to have it particularly be caughtht up in taking a line out of an op-ed or a really bad tweet which ends up obscuring what you actually set out to do and it feels like a lot of noise sometimes youou hope you can get past so people actually consider the work you did with an open mind and sort of just take our work seriously the way we try to. >> thank you very much for being with us. [applause]

>> now on c-span2 book tv, television for serious readers. >> welcome to heritage. thank you for joining us. we will have a fun discussion today about the new book power grab and to introduce them is senator mike, a great friend of heritage and a best friend of the constitution. >> hello. it's a pleasure to be with you. this merges several of my interests. the constitution, conservative politics, books about the things the heritage foundation and my friends jason and julie chafe this. i've known them for a long time. i first came to know jason over 30 years ago when he

became a place kicker at byu. he's really good. till this day he holds some records including the most successful scored in a single game and i think in a single season, and he was also famous for the fact that immediately after he picked a field goal the helmet would come off and then he had this awesome job to the sideline and he became famous for that. i think it resulted in something called the chafe it's rule. i think it played a key role in his success as a statesman in the state of utah. people came to know him. they knew who he was. i remember many years later, long after he had played for byu and had a successful

career as a businessman, i met him in person for the first time. i was quite starstruck because he was a big deal. i met him while he was running a campaign for governor huntsman before he was governor huntsman. jason chafe is himself convinced me that he was the man to become the next governor in 2004. we had a long conversation about it at the republican convention. several months after that, he called me and informed me i was under consideration for a position and he said i didn't imply an he said i don't care we want to talk to anyway. we went over and had a chat, we headed off and we ended up working together. i ended up serving as his general counsel when he was chief of staff, but my most

important goal was when i became his chauffeur. he and i lived closer together than any two member of the senior staff at one point jason broke his foot, long story we won't get into that, because it sounds like the punchline to a joke but it was actually quite serious. he fell and broke his foot and had to be in a cast and i would go and pick him up at his home in alpine utah. he would sit in the backseat so he could keep his foot elevated. i asked if you want me to it get a hat, a chauffeur's hat and i didn't charge him anything for it. the only thing i charge him was he had to agree to be subjective to my rants on constitutional issues and to listen to tape-recorded supreme court arguments which, who wouldn't want to do that. but i digress. were not here to talk about any of that, we are here to

talk about the fact that he is a hero when it comes to defending individual liberty and fighting against big government. he someone who is willing to call out the left, both those who identify themselves as part of the left and also those who just want to build big government. he is someone who understands the fact that there is something of a zero-sum game when it comes to defending liberty. if you are a government, as you get bigger, as you become more powerful, you do so with the expense of individual liberty. he understands the fact that government itself is not and never can become and never will be completely prevalent. they are the use of collective force, organized force and it's run by fallible mortal individual. consequently we have to

carefully constrain its power and we have to make sure it's not abused. in his latest book, power grab, jason explains how the lovers of government power have been orchestrated in such a way as to effectively weaponize the threatening power of government in a way that advances the political agenda of the left or another way of describing it might be the political agenda of those at the expense of individual liberty. he blows the whistle on how he has. [inaudible] to be clear as he makes clear in power grab, this isn't a simple question of the red team versus the blue team. this is a question of liberty versus centralized government

power. we fought a war over that and we won the war and we shouldn't be eager to go back to a system in which government knows best and government holds all the power. we the people are the sovereigns and we can't go back to a time where that is not the case. that's why his book is such an important tool for those who want to live in a land where they are free. whether you call yourself a conservative or a liberal or libertarian or something else, it shouldn't matter to you. what should matter is the concept of liberty that government exists for limited purposes to make sure we are secure and to make sure we have an enterprise that uses

collective force for the purpose of defending life, liberty and property. the more we deviate from that, the more we run into a real risk of a paragraph where we become less free and less secure in our liberty and our property. there is not a day that goes by that i don't miss having jason serving in the house of representatives. he was someone who, in addition to being a trusted friend and colleague, he is someone who i came to trust and love working with when he was serving in the house of representatives and during my term in office at the senate. it's hard for me to it remember an issue where he and i took opposing viewpoints.

