tens of millions of dollars that were funneled to the Contras and the release of several Iranian held hostages. The plan came to an abrupt end on November 3, 1986, when Medi Hashemi, a, uh, senior official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, spilled the beans in an interview with the Lebanese magazine Ash Shira. Some people believe that the original source of the information was a leak orchestrated by Arthur S. Moreau, Jr. Who was assistant to the Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was concerned, as the stories go, that the conspiracy had grown too big and was out of control, and he leaked the information to Iran so that it could be exposed by this foreign power. The support for that version of the story is not definitive. Let’s just put it that way. One thing led quickly to another. A presidential commission led by Senator John Tower was formed to investigate the conspiracy. Congress also ran investigations. It was discovered that Colonel Oliver North had shredded massive amounts of documents to cover up the extent of the conspiracy and protect President Reagan. Eventually, President Reagan was forced to admit in a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office that he traded arms to Iran for hostages. This is where we return to the Mies is a, uh, pig posters. Mies was United States Attorney General during the Iran Contra investigations. During those investigations, Mies himself was investigated for his involvement in the COVID up. The issue at hand was that instead of conducting a proper criminal investigation on behalf of the people of the United States, it became evident that Mies had focused on limiting the damage to and the criminal exposure of President Reagan. Mies initiated his own three day sham investigation on November 20, 180. The committees investigating Iran Contra would later criticize meece for, among other things, failing to protect National Security Council documents that were later altered or destroyed by Oliver North, failing to take any notes during his interviews, and for claiming falsely, at the end of his quote, investigation that Reagan did not know about a November 1985 Hawk missile shipment to Iran until February of 1986. This last one, lying to cover up for Reagan, has extra importance. The independent counsel noted that this error was part of a greater pattern of omissions by Mies to protect Reagan. If Reagan knew of any illegal arm shipments and failed to report them to Congress, he could face criminal charges. As a result, when investigating whether Reagan knew about the sale, meese never actually asked Reagan if he knew about the sale. I’m going to break here a minute and emphasize this. I wrote that in italics for the essay. But your investigation was as to whether Reagan knew about the sale, and you never asked him if he knew about the sale? This is investigation 101. Sorry. Getting on with this. Secretary of State George Schultz even told me on November 22 that Reagan had admitted to knowing of that shipment in advance, but Meese ignored him. Finally, on November 24, the third day of Meese’s investigation, he met with several officials, including President Reagan, vice President George Bush, george Bush senior and Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger. At that meeting, Meese stated that the shipment in question may have violated the law. Quote, but the president did not know. It was shown that Meese, Reagan, Regan, Schultz, Weinberger, Bush, and Poindexter, all high ranking officials all had evidence that this was false at the time that this statement was made in this meeting. Thus, Meese was lying to protect the president. No charges were ever filed against Meese because prosecutors were unaware of M. Meese’s false statements in the November 24 meeting until six years after their investigation had closed. By that time, too many witnesses had followed Reagan’s lead to fail to recall details, and prosecutors were concerned that they would not be able to convict Meece if they went to trial. This is the main context of the Mese Is a Pig posters in 1987, six months after this sham investigation that attempted to hide facts, distort the truth, and subvert justice all in the name of protecting his longtime friend and employer, Ronald Reagan. This is why the T shirts were selling like hotcakes. This is why document couriers were appealing to the ACLU to protect them when they had their First Amendment rights violated simply for wearing the T shirts. This is why young punk rock musicians felt compelled to risk prosecution by covertly hanging the posters. All around DC. People were finding out the extent to which the Attorney general had covered up, lied, and conducted a purposefully incompetent investigation to protect a president who thought he was above the law. People were upset to think that even after all that we had learned from Watergate, the United States had yet another Republican attorney general committing crimes to protect another Republican president from criminal prosecution. Over the subsequent years, 14 people were indicted in relation to the Iran Contra conspiracy, eleven of which were convicted. Some convictions were vacated on appeal due to technical reasons, but six of the highest ranking conspirators never faced justice for their crimes. Instead of facing time for breaking multiple laws, lying to investigators, or destroying evidence to cover up their crimes, they were instead pardoned by President George H. W. Bush on December 20, 492, six years after the Mies Is a Pig posters helped draw national attention to the extent of Mies’s complicity in cover up inside the Reagan administration. The fact that Bush issued the pardons on Christmas Eve was lost on no one. You see, during the Iran Contra investigations. Then Vice President Bush had also been implicated in the conspiracy. Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, who had led the investigation into Reagan officials criminal conduct in the Iran Contra scandal, noted a pattern of, quote, deception and obstruction by Bush, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and other senior Reagan administration officials in relation to the Iran Contra investigations. But because Weinberger kept winning fights to delay his trial, and because he refused to testify in the trials of others, there was little evidence available to pursue charges against Bush. Thus, on Christmas Eve 1992, upon hearing of Bush’s pardons, which included, of course, a, uh, pardon for Casper Weinberger, independent Counsel Walsh said, quote, The Iran Contra cover up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed. Now, while this was the main context of the Mies is a pig posters from 1987 to 88, there was also a deeper context at play. A context in which Mies was not just a liar and a conspirator, but a bully and a thug with blood on his hands. You see, 20 years earlier, in the spring of 1969, students at UCLA Berkeley had converted a derelict plot of land on campus to a public park. People’s park, as it came to be known, was used by students and local residents. Local merchants even expressed their gratitude for the community’s effort to improve the rundown area, while the university expressed a desire to convert some or all of the land into a sports field. Chancellor Roger Haynes promised a three week period of discussions with the students and that no construction would begin without fair warning. All of that was ruined on May 15, when California Governor Ronald Reagan cracked down on what he saw was the student takeover of public property. Describing Berkeley as, quote, a, uh, haven for communist sympathizers, protesters and sex deviants, reagan sent California Highway Patrol and Berkeley police officers into People’s Park at Berkeley to force all students out of the park long before the promised three week negotiation period had ended. This caused a crowd of over 6000 students to gather to protest the harsh police reaction to what had been very peaceful assemblies and negotiations up until that point. At the time, Meese was Governor Reagan’s chief of staff. An army veteran, he had long despised protesters due to their antiviettm war and, quote, hippie sentiments. On the day of the protests, Mies assumed responsibility for the governmental response to the People’s Park protest. Under Mees’s direction, officers in full riot gear obstructed their badges to avoid being identified and attacked the students with nightsticks and eventually shotguns loaded with buckshot the same size as 38 caliber bullets. The police, not satisfied with shooting running protesters in the back with shotguns, decided to shoot at people simply watching from the rooftops. That day, police shot and killed James Rector, a young man who was visiting friends in Berkeley and who was peacefully watching from the roof of Grandma Books bookstore. Carpenter Alan Blanchard was permanently blinded by a load of birdshot fired directly to his face by police. In all, at least 120 Berkeley residents were admitted to local hospitals for various police induced injuries, including head trauma, shotgun wounds, and broken bones. The actual number of seriously wounded was likely much higher because many of the injured did not seek treatment at local hospitals to avoid being arrested. This was a time before the advent of cheap video cameras that everyone could carry in their pockets and use to record police activity. So the police got away with it. That evening, Meese advised Reagan to send 2700 National Guard troops into Berkeley against the wishes of the Berkeley City Council, who voted against such a measure. Eight to one. In a truly nightmarish scenario, and in a foreshadowing of the Meese is a pig posters, berkeley City police officers were discovered to be parking several blocks away from the Annex Park, removing their badges and donning grotesque Halloween type animal masks, including pig masks, to attack citizens they found in the park. Think about that. A, uh, year after the People’s Park incident, governor Reagan defended his decision to put Meese in charge and use the California National Guard to quell Berkeley students attempt to negotiate with the university over the park they had created. Quote, if it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement. Close quote. In short, Meese, the eventual Attorney General of the United States, sent police and military troops in riot gear and some in literal pig masks into a school where unidentified police and soldiers killed, maimed, and injured hundreds of protesters at an event that had been up until the moment the police arrived. Peaceful. Combine this history with his cover up of Iran Contra, and you start to get a better understanding of why the Mies is a Pig posters were so impactful. But no discussion of mis is complete without exposing his totalitarian and hypocritical views by reviewing his objection to the Miranda ruling by the Supreme Court. Yeah, that ruling. Prior to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Miranda versus Arizona, anyone arrested by the police could be questioned without being told that they had a right to remain silent or that they had a right to an attorney, even if they couldn’t afford one. Police regularly used tactics to trick people into false confessions for crimes they did not commit. The Supreme Court opinion requires law enforcement officers to read you your rights before questioning you. In 1985, Meese was asked if people questioned by police should know their rights. Meese replied, and I want you to listen to this quote very carefully. Quote, suspects who are innocent of a crime should but the thing is, you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That’s contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect. Meese said this in 1985 while he was attorney General of the United States of America one short year before he organized his sham investigation to help cover up the Iran Contra conspiracy for President Reagan. Let’s read that again. Suspects who are innocent of a crime should but the thing is, you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That’s contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect. This is again the attorney general totally obliterating the concept of innocent until proven guilty of all these events. His Iran Contra cover up, his role in the deaths and injuries of peaceful student protesters, his views that innocent people are never suspects played into why Mies is a pig had become such a big deal in the summer of 1987. Mies had a history of abusing power in an authoritarian manner to further his view that those who are in charge must be obeyed and are themselves above the law. But Mies is a Pig was also bigger than just Mies. It reminded people that there are, in every generation, people who will