Andy McCarthy & Prosecuting The Worst Of The Worst 50:16

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Well, welcome to the Jason and the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and I appreciate spending a little time with us. I really think you're going to enjoy this because we're going to have a conversation with Andy McCarthy. Now, Andy, you've seen him on Fox News. He has been a prosecutor.

He's really good at understanding the Department of Justice, how those wheels turn, and he just offers an amazing perspective. But he's got an interesting background, and you probably haven't heard about it. I haven't seen it anywhere, and we're fortunate to have him join us, and I think you're going to enjoy that. We're going to talk a little bit about the news, and then we're going to highlight the stupid, because as you know,

There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. And then we'll get on with the conversation with Andy McCarthy. So let's start with just a few little clips of things that are happening in the news. And, you know, I continue to hear and see things about the Green New Deal. Now, here's where I'm at. The whole Al Gore, you know, spiel about global, you know, warming and all that. I just thought that was always been a farce.

Now, obviously, what you throw into the air, what we put into our water, it has an effect. Of course it does. But weather, climate, they're different. Okay? But this change have changed over eons of time. They have changed and they will continue to change. But of course, we're going to be smart about what we put in our air and what we're doing with our water and all that. But what you can't take seriously is

are these climate initiatives, a la John Kerry and others that are leading out on this, that don't include China. They're the world's biggest polluter. They're the world's most aggressive force right now in terms of building and expanding their military. And if they're not going to be at the table, all these initiatives that we want to do aren't going to make a hell of a difference.

Because they are opening up and doing things far dirtier than we're doing here domestically. And we're putting ourselves in great peril when we just allow them to control so many elements of what we're doing and what we're not doing. And around the world, they are putting their tentacles into every continent that they possibly can in order to expand their empire and their influence and manipulate things to

So no more prevalent than south of China in this what's called the South China Sea, but the Spratly Islands, the danger islands, those types that all these shipping channels that we need with Asia, they are literally building islands to try to control all of that. In the meantime, they're also controlling all the production elements and doing everything they can to control the ability to be more green.

And so I just don't buy that the number one, number one existential threat to the United States of America is this global warming or climate change or however, you know, you know how they morph the titles depending on what fits their political convenience. But even just recently in the last few days, there have been more discussions from the United States about

Trying to enter into deals that don't involve China. If you don't involve China, you're never going to move the meter whatsoever. Item number two, on a very positive note, there is a very inspirational story. The quarterback for Utah State,

has decided to forego he's been to three bowl games okay he's decided to go forego that because he wants to get into navy seal training now whether he or not he becomes a navy seal don't really know you know people wash out of that most people try don't achieve it very few people do achieve it but the idea that he wants to serve his nation rather than playing

And trying to pursue maybe another round of football at Utah State. Great program, good coach. Is really inspirational, and so hats off to that whole program, but the quarterback there at Utah State, Levi, for deciding that serving his country is even more important. All right, and one more item is this whole discussion about Hunter Lowe.

Hunter Biden, should he testify publicly? Should he not? Now, James Comer is the chairman of the committee. I used to be the chairman of the oversight committee. I used to have that power. I used to be able to issue subpoenas. Subpoenas are only good as your ability to enforce them. And unfortunately, the Department of Justice controls the levers as to who can and cannot enforce.

be prosecuted. Now, of course, if it had to do with Donald Trump, they'd be all over him like they did Steve Bannon, where in record time for noncompliance and non-attendance, they got him convicted in just a heartbeat of a flash of time. So James Comer wants to have Hunter Biden come testify. Now, the first step in a thorough and a thorough is probably the best word, is to do a transcribed interview

There's a version of it that's a deposition. But the rules are totally different when you do that. When you bring somebody in, each side gets one hour, then the other side gets an hour. Or you can parse it up where somebody has 30 minutes, 30 minutes. Well, usually it's an hour, an hour. You do an hour, take a break. The other side gets an hour. Equal time.