he and i worked together on countless issues. i take comfort though, in the fact that he is able to do an enormous amount of good where he is in informing the american people about the risks of big government and keeping them informed of what's going on in washington. he is exercising a lot of influence by writing books like power grab which i highly recommend. with that, please join me in welcoming jason, the author of power grab. [applause] >> thanks for having me, thanks for being here. thank you to senator lee. he had a vote and now he has to hustle back because he has another vote on the floor. probably best that he does

that. now i get to tell my story while he's not here. that's even better. i first met mike, this is amazing to me because we were at the utah county convention. there's literally a thousand people at this event and this gentleman comes up and we start talking and he introduces himself as mike and i said you have a card or something, what's your full name and he said mike lee. i knew, he was the spitting image of whose father who was the president of brigham young university and i said likely and i said any. [inaudible] he had argued a hundred plus cases before the supreme court. fast forward to when the chief of staff, general counsel, one of the best things i did while i was chief of staff, it is true and i broke my foot, i broke my right foot so i

couldn't use the accelerator. i tried to convince my wife i could drive left-footed and she said you're not doing that. he would drive me to it and from every day what he didn't tell you is that he had a cassette tape player in his car and he would like to listen to his dad argued the supreme court cases so he would literally put the cassette tape in there. that's how much the guy loved the law and we would listen to the oral presentations before the supreme court. i learned a lot, but that's what mike does for fun. he's not listening to music or something like that. you've gotta love a guy that is not committed to it. mike is going to walk us through a few things. i want to acknowledge my wife julie who is here with me, i appreciate her being here, i appreciate all of you being here, i wanted to thank the heritage foundation for making

this all possible, the good that heritage does in terms of informing people, being a resource while i was in congress, even after i had been in congress, it's such a great resource, so many minds thinking through tough issues. it's so helpful. the quick of why i wrote the book, as i said the beginning, steven covey who wrote seven basic habits of highly effective people, seek first to understand and then be understood. i wholeheartedly believe that. i also believe what margaret thatcher said and that she said first you need to win the argument, then you can go when the vote. i always felt, even before i came to congress and before i ran but republicans, conservatives, we were very pathetic in our communication. first of all we were doing no

help from the media. they were not going to be a conduit to help us get our message out there and be a platform or have the time to be able to do that. it was compounded by that. i've always felt like we, as conservatives, have the right message, we just didn't say very well. we didn't say it enough and i remember when i was first in congress i met with eric who had a senior position at the time because i had been invited to be on fox news and i had, i couldn't believe it. so i called up eric and i said are you all right if i go on fox news and he's like jason, are you kidding me, you need to go out there as much as you possibly can to get out our message and go on every other message you can possibly get on and talk about why you believe what you believe. it was the right answer, it was good advice and i would argue we need more people who can get in front of those cameras to go on all the networks to talk about what it

is we believe and give that perspective. i don't buy into the idea that you need to just sit back and say they're not gonna give us a fair shake. i probably did more interviews on msnbc and cnn, you probably didn't see them, not that many people saw them, then i did even on fox news. eight and a half years in congress and i left and i'm very blessed to have this contributor relationship with fox, but i always felt i can still contribute in the public square because now, more than ever, i can get out there and talk about issues that matter, that matter for our country, at least from a conservative standpoint, i've been very blessed to have this relationship with harpercollins who did my first book called the deep state, it was a new york times bestseller and we just launched this book seven days ago, power grab which is sort

o of, it bifurcate scented to different areas, how is it that the democrats are using the leverage of power that they currently have to do things that you all wouldn't necessarily see unless you have maybe been in congress or you're really, really paying attention, but you need someone to draw your attention to them, and then what are the things you're doing outside of congress to change the dynamic in the narrative. those of the first two chapters of the book that should scare the living daylights out of you because they are doing some things on the left that will affect all of us whether you realize it or not. we as conservatives and republicans don't play offense nearly enough. democrats are always on offense and that's what i think i articulate here. mike's going to walk it through us and then i think were going to do some q&a. let's get after it. >> we can open it up to q&a at the end. full disclosure i worked for the former congressman when he was chairman of the house oversight committee.

