Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist and official guest host Ben Cunningham along with the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio.
During the second hour, Carmichael referenced a Wall Street Journal article where an attorney made the strawman case for the constitutionality of the Senate’s upcoming impeachment trial of ex-president Donald Trump arguing that his position incorrectly compared it to a criminal trial. He suggested later that Nancy Pelosi has made it clear that nobody is above the law and suggested that AOC could be impeached for lying about protesters beating at her door.
Leahy: The gang is all here this morning. Crom Carmichael the original all-star panelist now joins us in studio. Good morning Crom.
Carmichael: Michael. Good morning, sir.
Leahy: And also the official guest host of the Tennessee Star Report and also our panelists Ben Cunningham is in studio.
Cunningham: Good morning, Michael. It is great to be here.
Leahy: Great to have you both here. Ben will be taking over official guest host studio duties right after this break and we’ll take the show home with Crom for the rest of the day. I’m off doing a little bit of business as my late father-in-law used to say. Crom, there is some business going on in Washington D.C. Tell us about it.
Carmichael: Michael there’s the impeachment trial in the Senate that is supposed to start I guess tomorrow. And there’s an attorney I guess that was paid by The Wall Street Journal to make the case that the trial is constitutional.
Leahy: Do we have the pretzels ready to twist and turn?
Carmichael: Yeah. It’s pretty interesting. And what the guy does is he makes a straw man argument and then he knocks over the strawman. What he does is he compares the trials to something that it is not. And then in so doing he then says and because it is comparable to this and therefore this is real therefore the trial is constitutional.
And what he does is he uses a clause in criminal cases and he talks about all these different things about that you do this in a criminal case before you do this and therefore the person being tried does not have to be a current officeholder because that’s not necessary in order to get to the second part. Which is the you can’t run again for office and you can’t get all these benefits. So he tries to set it up that way. But what’s interesting about it is that if it were a criminal trial and there was a judge which there’s not then it would be thrown out immediately for one reason. There’s not been due process.
Leahy: Not at all.
Carmichael: I mean zero.
Leahy: Zero.
Carmichael: Zero due process. They didn’t even hold a hearing in the house. So that’s it. So to try to compare it to a criminal trial when all of the elements of the criminal trial that would have happened were in a criminal trial didn’t happen. If the comparison is is just ridiculous.
Leahy: And by the way, do you know who will be presiding over the trial?
Carmichael: Your distant relative.
Leahy: My distant cousin. Senator Patrick Leahy president pro tem of the Senate. Now the Constitution is very clear that if a president is being tried in the Senate on impeachment that the Chief Justice must preside. And the Chief Justice said I’m not presiding because presumably, he ain’t the president!
Carmichael: Right.
Leahy:Â He’s a private citizen.
Carmichael: Right.
Cunningham: Has Leahy made any claim to legitimacy? (Leahy laughs)
Carmichael: Let’s go through the steps though. Who is supposed to preside if the Chief Justice doesn’t? Who is supposed to?
Leahy: The Vice President.
Carmichael: And and why is Kamala Harris not presiding?
Leahy: That’s a good question.
Carmichael: They can’t claim because she has a conflict. They can’t claim that. She should actually be presiding. She was actually asked to preside.
Leahy: I didn’t know that.
Carmichael: Yes. She chose not to.
Leahy: Why?
Carmichael: We don’t know.
Leahy: Interesting.
Carmichael: We simply know that she chose not to.
Cunningham: She explicitly turned it down.
Carmichael: Yes. According to this lawyer she was asked to preside. But now the reason that the vice president would typically not preside is that there’s a conflict of interest because if the president is removed then that vice president who would be presiding over the trial would be conflicted because they would then be elevated to president. But that’s not the case.
Leahy: He’s a former president and a private citizen.
Carmichael: And a private citizen. So she has no conflict. Chief Justice Roberts, he just demured. He didn’t give reasons either.
Leahy: Well he doesn’t have to give reasons. But it’s obvious.
Carmichael: No, but I’m saying he didn’t give a reason. Kamala Harris didn’t give a reason.
Leahy: The presiding officer now president pro tem my half third cousin Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont who voted twice in a previous trial to convict President Donald Trump and he wasn’t convicted, he came out, I can’t believe I’m related to this guy, and said, oh do I will be completely unbiased. Have you ever heard anything the guy said? He hates Donald Trump.
Carmichael: It is truly a Saturday Night Live skit in the making. And the question is if you were a Republican senator and you believed it was a farce should you treat it as a farce? What should be the strategy? because it is a farce. Let me be clear about something. Nancy Pelosi put in a House rule with fines because in order to enter the House chamber you have to go through metal detectors and a procedure. And apparently, one or two Republicans didn’t through that procedure when they stepped out of the chamber to go I think maybe go to the bathroom or something. But they just skipped it and when they came back in she fined them $5,000. She’s on videotape doing exactly the same thing.
Cunningham: They did get her on tape.
Carmichael: Yes. They have her on tape doing exactly the same thing. The question is should she be removed from office?
Leahy: Well, there are a million reasons why she should. (Laughs)
Carmichael: Should she be removed from office by violating the security procedures that she herself set up to protect all the other House members? This is such an egregious…
Cunningham: Sounds like insurrection to me. (Laughter)
Leahy: Ben with the line of the day!
Carmichael: It was a form of insurrection. It was a form of insurrection.
Leahy: Insurrecting against herself. (Cunnigham laughs) Insert punchline here.
Carmichael: This is how silly it is. You now have members of Congress like AOC claiming that the protesters were beating on her door which is false. She claims she was in her office and then hiding in her bathroom. Well her office is two doors down from some Republican members who said There wasn’t anybody in the hallways. There wasn’t anybody where their offices are.
Leahy: You mean Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not telling the truth? I’m shocked! I’m shocked!
Carmichael: This is the second time that she’s been caught. Now should she be impeached? Nancy Pelosi said no one is above the law.
Leahy: A member of Congress cannot be impeached by precedent.
Carmichael: Who cares? Who cares?
Leahy: You obviously don’t.
Carmichael: No. We don’t care about the law anymore. No one is above the law. No one is above the law. If a private citizen can be tried in the Senate and that’s considered then why on earth can’t we impeach a member of Congress? As a matter of fact, if we do get the majority back that’s one of the very first things that the Republicans ought to do is impeach AOC.
Cunningham: Yes!
Leahy: Or remove her from all of the committees.
Carmichael: No. Impeach her and then go through the hearings.
Leahy: Give her due process?
Carmichael: Give her due process then somberly walk it over to the Senate. (Leahy chuckles) Because our government is becoming a laughing stock.
Leahy: It really is.
Carmichael: Around the world. And Biden, by the way, is becoming a laughing stock.
Leahy: Already.
Carmichael: Already. He has all of our allies scared to death.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.Â