But it is much better to have professional staff go deeper onto these issues than it is to have one member ask somebody five minutes a question where they can professionally filibuster. They can just figure out how to go through and get past any five-minute question by just saying, can you repeat the question? No, or wander off in your thoughts, and next thing you know, the five minutes is up.

Now, Abby Lowell is the very talented, very successful, very smart attorney that's representing Biden's, or at least Hunter Biden. And he's saying, no, we got to do this in public. We're not going to do a closed door. Well, I'm sorry, but the chairman gets to set the rules. And Comer has said so. They set the rules. And you got to, you know, in this case, they're going to do both. Do a public hearing. Great. But you first got to do a transcribed interview first.

and the control of those transcripts, they don't get released. But it allows investigators to actually dive deeper. And in a complex financial situation, you got to be able to do that. You got to be able to verify what the witness is saying or not saying, their perspective versus other witnesses, and then be able to compare the documents which have been held back by the Biden administration. If you remember, it was Jen Psaki who actually came out

on day one of the Biden administration saying they were going to be the most open and transparent administration ever. That's the way she framed the way the Biden administration was going to be, but that's obviously not the way things have worked out. So anyway, let's bring on the stupid because that one gets me frustrated, but it's time to bring on the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere.

All right, we got to go. No, she's frequently on this list, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she was complaining about how unaffordable New York City is to working class people. Oh, my goodness. I just want to beat my head against the wall. First of all, Amazon was going to come to town and bring a lot of jobs. I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of jobs, but it's going to be a lot of jobs.

Good jobs, good paying jobs, good benefits, incredibly successful company. Oh, no. She had to put out the stiff arm and say, no, not here. And so guess what? You know, they didn't get the full throttle investment from Amazon. And now she's complaining that people don't have the right kind of jobs in order to be able to afford to live in New York City, one of the most expensive cities.

And then you look at the policies that she wants to institute. Remember that Green New Deal? Remember all that stuff we were talking about? Instead of pursuing all of the above energy and trying to drive down the cost of energy, no, she wants to drive up the cost of energy. Guess what? That makes living in New York City and everywhere else in this country more expensive. So for that AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that's pretty stupid, in my opinion. That's bringing on the stupid. ♪

All right, now I want to bring on and call and bring in Andy McCarthy because Andy is a super talented guy, wicked smart, love talking to him offline, but thrilled to dive a little deeper into his background. So let's get Andy McCarthy. Hey, Jason. Thanks. I saw you on my caller ID. I'm honored that you would actually pick it up because it's like a 50-50 proposition. That darn caller ID has always slowed me down.

For you, no problem. No, hey, listen, I appreciate it. Look, I've been able to get to know you and interact with you and call you from time to time with various questions about things that are going on. I just love how you take a complicated topic and just wither it down to something that makes it palatable to those of us that

don't have law degrees and haven't been a prosecutor like you have along the way. But thanks for joining us. It's my pleasure. It's been great getting to know you over the years, and I'm glad we can have a sort of a chat in a nice, friendly format. Well, listen, I want to go back because we see on air, seeing what you write, you know, all the things that you've done along the way. But

You know, I want to go back to, you know, Andrew McCarthy. I was born in and just kind of walk us through growing up because I believe you were born in the Bronx. Is that right? Yeah, I was. I was born in the Bronx. I'm one of these now seven generation, seven decade people, even though I don't feel that old. But I was born in 1959 and lived the first half of my life in the Bronx.

Grew up in a big Irish family, oldest of six. My dad died when we were very young. I was about 13. So my mom's been my mom's who now who is now 88 and still in the Bronx for her is, you know.

Does she get excited when you're on Fox? Do you like to call her and say, hey, mom, turn on Fox? You know, I don't do that. But but she does. She does catch me from time to time. And one time caught me on one show. I can't remember which one where I didn't have a tie on. And she gave me a call like, what's up with that? So I I listen to mom. So I wear the tie.

