guantanamo bay detainees. then, deputy washington bureau chief for insider, dave levinthal, talks about a recent report on members of congress and financial conflicts of interest. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: mark meadows served as donald trump's final white house chief of staff. though he has provided the house january 6 committee with thousands of documents on social media records, he rejected their subpoena to testify. late last night, the full house voted to hold mark meadows, one of its former members, in the contempt of congress. the measure now goes to the justice department for possible criminal consideration good morning. wednesday, december 15, 2021. welcome to "washington journal." we will spend this first hour talking about that boat last

night and the contempt of congress citation and resolution passed by the house. your views at (202) 748-8001 for republicans. democrats, (202) 748-8000. for independents and others, (202) 748-8002. you can text (202) 748-8003, and tell us your name and where you are texting from. we are on facebook and also look for your posts and your thoughts on instagram and twitter at @cspanwj. a busy day in the u.s. house yesterday. they passed a debt resolution, raising the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion. the house is pretty much done for the year except for wedding for the senate to see if they will pass the build back better measure the president is trying to get through. but the contempt vote late last night in the u.s. house.

a headline this money, house votes to hold mark meadows in contempt of congress, writing that the house voted 222-208 to hold mark meadows and criminal contempt of congress for refusing to cooperate with the january 6 select committee's investigation. meadows, a former republican member of congress from north carolina, engaged in weeks of negotiations with the committee entered over thousands of records and agreed to testify before ultimately backing out the day after his book was released, claiming executive and other privileges. the committee took issue with meadows releasing a book about his experience in the white house, including on january 6, then refusing to testify. "he is willing to talk about it in his book," said representative jamie raskin, of meadows' book in which he discusses january 6, he is willing to talk about it in public but unwilling to undergo the questioning of our committee

despite being subpoenaed to do so. raskin said meadows nullified his executive privilege claims with the 9000 pages of records he gave the committee. among the republicans on that january 6 committee, only vice chair liz cheney of wyoming and adam kinzinger of illinois voted in favor of last nights contempt resolution. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. independents and others, (202) 748-8002. "the new york times" with a profile on liz cheney, marginalized by her party, cheney takes center stage in january 6 inquiry. here she is last night on the house floor. [video clip] >> january 6 was without precedent. there has been no stronger case in our nations history for a congressional investigation into the actions of a former president. this body must investigate the

facts and details, and we are entitled to ask mr. meadows about the nonprivileged materials he has produced. madam speaker, i am sure you will hear my colleagues this afternoon say that there are privilege issues here that must be resolved before we can move forward. any argument that the courts need to resolve privilege issues first as a pretext you'd we will question mr. meadows about emails and texts he gave us without any privilege claims. mr. meadows' role in the call cannot be privilege, nor can his dealings with a member of this body. the committee must get to the objective truth and ensure that january 6 never happens again. host: another republican member, republican marjorie taylor greene of georgia, a member of the freedom caucus, posted a video before the vote. [video clip] >> i vote to hold mark meadows

-- to vote to hold mark meadows in contempt is nothing more than a witchhunt like we saw with president trump. riots were in american cities for more than a year. if they cared about riots, they would not have bailed these people out to send them to those cities to start riots again. there are a lot of questions that need to be asked, but holding mark meadows in contempt of congress is more outrageous witchhunt action by democrats that are using communist tactics. i am a solid no vote. host: in the majority leader, steny hoyer, tweeting after that vote, holding mark meadows in contempt of congress, saying, i hope the justice department will move swiftly to execute the church to compel mr. meadows and

others to cooperate and share what they know -- to execute that charge to compel mr. meadows and others to cooperate and share what they know about that terrible day. let's go to calls. a call from texas is first. glenn, good morning. caller: hello? host: go ahead. caller: thank you very much for c-span. yeah, i have some comments about this so-called kangaroo court for january 6. everyone on this committee is the scum of the democratic party. adam schiff should never be on that party. cheney should be fired from government. adam schiff signed a paper on trump's so-called russian collusion for four years. he lied to congress for four years and gets away with it. host: ok, to tom in florida, democrats line. your thoughts on the vote last

night? caller: yes, i agree with the senate 100%. if we look back at history, nixon's chief of staff went to prison. trump, he committed treason. there are traitors and every country, some executed. some serve at least 20 years. [indiscernible] ok, let me check my notes. federal law, he can go to prison still. but the state laws, like georgia, pennsylvania, arizona, they can put trump in state prison for what he tried to do.