we made some memories of the good times we had when he was running the committee. we will go through a couple. i like to start off with your final town hall, right after trump was elected, things got ugly. i think that's a good table setter for what the environment looks like now. can you just tell us a little bit about that. >> i write about this in the forward. i had one my fifth term in the congress, i was blessed to get 73% of the vote, this was roughly four or five weeks after donald trump had been sworn in so were talking the heart of winter, in utah and all of a sudden i'm having town hall meetings. i had had, i don't know how many town hall meetings. i love town hall meetings. usually a group about the size, people can interact and i learned a lot about the questions are asking.

it's a good format. the quick of it is, democrats got a hold of this and they have this group called indivisible utah which had a national presence but they had a specific manual about how to take over a town hall meeting. this thing blossomed and blew up into a thousand plus people that were showing up and they wanted to create this allusion, it's a recurring theme, but they wanted to create this allusion that a conservative republican in this district who just happened to be the chairman of the oversight committee with the newly minted president of the united states donald trump was that his voters were mad and they needed to do his job and hold the president accountable and he needed to do this and do that they had this long list of demands of things they wanted me to it do. much of which i didn't think were within the purview of the united states congress. so much so that i got out of

control and you gotta read the account but there is 30 plus police officers, people openly carrying weapons in the parking lot, we had swat teams, it turned into quite a fiasco. the highlight of which i will give you is that there were two members of the national media that had shown up. now, i don't remember ever having national media show up to my town hall after i won my fifth election with 73% of the vote. we are weeks into the 115th congress, really, this one reporter she insisted that she interview me. i said well, let me talk to her on the phone first and i said to her why are you here. and she said well we have a source in san francisco that says there's going to be a riot and perhaps a fire and i said really, i said did you

ever think that, did you tell law enforcement about that, did you call my office about that, you're only telling me this because i asked you why you're here and she said no and i said you're going to literally put a thousand people in danger. if you think there's going to be a riot and a fire, potentially you telling me people might die, you believe there's enough credibility and that's why you're here and these people are doing live shots for my town hall meeting. it just, it was the last one that i ended up doing but this is how these people play. there is this kind of recurring theme in here that they really do believe on that radical far left side, they throw all these labels like fascist and all these really negative terms on donald trump, but what i see them doing is exactly what they

claim the president was doing that in order to protect our freedom they need to take it away, in order to make sure the first amendments in place, they need to take away our right under the first amendment. it's just a recurring theme but i could go on and on about this particular town hall meeting being used as a tool and a prop. they paid people to come in, there were people from all kinds of states there. they wanted to create this media allusion that it was an organic utah phenomenon in a district and that they're gonna run all the stories and say look, knee problems donald trump is creating which was not true. >> in your book you get into a lot of examples of double entry and double standards are hypocrisy. one of the most telling is how you first came to congress republicans were referred to as the party of no, but now the media and others like to call the left the resistance this kind of mythological name.

what you make of that. >> think about it. how often have you heard the republicans were the party of no that because were somehow opposed to a public policy position that barack obama and the democrats are championing that we were the party of no but if all the sudden now you don't where they ca liberal could credentials unless you are anti- trump, no matter what position you possibly take their gonna take the opposite one. i did that when i was like in third grade. yes you did, no you didn't, it's very true. i sesame today on the street wearing a black shirt with white lettering that said resistance and they were part but they -- they were proud that they were part of the resistance movement. let's tackle it like an adult,

issue by issue and let's have that debate. i do believe the more conservatives have the debate and they win the debate. i've been going around the country telling people, and i want to share this message with you, i really do believe we can't be afraid of having that discussion, but let's also talk from our hearts. i'm tired of competing the compassion card to the democrat. they are not the more compassion caring group. what i'm worried about is that we want to smother people with statistics and numbers and the study, i think we also, as conservatives, i've got my campaign hat on a little bit but we need to talk about why we believe what we believe. i think we were partly successful because we talk about the prison principal. my guess is if you are here at this meeting, you have a set

of principles that you believe in, but i think a lot of conservatives forget that step one, let's talk about why you believe what you believe. then we can argue about how to get there in the individual policy, but democrats want to shut down the debate. they want to create this evil appearance on how dare you. that's why i think all this polling we do day after day on television and in the newspapers, it's just a bunch of hogwash. people don't want to admit out loud that they're going to vote for donald trump as opposed to hillary clinton because they don't want their neighbors or somebody else to beat them over the head with it and that is part of the strategy. they want to embarrass people. >> one of my favorite parts of the book is when you put your investigator hat on and start digging through the tax returns of the big nonprofits on the left. what did you discover in how these operations are financed and some of the shading accounting tricks.