Disrespecting the family? She was embarrassed? What did she call you? Did she call you Andrew?

When she calls me Andrew, Jason, there's a problem. When I hear Andrew, I know that I did something wrong. So now, you know, everybody's called me Andy for a year. And I think that a large part of the reason of that is I'm Andy III, actually. My dad was Andy Jr. So it's just always stuck. Did you have a nickname growing up?

I was very slow on my St. Helena's Grammar School basketball team, so they called me Flash.

which was the way we did nicknames back in those days. And I haven't gotten much better, I don't think. So if we call you Flash, you'll turn your head? That's good. I'll think. Well, it's not exactly Usain Bolt, but... Yeah. Well, I get that. All right, so you're the oldest of six. You're growing up in the Bronx. Were you playing sports? I mean, were you just a nerd reading books all day? No, we played... Yeah, we played all...

We played every sport. I think back in those days, it was, you know, it was much less organized and kids were expected to entertain themselves. And of course, I grew up in a I grew up in a place called Parchester, which is, you know, basically an apartment complex in the Bronx.

And, you know, we'd be out from break of day until the in the summer, in the dark at night, but certainly till dusk the rest of the time. And we played every sport. I'm a nut for baseball, but I would put the baseball down in October and probably not pick it up again until March, because that's just the way it was back in those days. We played every sport. I've noticed now because I got very involved with my friends.

my two sons especially my my uh my younger son uh is a catcher at the university of chicago now and

They live a very different life from anything that I remember as a kid. It's much more structured. It's much more dependent on like organized leagues and stuff. And I've noticed that a lot of the coaching seems to have filtered down from the pros to the college level to the high school level.

in a way that sort of encourages the kids to specialize in a sport whereas when i was a kid you were encouraged to play everything you know it was like in high school the thing was to be a three-letter man right uh to be involved in as many sports as uh as you could a lot of these kids like for example the ones who play baseball um sometimes they play baseball all year round yeah and and

I can't help but think that porn, the reason that you're seeing a lot more in the way of injuries, especially repetitive stress injuries and stuff like that is it's

I don't know the kids at that age are made to play one sport, utilizing one set of muscles all the time, 12 months a year. I think it was better. Maybe it's just because I was a kid and I have fond memories of it, but I think it was better when we tried to do everything. Yeah, you know, Wayne Gretzky actually talks about this a lot. He talks about, you know, the great one in hockey, but he talks about growing up and how his dad and his family...

They encouraged him to play lots of things. You know, he obviously kept gravitating back to it, but he felt he was a better player, that he had more athletic skill, that he could see the field and, in his case, you know, the rink better because he was playing these other sports. You know, he was shooting hoops. He would kick the soccer ball around from time to time, and he was a better all-around. And he said, you know, also for these kids, it just keeps it fun.

And I think there's a lot of truth to that. It's just, I know they want the glory. They want the accolades. They want the big money, the big contracts. But I went to college on a football scholarship, but I didn't kick a football until I was a junior in high school.

Wow. Wow. That's that's late for someone to play in college. But listen, if that's Gretzky's advice, I would suggest that people take Gretzky's advice because I must say there's like about a handful of athletes that I've now lived long enough to have seen. And, you know, my dad used to always say about Willie Mays that if you didn't know anything about baseball, you

and you just went out and watched them practice, you would notice Willie Mays. Like there would be something different about the way that he carried himself. And some guys just stand out. And there's about a handful of guys like that. But I have never seen anyone, and I'm a nut for sports, a nut for hockey as well. And I've never seen anybody...

like Gretzky in, I mean, Gretzky was like Babe Ruth in hockey terms because he, the statistics he compiled

were like double what anybody else, what the next closest guy. The only thing I could compare him to in modern sports would be like Jerry Rice, who's about like 100 or 150 touchdowns ahead of whoever is the guy, like Tim Brown or whoever's in second place. And Gretzky was like that. And he saw, it's interesting you talk about seeing the field. He had this uncanny ability to see the play before it happened.