host: independent line next, stan in florida. caller: first, i want to say, i do not want to defund the police. that is what fox news says, everybody who votes for biden wants to defund the police. i want to protect them. there were those policemen injured on january 6. the people that did it live about five miles from me. one is on home arrest -- the wife is on home arrest. the husband will go to trial in july, still in jail. as far as that guy said in the report to release trump, he did not read the mueller report. january 6, they want to tell us we did not see what we seen. they wanted to hang mike pence and shoot nancy pelosi -- in fact, that guy just got 25 months in jail for that. he is going to spend 25 months

in jail. millions of dollars of damage to the capitol. and now washington is suing them, the proud boys. and people on both sides in charlottesville are paying tons of money. the people who did that now, i think they are asking for 25 million dollars from the people who did their. it was not good people on both sides. people should stop looking at fox news. they should see, once in a while, the cnn special when they interviewed all the people that were there. some said we did not know why we were there, thought it was for this or for that. they were there to stop the counting of the vote. 100 republicans in the house. 13 senators were not going to certify the vote. you had ted cruz ready to go, the guy from arizona ready to go. and there are still people in the country that do not believe biden is president because trump

goes around on every tv show and says i was cheated and it was stolen from me. now they're putting people in place all over the state to count the votes for them. if they do not do something about voting rights, they will not have a chance. host: stan mentioned the lawsuit in the nation's capital. here is the report on that from the wall street journal. d.c. sues far-right groups over the capitol riot. they said the proud boys and the oath keepers, it is alleged the far-right groups conspired to attack the u.s. capitol on january 6 and disrupt the certification of president biden 's election victory. a civil lawsuit filed tuesday names the two groups, more than 30 individuals it says are associated with them. in philadelphia on the democrats line, crystal. good morning. caller: good morning, america. stan, the last caller, he is absolutely right. the right needs to take the blinders off, rose-colored

glasses. they are like monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil about trump. he is a lying fraud. we went through four years of this nonsense, and all those senators and house people always taking up for him, spreading his lies, he is a cancer. and all those people, all those senators and house members, ron johnson, loudmouth out there, they just talk a bunch of crap. please stand up and fight for our voting rights. they delay, delay, barriers in the way. and the build back better. and manchin and cinema --

sinema this is from yesterday, oh, [video clip] . >> here we go again -- i hope they see what happens when democrats get total power. they abuse it. they intimidate, threaten, and they harass. and they try to put their political opponents in jail. in a matter of weeks, the committee has passed three criminal contest citations. today we vote on holding mark meadows in contempt of congress. onset timber 23, 2021 -- on september 23, 2020 one, mark meadows was served a subpoena for a sweeping set of documents at a deposition. in october, president trump instructed mr. meadows to maintain his executive privilege in any response to that subpoena. mr. meadows then told the select

committee that he would give them any information they requested that was not protected by executive privilege. mr. meadows gave the select committee over 6800 pages of information, including 1100 documents and 2300 text messages. mr. meadows agreed to sit for a deposition. if it was limit to areas not protected by executive privilege. he tried to cooperate, but the select committee did not care. mr. meadows avon sought an independent ruling on the question of executive privilege -- mr. meadows even sought an independent ruling on the question of executive privilege. but they did the same thing they did to mr. clark in trump versus thompson. apparently, the select committee's rules collect this, nor the former president and do not wait for legal rulings, immediately do everything that

was a without objection or we will refer you for chemical process -- for criminal prosecution. they do not care about fairness or due process. host: that resolution of contempt passing late last night. chris marquette here with the tally on the republican side, tweeting that nine house republicans voted to hold bannon in contempt, only can singer and cheney voted to hold meadows and content -- only adam kinzinger and liz cheney voted to hold meadows and the contempt. and these people voted that way. this one says the trove of documents mark meadows released to the committee reads like a bad calm clancy novel. this case is unlike any other, why i asked the court to expeditiously resolve the issue of executive privilege in this singular, unprecedented issue.