betray the trust we place in them in the worst way possible by using the power we grant them to facilitate and cover up crimes perpetrated by other powerful people and to violently suppress the free expression of ideas that they do not agree with. Mises a pig was a warning that we must remain vigilant and prevent such people from gaining enough power to hurt us in any significant manner. Mies was a pig, yes, but so were many other people in the Reagan administration, and we need to always be on the lookout for them in the future. This was the message of Mies Is a Pig to those of us who grew up in the DC. Area at the time. Now, fast forward to last month editorial note. I wrote this several years ago during the investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia. Fast forward to last month when the New York Times reported that Trump’s former Attorney General, William Barr, pressured special Counsel John Durham, possibly even conspired with him, to mislead the public about the Justice Department inquiry into Trump’s ties with Russia. Instead of following the evidence where it led them, they and their teams sought to find flaws in the Russia theories in order to protect Trump. In other words, Barr was more concerned with covering up the potential crimes and misdeeds of President Trump instead of doing his duty to investigate criminal activity. We have previously heard Attorney General Barr spin the motivations of a president who issued pardons to cover up his own crimes and to reward his conspirators. We have witnessed Attorney General Barr duck and dodge when questions about his use of violent secret police none wearing pig masks this time against peaceful protesters he disagrees with, while ignoring the gun carrying violent protesters he does agree with. Seeing all of this, we should all be reminded of the Mise is a pig directive to always be on the lookout for the next meece. Were that the end of the story, it would surely be enough. But surprisingly, there is an even closer tie between the Mies Is a Pig poster and former Attorney General William Barr. In this case, the tie lies in the area of presidential pardons. Normally, presidents don’t pardon people on a whim. Normally, there’s a process that takes place that involves deliberation and discussion with senior administration officials. That discussion almost always involves advice from the Attorney General of the United States. The discussion that George H. W. Bush had surrounding his pardon of Casper Weinberger to protect himself from any dirt Weinberger might have on him also involved the attorney general at the time. And wouldn’t you know it, the attorney general who advised Bush to pardon a potential co conspirator was none other than William Barr. That’s right. The same attorney general who recommended Bush pardon Iran Contra conspirators as a Christmas Eve gift in order to protect himself this week has been yet again exposed as continuing to secretly and sometimes outrageously, obviously attempt to cover up President Trump’s misdeeds and crimes and justify the brutal meselike tactics barr himself employed in ordering federal troops to attack peaceful protesters in DC. Oregon, and elsewhere. This is the William Barr who caused 1900 former Justice Department employees to repeatedly call for his resignation because he moved to drop the case against a close Trump ally, Michael Flyn. This is the William Barr who, while recommending Trump not pardon, admitted Trump conspirator Roger Stone did not oppose the commutation of Stone’s sentence. From political cover ups to pardons and abandoned cases for conspirators to the use of violent secret police against peaceful American protesters. Barr’s actions echo that of mises to such a degree one might think he is mis reborn. Mises a pig should be echoing in all of our minds every time we see Barr covering up the crimes and misdeeds of President Trump. Mises a pig should be a chant we say to ourselves when the next bar sends secret police to violently punish those that the people in power disagree with. Mises a pig should be a constant refrain as we continue the fight for the soul of our country. Hopefully, those of us who don’t want our elected officials to break the laws that they are hired to enforce will learn from the Trump era and be more prepared to spot the next meece when he or she rears their authoritarian head. And maybe, just maybe, next time, we will keep that pig locked in its pen. Maybe. Postscript there is hope. This poster was spotted in DC. In 2016, and I include a picture of a sign that says, Experts Agree Trump is a pig. So that was the essay that I wrote years ago to rail against what I was seeing as repetition of history. Barr really is mise reborn. Mies was a pig. For those of you who were not alive and don’t remember him. It is astounding when you go back and look at all the things that he did in his role as Attorney General of the United States and Attorney General of California, the people he killed, the lives he endangered, the laws that he broke, and the crimes that he covered up. Here’s a clip of Barr testifying before Congress under oath as the Attorney General, and they are questioning him about the Russia scandal for Trump. If you recall correctly, there was a ton of evidence that Russia was assisting Trump in getting elected by many different means. We had cyber warfare basically going on where there was an army of operatives in Russia that were using fake identities on Facebook to create support groups for Trump. They were so good at sewing distrust and resentment in America, they would have different support groups on different sides of the aisle in their pockets, either because they were the leaders or because they were influencing the leaders. There was even cases where they would have the two different sides show up at an event on the same day for the express purpose of causing them to start fighting and get on the news. This is how deep it ran. We had Russian operatives exposed as illegal lobbyists, distributing money and trying to influence politicians to help Trump get elected. All of this is going on, and Barr is testifying before Congress to try to explain what the law is. So in this clip, representative Cecilini David Cecilini from M, Rhode Island, is asking Barr about the state of the law regarding foreign entities aiding people in getting elected in the United States. Listen to what Barr says.