you know almost like you think guys think of a of a chessboard as as uh you know five ten moves ahead there you know there's some guys who would just they have that natural ability and that was the most unbelievable thing about him like he would make plays and you would say how did he see that how did he even know that was going to happen he's an amazing player we uh we could spend the whole podcast talking about this hockey thing but last comment then we'll move on

One of the things I learned about him is that every night he would watch every game that was played in the NHL. He would literally stay up late watching. And consequently, at the end, he could tell you every statistic about every player in the entire hockey league. It's unbelievable how much he knew and understood and studied. There's a reason why he's the great one. All right, let's keep going. So you're playing sports. You're doing all that. But then there comes a point where...

You have to, I don't know, it was high school or college or it was just your parents or, but you kind of get your sense that, hey, I like doing this and you have a certain aptitude for that. What was that moment or moments or things that happened to you kind of early on that said, hey, you know, I should probably go to school after I get done with high school and I should probably go to law school. Like what, walk us through that.

Well, my grandfather, my father's father, was a pretty prominent district attorney in Bronx County, assistant district attorney, but ran the Homicide Bureau for many years. He was in that office for probably 35 years or so. And I was kind of hooked on it from the time

i was very young so i i never really thought about it i kind of decided probably by the time i was 10 years old that that was i wanted to be a lawyer really um yeah um but that i think because he was another one of these bigger than life presences and but what was it about that that was attractive to you i mean that's a pretty big job it's an important job you're getting faced you know in front of some high profile cases but

Did you go see him argue a case in court, or did you just hear stories of what he was doing? What was it? Yeah, we'd hear stories about it. I was too young to have seen him in action in court. But my dad used to tell stories about him and his style in court. And the other thing is...

This is another big difference between the world I grew up in, the New York I grew up in, and the New York we have now. We were newspaper kids.

Like when I went to Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, which was a subway ride from where I lived to get there, my first stop every day when I would get to school would be the sink in the boys' room because I would have to scrub the New York Times and especially the New York Post and the Daily News, the tabloids from my hands. We were real newspaper kids. Yeah.

Courtroom drama was a big part of the day-to-day news. It was captivating and fascinating.

Yeah, I guess now you have like, well, we had Perry Mason back then, but you know, you have like television dramas and there's now even a court channel, I guess. But back in those days, the big trials in New York got a lot of coverage. And I was kind of immersed in it anyway, because I knew at a very early age, it was what I wanted to do. And the other thing I liked to do was write. And being a lawyer, you know,

was like an opportunity to do both of those things. 'Cause I always thought the best lawyers were the lawyers who could beat you in court, but also beat you on papers. And as I grew up in the law, I learned that there were a lot of people who wanted to do one or the other or not both. Like you have some people who just wanna be an appellate lawyer

and they're content to live this hermetic existence of uh of writing briefs and then you have other guys who want to be the the you know they want to be the flashy courtroom lawyer and they just assume turn it over to the appeals unit once the case is over and not get involved and try to defend the case on appeal i always thought the best lawyers were the ones who could do both and that's what i really wanted to do and the law allowed you know it not only allowed you to do that

As I've had this wonderful opportunity to have a second career, because I was a government lawyer for about 20 years, and now I've been in journalism for over 20 years, and I think that because I didn't come up in journalism, I came up in the law, I think it's a good way to teach you how to try to explain things that are complicated

to ordinary people because that's what we do in court. You don't talk down to people, but like, you know, the specialized kinds of factual situations that come up in trial work are beyond the ken of the ordinary person. They would be beyond the ken of me, but somebody has to present the case, right? But sometimes you're doing a medical case and sometimes it's some other kind of specialty. So

The thing I've been able to bring to journalism is, I think, two things. One is you have to try to have a thematic way that you can tell stories to people so that you give them two or three things they can hang their hat on as they try to assemble complicated facts into something that they can understand. And the second thing is