full disclosure i'm glad i learned about the tricks for the first time in this book because we don't do any of that. >> this is what i think people need to understand. if you look at the priorities they have put forward in congress and you look through any poll that's out there about one of the most important issues, you're going to hear about healthcare, the economy, immigration. : : : they have to reconfigure how we do voting in this country in order for them to win long-term.

so, one of the weapons of the war i think is something i guess 98% of you have never heard of before and that is that they have learned to weaponize not-for-profit. planned parenthood, aclu, and i know a laundry list that have been there but have gone from 990 which is a form essentially as the topline tax return for a not-for-profit. what you are going to see in these 990s is a for-profit entity called grassroots campaign and there are 100 different types of organizatio organizations. he's done fundraisers for joe biden, barack obama when he first got out of college and worked for this organization, credited this organization but

teaching all he needed to know about how to win the campaign. believe barack obama this is how they learn how to do this. here is the way that it works. you are a 501 c-3 which is a nonprofit if you make a donation you get a tax write-off and then there are 501(c)4 which are allowed to engage in more politics that have a different tax treatment on how you can write off your taxes and talk to your tax accountant if you have questions over which one is which, okay? but these 501(c)3 organizations come as a not-for-profit, this gentle man here to go and make a 10 million-dollar donation. going to get a tax benefit for doing so. but, that nonprofit organization is hiring a for-profit organization, and grassroots campaign that will do fund-raising. they will put on t-shirts.

the aclu, poverty law center, planned parenthood and then start knocking on doors. they will say we are raising money, $50 for planned parenthood. you with us or against us? i was planned parenthood. i will give you $100. what does this tell you? because the for-profit entity has now gather all this information, then they go and work for the dnc in swing states and they can go out and target individuals, bypassing all of the campaign-finance rules.

if this gentleman wanted to participate in the individual campaign contribution limit is $2,800 there are certain things you can and cannot do with that money. but the problem here is if you look at the charts that we put in there, planned parenthood for instance over an eight-year period come every single year they hire the campaigns to do fund-raising, they didn't raise as much as they say it and then they hire them again and spend more money with them. they lost something like $11 million over eight years. why would they do that? i raised that as a question because this is the place they should be doing the audit because they are strictly prohibited from engaging in this type of campaign work and i wish everybody would realize it. second part, and i've got to move quickly to address it later not in the first few chapters,

but later on i can't remember which chapter is about vote harvesting. you may have heard about this term, but basically democrats in legislation supported the idea they want to make the law that everywhere you go that you do not have to be present to actually vote. vote harvesting allows somebody to go around and there is a "los angeles times" story about the woman that is an undocumented person, she's here illegally and how all of you can knock on your door and say i know you didn't get to the polls. i know it's inconvenient for you but if you just give me your ballot i will sort it out for you. anything you think could go wrong and that is the sort of

scenario, i want to go wrong. there were thousands and thousands of votes that showed up after the deadline that came in miraculously in favor of the democrats. why are we having a special election in north carolina? it illegal to devote harvesting in north carolina. joe kennedy, the congressman from massachusetts, complained about it. the republicans are cheating. you just voted on legislation to make it legal everywhere in the country. this is but one thing out of a list of 30 the democrats are trying to do to grab back more power, and if we don't open our eyes and become cognizant of that, they are going to blow through this. i don't know how you win an

election in california when democrats play by different rules and that engage i an ageno devote harvesting. i think there's evidence that it happened in arizona against martha mcsally and that it's happened in other places. even in utah this allegation that the thousands of votes showed up after the deadlines. democrats elected as the county clerk, who is going to be the eyeball to watch that? >> congressional oversight has changed quite a bit. certain things were out of bounds but now it seems the more personal and vicious, the more likely they will call the hearings and investigations on the topics. how do you think it has changed and what damage has it done for the biggest mark and philosophical change of the