this case is about separation of powers. she says that if the supreme court compels him to do so, i expect mr. meadows to appear before this congress. failure to do so will be met with my support for charges of contempt. back to calls. flint, michigan, paul on the independent line. good morning. caller: hey, you guys do a wonderful show. what i would say is until they release every video of january 6, america is never going to know what is going on. i think meadows is an honest man. on fox, it is the most fair news organization that i am aware of. but i love this c-span. thank you. host: yucca valley, california, up next. oscar. caller: good morning.

thank you to the crew for getting up so early and bringing the truth forward and getting opinions. you will never resolve executive privilege in a timely manner. we need to get to the bottom of what happened. and the votes in the house represents that there are enough elected officials that want to get to the bottom of what happened. liz cheney, daughter of the vice president, a republican, no less, is one who is advocating probably most strongly for this investigation and sits on the council to find out what happened on january 6. so there is really no debate whether we should fact find. it is really just the cheerleading section of the republican party who think if they say something and if times, even if it is a lie, people will start to believe it. this cheerleading has gone on and on for trump and will probably never go away. but the courts and the critical

thinking people in the congress and across the country, especially 71 million of us, we know better. we want the truth, and we will continue that quest into the next elections going forward. thank you. host: (202) 748-8000 for republicans --(202) 748-8001 for republicans. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents and others, (202) 748-8002. ruben is in philadelphia, democrats line. caller: good morning. right now, two young boys are being charged with transferred intake in philadelphia because of a shooting were the cops killed a young girl, and this is called transferred intent. a legal doctrine that holds with intention to harm one individual, causing a second

person to be heard instead, the perpetrator is still held responsible, to be held legally as possible, a court typically must demonstrate that the perpetrator had criminal intent. we know these people on january 6 had criminal intent, which led to the death of ashli babbitt and another person, and they should be charged with the murder of these two people. and other officers ended up committing suicide. these guys went in there to not only kill nancy pelosi but also our vice president, and they did bodily harm to the capitol police and everyone else. this is a transferred intent, which led to the death of ashli babbitt and brian sicknick. they went to the capitol to hang mike pence and nancy pelosi. had they not gone, ashli babbitt and brian sicknick would still be alive.

all these people should be held in contempt, and they should be charged with the murder of these people. host: we shared comments on the floor of a republican from indiana, responding to that. majority leader steny hoyer -- [video clip] >> that gentleman who just spoke, the gentleman of indiana, laments the fact that we have this committee. but the gentleman from indiana voted against forming an equally numbered committee to be set up to a judge this issue. he voted against that. and now he comes and says, oh, my goodness, this is not what i wanted. but like so many of his colleagues, he voted against what he says he wanted.

the gentleman from indiana who just spoke, madame speaker, voted against holding in contempt steve bannon, not because of any executive privilege. he was a private citizen, not a member of the governors -- of the president's cabinet. and the gentleman from indiana voted against having him honor a subpoena of the congress of the united states. and it ought to be noted that at the time of the insurrection, we had a vote on whether to confirm what court after court after court headset was a legitimate election, he voted against certifying an election to the president of the united states, so i am not surprised that the gentleman from indiana does not want to see this subpoena honored.

because, madame speaker, i believe that he fears the information that would be brought forward. fearing the truth is not an excuse for not honoring a subpoena. host: want to remind you, all of last nights's debate, yesterday's debate, is available at c-span.org. you can also see it on our free mobile app, c-span now. some comments on the vote yesterday on twitter, this one saying that it does not solve kitchen table issues americans are facing every day. january 6 does not solve a rise in crime, crisis at the border, high inflation. all january 6 is is a distraction by the establishment swamp. a significant portion of the citizens essay, so what, can anyone say that had barack obama done what trump did, he would have already been convicted and

much likely executed for treason? white privilege is real. gary in pompano beach, florida, is next, independent line. caller: good morning. for four years, we watched as they try to prosecute the president. liz cheney was the republican who has no standing because she hates trump so much, refuses to align with the party of the republicans. now the country will never move forward unless we stop this one party assassination, which is the democratic party. we put them in power to run the country, not to assassinate trump and prevent trump from running again. what we need to do is get back to the business of governing our country so the people of this country can prosper and not execute, prosecute, and be