You always want to know what the best argument for the other side is, and you don't want to get ahead of what you can prove.

that's the biggest thing in trial work for prosecutors you don't offer to prove anything you don't have to prove and you don't you don't stick your chin out on something that you can't prove and i i think over time especially you know trying to cover these crazy legal situations that we're that we're now dealing with it's really been it's it's

It's kept me grounded in covering it to remember that you just don't want to get out ahead of what we're confident that we can know. So tell us about college life and then law school. Where did you go? What did you –

Where did you start to focus? I went to Columbia College, Columbia University. We were not exactly rolling in money, so I didn't have the ideal college life. I had a very interesting college life. I lived at home and rode to Columbia on the subway, but my day job was

was because ultimately I ended up doing most of college and all of law school at night. And my day job, when I was about 17, I started to work for the U.S. Marshal Service. Really? Yeah.

basically in a clerical job paying witnesses and jurors you know there's a daily fee that you get for showing up right court and they liked me well enough that I ultimately um pretty young about 19 became a deputy United States Marshall Wow Witness protection program

And basically, my job was to change people's identities, you know, with the court orders. And, you know, none of it was was illegitimate, but it was a pretty fascinating job. And we were protecting some, you know, very high level people.

people. I mean, you know, people like who they've made movies about, you know, in people like, you know, Frank Lucas, Henry Hill, guys like that, who I just, you know, as a young kid, and I got to know these guys as they were being prepared by prosecutors to testify. But it was pretty neat to be able to tell my friends when I was like 19, 20, that I couldn't tell them what I did at work that day because I'd have to kill them.

You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Andy McCarthy right after this. The world of business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox business rundown. Listen to the Fox business rundown every Monday and Friday at Fox business podcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. Yeah, no, that's, that is exciting work. What, uh, what, um, okay. So you get done, you do that. Then what's the next move for you and your career?

Well, I was so the witness protection program was was a real lucky break for me, not only because it was a very interesting job, but because there was a young, flashy Justice Department prosecutor back in the early 80s in the Reagan Justice Department named Rudy Giuliani, who was very interested in the witness protection program.

and who defied everybody in Washington who thought he was crazy,

to leave a high ranking position in the Reagan Justice Department. I think he's the number three or four guy in the Justice Department. But he wanted to be the United States Attorney in Manhattan, which was the US Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York, which is the most prominent position for federal prosecutors in the country outside of the Attorney General.

So Rudy came to New York as the U.S. attorney. He had been a prosecutor in the Southern District when he was younger, but he came to New York in 1983 and they started a program where night law students could work in the U.S. attorney's office during the day as interns. And they knew me because he had gotten to know me a little bit in connection with the with the marshal service.

Rudy was very interested in the Witness Protection Program because he thought that would be the key or one of the keys to breaking the mafia. One thing was learning how to use the RICO law, which has been on the books for, you know, since 1971, but no one had really used it aggressively yet. But the other thing was in order to get people to testify, you had to satisfy them that you could protect them and protect their families.

So he was very interested in the WITSEC program, and I managed to get myself hired as an intern in the Southern District. And I ended up staying there five years until I became a lawyer, and they hired me out of law school, which was the rules of the Southern District where you were supposed to be in the office for

working in a real lawyer's job, like a law firm or clerking for a judge or what have you. But I happened to get assigned to what turned out to be the longest federal criminal trial in American history, the Pizza Connection case, which was this big mafia international narcotics case that was run by Louis Freeh, who later became the...

the FBI director and a federal judge. And we had 22 defendants in the case. Case took 17 months to try. And my job in the early part of the case was to make discovery to 22 defendants, which was a massive, massive job in this particular investigation. And I think that they just decided that it would be easier. It wasn't that I was a rocket scientist. I think they just decided it would be easier

to hire me as a lawyer than to replace what I was doing at the time, which would have been very unwieldy. So they actually hired me as a prosecutor after I passed the bar exam right out of Knight Law School. And I started that case, which took 17 months to try. I started it as an intern when we began the case in, I think, September of

you know 1985 and by march of 1986 i was a i was a full-fledged prosecutor putting what this is on in the biggest case in america at the time so it was uh it's pretty exciting wow wow all right so what uh you know there's bad parts and good parts to every job in the career that you've had doing the in the prosecuted side of the equation what what's the best side what's the worst side