oversight committee was founded in 1814. it was there to oversee any and all government expenditures. it has different committee names. abraham lincoln when he came on the committee, this was his committee assignments when he was in the united states congress. he became known challenging the president where were the origins. there's a great history of the committee and wit that it's been able to do. that's interesting is what changed after i left because the oversight government reform committee came and now nancy pelosi and elisha cummings changed the committee and its called the committee on oversight and reform. the government is all good and what you see now are hearings

and a press to go after individuals and individual corporations. that isn't necessarily the purview of the united states congress. again, the committee is probably the lightest of any sort of jurisdiction. there are cases the layout here where they try to get it on the straight and narrow which is to look after the government. we had hearings for instance on the pharmaceutical where we did call it into the individual corporations but we also called in the fda and health and human services to say how does this happen. what elisha cummings is doing is now demanding and sending out subpoenas and directives to go out in record amount without any

evidence of wrongdoing by the way, presupposing the outcome on fishing expeditions to look at the lives of individuals. and if you have proximity to donald trump, look out because that is a prime time target. this operating agreement which nobody has seen the light of day between elisha cummings, jerrold nadler, maxine waters, adam schiff, and i want to say that there is a fifth one about how they were going to do investigations and how they were going to do in peach with. it's all premised on the idea that they were going to be essentially i believe the campaign research arm for the democrats.

i didn't want to its figure it out and then we will figure out how to cry and is. it starts on the premise we need to look at people and individuals. it's kind of scary that the congressional branch of government that they would engage in this witchhunt and power grab. we go through a whole thing on just this situation come about what we try to focus on is the work that they were doing and the outlines that they had when

you see that in total in retrospect in the way that we did in this chapter, i would remind you of how evil and how bad it was, and i do think it is almost humorous that the democratic senators, every single one of them pledged to vote no and then complained about the lack of openness and transparency. they always do this. you cannot by law.

there is executive privilege that the president has this seniormost advisors. the jerrold nadler does time and time again, and they did it partly in this situation is they ask for information the president has executive privilege on. it's the same claim that barack obama claimed believe me i've wanted to get this before the committee to talk about that iran deal. i invited them to testify before the oversight committee. he was in the new yorker, he was giving public speeches. certainly he has time to do all of the media and public speeches he can talk to congress about this. it was a separation of powers issue and i dropped it. the difference now is cummings and nadler will issue a subpoena to see that they do not comply. they don't win because that is going to come after the next

election. they want to create a narrative if we issued 250 subpoenas and they never responded. he went before the colleagues on the democrat side of the aisle have said i'm better to pursue the impeachment. come with me and i'm going to do in impeachment. what is the path forward. >> you come and listen to the meeting and you are bummed out

like a feel-good meeting of the year try to end on a positive note that this is the greatest country on the face of the planet. somehow and someway these people figure it out, they sniff of authenticity and these issues but we have to be aware of them. the very fact you are reading the book and people want to dive deeper on these issues, but i also think that it's incumbent that we engage in a federalism and that the pushback on this and there are too many things to too many people. somehow we have to lower the power of the federal government and just get them out of business. a lot of those answers will be pushing forward the states rights.

they are going to be part of the solution, not the problem, and so with that i can't thank you enough for hearing me out and hopefully you enjoy the book. if we have a few minutes for questions, i totally get it. if you have time for questions. [applause] you mentioned the conspiracy behind the town hall creating the reduction and we know during the rallies they have the tape showing the democratic operatives they pay people to go to incite violence. i went to the party and asked them if they were going to prosecute. >> we also got the discovery from the democrat democrats, bug ever happened. i think that we have to pursue

things like these. the people that are inciting violence and we know there are several, last count was close to a thousand. we've got to do something to really lay down the hammer. >> i don't know that -- i think there was one person that was arrested. they basically took her out and then released her. they didn't charge her with anything. they did detain her. she was giving a little crazy. i can't imagine what it's like to try and rallies. there is good and bad. first of the organic energy behind donald trump, you can go anywhere in this country and get 100,000 people. i look at the democrats, joe biden rallies. [laughter] they couldn't pay enough people. i agree with your premise in general, overall, because i

think you see this from the u.s. attorney is dealing with. i think that there is a huge swath of americans who doesn't believe there's an equal application of justice on your. it's just one side. and it is unfortunate, and i think like my grandfather was a career fbi agent and i think that if you look at the fbi today, when i'm trying to say is i think it happens all across the board. i trusted their judgment in the town hall to make the right decision and keep the calm and i think they made the right calls they learned from the others

were the escalation happened. the conservatives are right to point out because they've been on the receiving end and it has gone on for too long and there doesn't seem to be any consequent to truly threatening behavior where there's an actual assault. >> i think they are broadcasting part of this. >> i think that he will lose some stay.