Speaker C: Is it ever appropriate, sir, for the President to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election? It depends what kind of assistance? Is it ever appropriate for the president or presidential candidate to accept or solicit foreign assistance of any kind in his or her election? No, it’s not appropriate. Okay. Sorry you had to struggle with that one, Mr. Attorney General.

Speaker A: Um, that’s a nice little burn there at the end. But the audio, to me, was extremely striking. This was not a man who was seeking to thoughtfully and honestly answer Congress’s questions. He’s the Attorney General. He’s there testifying about the state of the law. And his first instinct was to protect Trump. His first instinct was to try to find some wiggle room and say, well, it depends. Now, granted, as lawyers, as lawyers, anybody who’s been to law school knows that the only proper answer to a law question is, it depends. But that’s not what’s going on here. What’s going on here is there is a rule says it’s not appropriate for any outside country to come in and affect our elections to assist one person over the other. That’s just not allowed. And here’s barr. Freewheewheeling it. Here’s Barr instinctually trying to cover up for Trump out in the open. That’s what. I meant in my essay when I said, sometimes it’s not so hidden. What they do things like this, right? So I hear you asking, this is all very interesting, but why are you doing this today? What does this retired Attorney General have to do with anything? Well, as you may have heard, a certain ex President Trump has been indicted on federal charges, and the charges are very serious. The indictment runs into close to 100 items. There’s 36 counts that he’s going to be charged with. Most of them run up to 20 years in prison each. It’s big boy time. It’s serious business. The right wing media and the right wing supporters of DeSantis and Trump and all of these people are going absolutely apeshit over this indictment. Here is Carrie Lake addressing this indictment to her followers.

Speaker D: I have a message tonight from Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden and the guys back there in the fake news media. You should listen up as well. This one’s for you. If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, yes, most of us are card carrying members of the NRA.

Speaker A: Most of us are card carrying members of the NRA. You’re going to have to get through us if you want to arrest or indict Trump. This is Kerry Lake basically threatening political violence, either civil war or assassinations, or the killing of federal officers. I don’t know why these people were cheering. These people are supposedly, right, the Law and Order Party, but we know that that’s a lie. It’s law and order when it’s cops sitting and kneeling on the necks of black men. But it’s conspiracy theory time when they’re coming after one of your heroes, one of your political champions, who gives voice to your racism, right? Or your conspiracy theory. And side note, I am editing this right now. This was recorded days ago. I am editing this at a time when Trump, ah, has in fact, been arrested. And I didn’t see Carrie Lake there at all. So great speech, Carrie, but we know it’s just hot air. As I said, these people are going nuts over this indictment. They’re calling it communism. They’re saying that the Despotic president that’s currently occupying the White House, Biden, the supposed president, is trying to assassinate his political opponent. And I’m not exaggerating about this. Millions of people in this country think that this is a sham. They obviously haven’t read the indictment. They haven’t said, well, if these things are true, wow, let me look up the law. And, yeah, he violated the law in a major way. There’s this false equivalency between what Pence did and what Biden did as far as having some secure documents in their possession. I don’t think I have to explain it, but I probably should for anybody listening in the future or people who might be a little confused. Accidents do happen. Pence didn’t intend to mislead investigators. He didn’t intend to steal anything. Neither did Biden. Most people that end up in this situation, especially if they’re high ranking, don’t intend to. They’re very busy people, and they can take papers home to work on it, and they might have some top secret stuff in there. The key to analyzing how these cases were treated is the following. In all three cases, the government went to these officials and said, we believe you have some documents. They are top secret, or some otherwise classified documents. Would you please return them to us? Two of the people said, oh, wow, my bad. Sure, here you go. And that was the end of the matter. One person said, no, I don’t have any documents. And if I did have any documents, I don’t want you looking at them. And what’s that over there? And then turns around and hides the documents and then has an attorney file a report to the government saying, I did return all the documents I had in my possession, knowing that that report was false. The attorney didn’t know it. Trump knew it. Then, when the government was planning on raiding their property to actually get these documents back, one person had