Well, the best side is I basically remember when walking out of the Pizza Connection case the day that we sentenced the last defendant, and an FBI agent who I had gotten to know over the years threw his arm around my back and said,

"Kid, you'll never have another one like this." And I really believe that was true. I mean, it was like, you know, those kind of cases are historic. They don't come around very often. And I was about ready to leave in

1993, because I had had such a good run and I had so many good cases. I had been, you know, I'd been a supervisor in the office and I just had a very extraordinary run of great stuff to work on. And then on February 26, 1993, these things that happen that just change your life. You don't even know when you show up at work that day. But the World Trade Center got bombed. And within a few weeks, I was running

What turned out to be the biggest terrorism case in America, which was the blind shake case where we prosecuted 12 jihadists who not only carried out the World Trade Center bombing, but then within weeks of that set about another plot to blow up New York City landmarks, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.

The FBI's lower Manhattan headquarters and the U.N. complex. So I went from thinking I would never have another case, anything like the pizza connection case to actually being a prosecutor. But I was the lead prosecutor in the blind shake case, which is like for doing what I was trained to do, Jason, it's like, yeah.

you know somebody handed you the ball in the seventh game of the world series and said you're up you know uh you're the guy or make it good depending on so um that was an amazing thing and that was clearly the highlight of it yeah if you're gonna do a job like that um there's gonna be it's a hard job so there's a there's a lot of tension there's a lot of low moments but i would say the hardest part

was the security concerns in connection with that second case, which were not like anything I had ever dealt with before. And I think it's very tough. I may have felt like I didn't have time to worry about that kind of stuff because I was pitching the seventh game of the World Series or the equivalent of it for my profession. But the people around you who care about you don't have that thrill. All they do is worry.

All they do is wonder if you've gotten yourself into something and gotten maybe them into something that's more dangerous than anyone bargained for. That part of it, I think, was a real mixture of high and low with respect to that. It went on for three years. It was very high tension. What should the country remember about that case? I know you've written books and done all kinds of writing.

But what would if you kind of had to summarize what people should remember and know, we always say never forget, but we tend to forget. So what would you how would you summarize that? I think that what it really taught me was you can't you can't live the most important life and parts of your life based on just aspirational rhetoric. And what I mean by that is

What we were dealing with was a national security problem that wasn't a criminal justice problem. It wasn't like people sat around a table and said, after the Trade Center got bombed, and said, should we treat this like a crime or treat it like a war?

You know, we were what happens is there's a critical event like a bombing and then all of a sudden the investigative wheels start to turn and the next thing you have, you know, six people or eight people in custody and then you have to charge them. And before you even think about it, you're in a you're in a trial. But I think other people in the country should have been thinking hard.

as early as 1993 about whether we were doing this the right way. And we continued for eight years to treat this like it was a crime problem when it wasn't. And I believed when I first got involved in it,

And I wanted to believe as much as anybody in the country did the rhetoric that was coming out of the Clinton White House and the Clinton Justice Department, which was that it was important to be a shining example to the world that we bring people who were trying to mass murder Americans who were mostly foreigners. These were this particular cell was mostly Egyptians and Sudanese and that we bring them into society.