judge, jury, executioner of one man. trump is not the sole purpose of our world. this country needs to stop, the democrats need to stop come and get to the business of governing our country and get us out of this rut we are in. host: joan in myrtle beach, south carolina, republican line. caller: yeah, i am in north carolina now, and i am appear with the senator -- used to be the senator, but my problem is cheney and the friend that she took with her, they need to go to the democrats because they have never voted trump. thank you. host: ok, joan in north carolina, mention former senator of south carolina, jim demint, writing in townhall.com, the generate six committee's real

goal, his opinion, saying, have you heard the latest news from the third world, a political party won an election and started a committee to conspire with the president and file criminal charges against members of the previous administration? while this unfortunate country spirals down world from inflation, criminal virus, out-of-control spending, and debt, media distortions and propaganda, general societal decline, the new government is attempting to distract from real problems by pursuing political retribution against its opposition. you can read that at townhall.com. next call in brooklyn on our democrats line. caller: good morning. how are you? host: fine, thank you. caller: thanks to c-span. all i can say is that i was a republican for many years of my life and just said i can't do this anymore. trump has done a lot of corrupt

things, but that is not really why i am calling. i just wanted to give a shout out to cheney and adam schiff and many of the democrats who do want to make a difference in our world. i just also want to say that i think that jordan and the likes are always showboating, so what do we expect? we have to get to the bottom of what happened on january 6. it broke our hearts watching this, and we need to know. meadows needs to get out there and do the right thing. and we can get past these issues. please to vote, people. that is how we are going to change our world. thanks a lot. host: also on the house floor yesterday, the house passing the that resolution. this is the headline -- passing the debt resolution. a headline from politico, congress clears $2.5 trillion debt limit increase. the deadline was today.

the new ceiling is expected to carry spending until after the 2022 midterms. tom is in calluses -- tom is in kalamazoo, michigan, republican line. caller: thanks for taking my call. quite frankly, i think we have had three or four investigations into this january 6, and people have been prosecuted and sent to jail, prison, and i think this is just another vendetta by congress against the past president. i think it is time to let this go. it is time to stop all the constant bickering and fighting and who is to blame for this or that or anything. and let's address some real

problems like the huge inflation we are in the middle of and the problems down at the border were almost two people have run rampant over that border, and they are super spreaders of the new variants and so forth. and it is time to get crime under control and other things that really, really need to be addressed. we know january 6. we all watched it, saw it 100 times now. and people died, and that is a shame, but people will go to jail for that. but unfortunately, we are not getting anywhere in this country after all the time we have spent on this covid. it is actually worse now than it has ever been. so let's drop the whole january 6 crap, move on to something

really important, all of the problems we're having in this country, not one vendetta against a past president who was -- let's face it, he was just a pain in the ass. but now he is gone, we have a new president. time to move on here. host: to larry in washington, d.c. go ahead. caller: good morning. mark meadows is a smart man, smart enough to have been elected to congress and named trump's chief of staff. he knows he has no critical claim of executive privilege here as trump is no longer president. he seems to be stonewalling and hoping to run out the clock. i hope he does not get away with it. on another matter, i think "time" magazine should rethink its person of the year. it should have been officer eugene goodman of the u.s.

capitol police. host: who got person of the year, elon musk? caller: it was, and i am not saying he is not doing important work, but eugene goodman is my hero. host: from the floor last night, jim jordan of ohio, his views in opposition to the resolution. [video clip] >> make no mistake, make no mistake, when democrats voted in favor of this resolution, it is vote to put a good man in prison. that is what -- do not pretend to argue either, do not even attempt the arguments, no, no, no, this is just the house acting. the justice department will make a decision whether to prosecute or not. , on, is there anyone who believes that? -- come on, is there anyone who believes that? it took the attorney general all of five days to treat them like terrorists. if a left-wing group can ask the department of justice to use the patriot act against moms and dads, and five days later, the

attorney general of the united states does that, what do you think he will do with 225 democrats in the house asking him to put president trump's chief of staff in prison? i have been in congress a while, 15 years. i have seen democrats weaponize the government to attack the political opponents. 10 years ago, they used the irs to target good people around this country, good conservative people. five years ago, they used the fbi to spy on president trump's campaign. two months ago, the department of justice using the counterterrorism division at the fbi to put a threat tag, a label, a designation on parents who had the gall to go speak up at a school board meeting to defend their kids, speak out against some crazy curriculum. and now they are destroying executive privilege.