their valet hide these documents, load them onto a truck or a plane. I forget how they got there to take them out of the state. One person had boxes and boxes and boxes of documents in bathrooms and on stages spilling out onto the floor where people could access them anywhere, all the while lying, lying, lying to the government and trying to keep them. And the most bizarre part about it, the strangest part, even after all this time of being exposed to the toxic simplicity that is the pure ego that is Trump, I am still surprised when I see his obvious signs of his motivation, where he is caught on tape talking to journalists, saying, oh, hey, take a look at this document I got here. It’s top secret, I can’t show you. Or, hey, look at this map, you big Pac supporter, don’t get too close. It’s top secret. But here, look at it. That’s what’s going on with Trump. So every single person who believes that these three cases are the same is utterly wrong. And anybody who is spreading that misinformation is either utterly incompetent or utterly diabolical. They are willing, as I have said time and time again, to feed people misinformation, to lie to them, to get what they want, which is they want to be supported. And quite frankly, I don’t know why the GOP hasn’t thrown him under the bus. If you are DeSantis, if you are anybody who’s planning on running in the primary, you are cheering for this guy to get arrested and convicted, and that’s going to happen soon. He is going to be arrested and arraigned. It’s going to be the first time an ex president has been arrested by the Feds. He already set a record by getting arrested by New York, but he’s going for the double. So it’s in this context that I’ve read this essay, and we know who William Barr is. He is one of these people who was willing to advise a president to pardon people to cover up for Iran Contra. He is a person who was willing to get before Congress and testify with his very first answer that it might be that there are some times that foreign entities can interfere in US. Elections. Until he was really pushed and he realized, oh, wait, I need to wake up. I’m on camera. I’m testifying before Congress. I better stop protecting Trump. And then corrected himself. It is this toady that is William Barr who spoke today about this Trump indictment. And I want you to listen to what he said.

Speaker C: If even half of it is true, then he’s toast. It’s a very detailed indictment. Uh, and it’s very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, uh, is ridiculous.

Speaker A: Barr said that on Fox News today. Wow. Right? So write down the time and date. I am actually going to agree with Bill Barr right now for this one point. It is damning. The indictment is damning. He, uh, is absolutely right. What I find ironic is that Bill Barr was essential in Trump’s effort to weaponize the Justice Department and go after people the same way that Meese did. He was essential at weaponizing this. And now here he is saying this indictment’s rock solid. He’s just taking it as rote that the Justice Department is doing their job. So if a person like Bill Barr, a person like Edwin Meese, reborn in Bill Barr, is coming out and telling everybody this is really bad news for Trump, you can believe it. So the lesson I’d like to convey from this particular essay is the same as has been a theme of my podcast. People in power will lie to you. They will cheat you. They will use their power to cover up their crimes and get what they want. It doesn’t matter whether they’re in your political party or your opponent’s political party. You need to be skeptical of their claims. We need more government happening out in daylight, because only when we have evidence that they are on the up and up should we believe that they’re on the up and up. I’m going to put a lot of reference links in the details for this particular episode. I’ll put a picture of the original mises a pig poster up there. I will put an interview for those of you who are interested in, uh, the atheist angle here. Christopher Hitchens debated Edwin Meese on live TV after Iran Contra. There’s a term called Hitch slapped in the community about when Christopher hitchens tears, uh, into somebody they got Hitch slapped. This is one of the biggest Hitch slaps you will ever see. So I’m going to link a video there. Edwin Meese cannot believe that this young upstart is questioning his authority, his word, and Hitchens calls him a liar to his face, uh, on Pat Buchanan’s program, live on TV. And Edwin meese loses it. He has no way to come back other than to just start pounding the table and getting furious that this young man would dare question that he was an honorable man when the evidence by that point was overwhelming. And, uh, I encourage you to go watch it. The video quality is not the best because it was taken back in the it’s worth a watch. It’s kind of short, and it’s like a love letter from beyond the grave from Christopher Hitchens. When I saw this. And I’ll remind you, whenever you see shady politicians nominating their friends to positions of power, just keep repeating to yourself, mises a pig. I’ll see you next time.

Speaker B: This has been the Cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing. See you soon, you SA.