American courtrooms and give them, you know, grade A, all the majesty of American due process, and then convict them and show the world how well we treated them compared to how well they treated us. And I bought onto that until I saw what it was like to actually try to do it and how to comply with due process rules, we had to give our enemies, not defendants, our enemies who were trying to mass murder Americans,

information from our intelligence files, which made them more efficient at doing what they wanted to do, which was conduct operations against Americans. I think, you know, when you get into this and you see how it actually operates, it's crazy to treat

a war problem as if it were a crime problem because they're just too not only are they they two completely different but if the enemy is hitting you with bombs and assassination operations and you're responding with subpoenas and indictments then they don't take you seriously and weakness really is provocative so i think the path to 9 11 and i don't want to be misunderstood here obviously the people who were at fault

or the terrorists. But we were kind of asking for it by going from 1983, 1993 to 2001. And the enemy is attacking us more and more audaciously. And, you know, the embassies get bombed, the coal gets bombed. There are other operations. And we're responding. We're either not responding at all or responding with indictments. And I just think

It was a crazy way to do it because the people who were trying to attack us were in safe havens overseas where the writ of American courts doesn't run and where our law enforcement agency can't operate.

So they're attacking us with impunity. We're issuing indictments. We're doing nothing. And they're just being encouraged to attack us more. And the fact that they were able to pull off 9/11 under circumstances where to pull it off, they had to do an awful lot here in America in the months leading up to that, just goes to show how appalling our intelligence was and how we just weren't taking this seriously enough. And I think the lesson out of those eight years is

This is what happens when, you know, you want to live your life according to some kind of aspirational rhetoric instead of being very gimlet eyed and hard headed about what the threats to the country are. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Andy McCarthy right after this.

You know, and I was elected to Congress the same year that Barack Obama was elected president. So I came into office, and, you know, it's a whole different perspective once you actually get to D.C. and you're there in Congress. And one of the things that I looked at that I was just still mystified by was the lack of a clear vision and policy regarding enemy combatants and the difference between—

a U.S. citizen and an enemy combatant and our ability, particularly in the Obama administration, to deal with that in a strategic way, a smart way, and an effective way. And the more I dove into that, the more appalled I was that they just didn't have a strategy to deal with this that was going to actually make a difference. Yeah, they did exactly what I just said was the worst thing that you could do, which was they had this ideal that they were

you know, that they were bought onto and reality was never allowed to pierce it. And I don't want to be, you know, I want to be fair to them. This is a hard problem.

Because, you know, when the enemy is coming at you in Nazi uniforms, you know, there's no mystery about that. You know exactly what it is that you're dealing with. Whereas here, we're dealing with people who defy all the laws and customs of war. They dress like civilians. They hide in civilian populations. They attack civilian populations. They do all the things...

that under the laws of war render them not even entitled to the protection of prisoners of war because they defy the rules of honorable warfare. But at the same time, we're a country that believes in the presumption of innocence.

And unless you can develop enough evidence that somebody is potentially guilty of a crime so that you have probable cause, our system doesn't allow the authorities to arrest those people and detain them. So it's a very hard problem because if you put if you lean too much.

on surveillance and monitoring and that kind of aggressive protective measures, then you're really limiting people's liberty. And at the same time, if you lean too far in the direction of liberty and defy common sense, then you're basically begging to be hit by terrorists. So I don't want to say that

what the Obama administration was dealing with, like, you know, every government I ever worked in was dealing with, was not a hard problem. It's a really hard problem. But you have to be, you know, the most important thing we have in government is national security, because if you can't protect the country, then everything in the Constitution is just a parchment promise. It's meaningless. So when we have a threat, we have to be

I think we have to be adult about it and we can't be overly aspirational. We have to deal with threats in a hard-headed way. Yeah, no, look, I totally, totally agree with you on all of that. I guess we don't have the time and it's a fast-moving, continuous story about what's going on with the Bidens, the lack of the equal application of justice as it relates to prosecution and pursuit of justice and

regarding Hunter Biden and the family and the allegations of bribery and whatnot. But it's permeated to a point that I think it's a serious danger to the country. Take away any one of the specifics, but there's just this universal feeling that justice is not applied equally. And I don't know how we solve that. We're not one indictment or one prosecution away from solving that.