it's one person versus another person and it's hard to tell who the personalities are. i think in part it's a referendum on donald trump but it still went pretty well. you can complain and if you are complaining about it, then you are looking for an excuse. i think that it's going to play so well right into the democratic base blue collars workers also into the farming communities i think donald trump

earns credit on both sides of the aisle you matter how much people are talking on television they are like we finally have a president that is standing up to make it right. george soros and always guys are funding these activist groups. can't something be done? >> to point out what needs to happen is these not-for-profit or openly engaging in these types of campaign tactics. they need to be audited by the irs. they've spent an awful lot of time making sure that these 300 plus conservative organizations never got the authorization to exercise their first amendment rights and base lies and the gravity of the irs.

why are they not looking at these major players and how they are doing it because it is simple. you can look at it for two minutes line after line and year after year they lose many. what is the answer to that question. they allow abortion and we point out coming and i want to make sure that you get this right if they spend more on abortions in some of these countries than they do in the food and water aid it's kind of disgusting but they do their.

to win the vote if you don't make this argument, and to inform people and say do you think it's right that a non- for-profit charity is engaging in politics, i think most people would say no, no, they shouldn't be doing that. you have to engage in that. >> if we have one of the largest and the generation behind them, i taught school for ten years and you probably know where i'm going for this, i would love to see us make the case for the turn to the local entities not national, not in the nea.

as i look back at the kids in the school system we have a good education system. if we leave this classroom you will be registered to vote and that is all i care about is that you register to vote and go vo vote. thank you, yes sir.

>> many of you think that we are losing talks and for those of us watching a long time, it is changing dramatically and that is a big deal for us going forward. what can you say and smile at? >> when i showed up at fox and hound ahave an offer from anothr network as well and went with fox and they said what do you want from me, they said just you. we want your authenticity. don't think that you have to support the president. if you do, great, if you don't, do whatever you want. i think they are finding a place and what i appreciate about fox is that it is the only place that i know.

it makes my argument stronger. for democrats and liberals i look at it and say are you kidding me, let the debate fact ridiculous asinine position you just took on and win the argument. i wouldn't worry about that. it is unfair to be a political arm of one voice and one political side. i like the fact that they allow him to give opportunities.

it is a huge impact in the country so has there been any interest? >> i'm doing everything i can to draw attention to it and we will do something along with it as well. you noted that the nexus between the liberal and ngos and the media obviously.

it not only maintained enormous amount of information but to control the flow and influence the actual discussion what we are talking about are the issues are. or what the issues are. what is the appropriate response to this emerging power -- >> you highlight something we all have to deal with. it's on information technology not only emerging technology and how the government spends $250 billion, i'm sorry, $90 billion on 250,000 technology that is how much we're spending on taxpayers to look at these dilemmas out the there. it is a bipartisan group of the attorneys general.

it's interesting the president can't -- the rule saying the same holds true for twitter and google, can they hold back allowing people to see the president's account and other

people's account. then i will go to 40 or 50,000 people. in the exposure of content it's fascinating what europe is doing what other instance to be allow other 13-year-olds to engage in a contractor will obligation and

if they decided to 15 will be no longer wanted their content in europe, they have to delete it. it has to be gone to the point that they can be sued for that, so lots of issues. i am passionate about this but you highlight something that is very imperative tha into the sae time let's just be honest. at the end of the day there is a reason donald trump wants 40 of the 50 states because if i talk to the american people, we are so a conservative nation. we still believe in the basic tenets of the conservatives and that will win the day. thank you. i appreciate it.

[applause] she's interviewed by the republican congressman chet roi of texas open borders. first part of your book really captured my attention because it is important to me and the congress from texas the extent to which cartels have operational control. i want your perspective on that, the $2 million a week