Give us your perspective on that, Andy. Well, I think I think you're entirely right about that. And I believe that the the theme of two tiered justice is going is already resonating with the electorate in ways that the incumbent administration in particular is not appreciating. I do think that even people who are not I'm not particularly sympathetic to former President Trump.

Um,

But I do think you should be able to put your feelings about all that stuff aside and say, is he being treated fairly? Or just bluntly, is he getting equal justice compared to, say, how someone similarly situated like the Bidens gets? And it would be laughable to say that he was. And if we take Trump out of it because he's such a lightning rod, I was thinking today about this –

This guy who, Tarrio, who got convicted of seditious conspiracy and just got a 22 year sentence. And I'm not saying that this guy doesn't deserve to get some kind of a prison sentence, even though he was apparently not on the scene at the Capitol when the riot happened. But, you know, look, if he had a if he had an important coordinating position in it and he was urging violence, I'm certainly not going to defend that.

But, you know, I looked at the same time, Jason, at the case of these two young radical leftist lawyers in New York who, during the George Floyd riots, firebombed a police car in New York through Molotov cocktails in an NYPD squad car and talked about, like, you know, we should burn one police plaza to the ground. And

When the Biden administration came in, those people had been

but basically there had been a plea negotiated where they were supposed to get a 10-year sentence which is only half of what we're talking about less than half of what we're talking about with this this uh tario guy who was involved in january 6th when the biden administration came in they renegotiated the plea deal so that the the two lawyers were capped at five years maximum

They removed the terrorism enhancement that the that the Trump Justice Department had insisted in connection with the plea, which was what was driving the sentence to 10 years. And to make a long story short, they went to bat for them to the extent that one of the two lawyers got a 15 month sentence and the other one got a year and a day.

And they firebombed a police car. And we just gave a 22-year sentence to a guy who wasn't on the scene at the Capitol. I mean, something's really wrong. Yeah. On that positive note, Andy, we're running out of time because you've got a radio hit on Fox. And I can't keep you past it. I could go on for hours talking about you. I really do enjoy it when you're on there. I have to ask you two really quick questions first.

Because everybody has to get the rapid questions. So the first one is pineapple on pizza, yes or no? No. God. They kicked me out of the Bronx. They never let me back in again. Amen. See, this is why we like Andy McCarthy so much. That is the right answer. And the other question I have to ask you is if you can invite one person over to break bread, anybody in history,

invite him over for dinner, what would you, who would you invite? Boy, that's a great question. Edmund Burke. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I would like to, if I could bring a guest, I would like, I would bring Connor Cruz O'Brien, who was,

One of my favorite historians growing up as a kid and who wrote a wonderful thematic biography of Edmund Burke. So I'd like to have the two of them there and just listen to them argue it out. So they could, you could ask even more probing questions. That's great. That's great.

Andy, I really do enjoy interacting with you. I thank you for joining us on this Jason in the House podcast. I wish I could keep going with you, but another day, and I'm sure we'll see you on air before we know it. So thank you. I do appreciate it. I'd like that, Jason. Thanks so much. This was fun. Okay. Take care.

All right. As always, our guests, I really appreciate the generosity of their time. And Andy just puts a smile on my face because he's just, he's a good guy. He believes in what he's doing and he's done some super talented work. And, you know, it's interesting with him and his family and what they've done. And he's just an important voice and I love seeing him whenever he's on Fox News. So, yeah.

Appreciate him joining us. Hoping you can rate this. If you can rate the podcast, I'd really appreciate it. Subscribe to it. I also want to remind people you can listen to ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

Join us again next week. We'll have another exciting, fun guest. Pretty insightful as to who they are and what they're doing. But again, subscribe and certainly rate this podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the House. Hey, it's Clay Travis. Join me for Outkick the show as we dive deep into a mix of topics. New episodes available Monday to Friday on your favorite podcast platform and watch directly on Outkick.com forward slash watch.