now they are attacking that. and this might be the worst. destroying a precedent that has been around since george washington, and treating mark meadows as a criminal. mark meadows is our former colleague. he is a good man, and he is my friend. and this is as wrong as it gets. host: the house last night voting to own mark meadows in contempt. mark meadows, former chair of the freedom caucus, and former member of the house, obviously in president donald trump's administration, the last white house chief of staff. a congress member said, the text begging him to call off the attack are damning evidence. they knew who was behind it, trump's last effort to hold onto power. another congresswoman says, when we had a democratic president, mark meadows was zealous about

oversight, yet as our democracy was under attack, he refuses to cooperate with the bipartisan january 6 committee that it's seeking the truth -- that is seeking the truth. a call from florida, independent line. caller: good morning. i just want to agree with everything jim jordan just said. this thing going on up there, with all of them hypocrites, is just a big farce. they don't care what happened on january 6. they are after the ex-president. they could care less. they are so scared of him that you would see all the shaking in their boots. go out and take care of your voters, take care of the border, take care of the afghan people that you just left over there to die, take care of inflation. do what you are supposed to be doing. because us americans, we see

what you are doing. and the people that think they are getting over on us, they are going to pay in the next election. they big and bad, like ms. cheney, a benedict arnold from the start. when you turn on your party, good or bad or whoever they are, and go to the other party, that is a benedict arnold, in my book. i have no respect for her. host: to a call in fort payne, alabama, republican line. caller: yes, good morning. don't really consider myself a republican. i consider myself a person that votes for what is right. and second of all, i agree with both florida callers and with the michigan caller. third of all, we have serious things going on in our nation.

what if liz cheney and all these people that are doing this, what if this storm had hit their place? what would they be thinking about this morning? would they be thinking about donald trump and mark meadows and all this bickering and arguing, like little kids fighting over a toy? give me a break. this has went on long enough. they are not interested in what happened at that capitol, they just want to damage donald trump. let me tell you something, when donald trump was in office, i had more help from him than i ever had from anybody else. and they are so jealous, so jealous, because he was not a politician, and he came in office and did better than any of them. there jealous. and they want him gone, because they are scared to death that he is going to bring to light some of the underhanded things that they have been doing in the

past. and i want to close with this, a lot of the questions that c-span asks, i feel like it causes problems. i do, because of some of the comments that are made toward the president that are asked, some of the comments that are made by text, twitter, whatever, i feel like it causes problems. because i know we're supposed to look at both sides of the coin, i know that, but i feel like some people just do that to cause problems. and i think we need to pray for our nation. we need to look at things in a positive outlook, rather than a negative. what is going on in our country is shameful. it is shameful, and we need to look at those things instead of the past stuff. we need to look to the future and drop the past. the past is gone. you have a great day, and god

bless america. host: thank you. we will go to joan on the independent line. we will show you a video in a moment from andy biggs, republican of arizona. let's hear from joan in tennessee. caller: yes. can you hear me? host: yes, we can. caller: i want to agree with one thing the last lady said. we do need to get back to some things, and one of the most important things -- she forgot, i'm from the deep south, and basically, she forgot one thing. from my understanding, what i've been looking at and hearing about, what is happening now as they are trying to rollback a whole lot of stuff to be totally back like it was, the jim crow laws, all that stuff coming back. look, i am a black lady. i do not mind telling anybody about it.

i came from the south. but nobody wants to go backward. and donald trump, he sat in place, him and some old people that was working with him, set in place this guy that they just did, that steve bannon, put in place to get it back to where it was. the jim crow laws coming back into place, voting, counting beans to do it nobody wants that stuff. look, if you look at me as a person, not as a color, you would see the agony we went through to get where we are now, and we're not all the way there. this lady, like i said, i have taken care of people like her and know their prejudice. -- know they are prejudiced they do not even want you all to eat out of their dishes. this is my thing, do not try to put me back where i came from. just the right. ok, get to all the stuff that

needs to be done here. but you cannot do it. going backwards. there is so much i could say, and you do not have time to listen to me. the whole point is, be courteous, be kind to people that don't look like you. because we are human, too, and came from the same god. host: appreciate your call, as well appeared we're talking about the vote last night in congress, in the house, contempt of congress the resolution passed by the house, 222-208. ahead of that vote, a video from andy biggs, republican from arizona. [video clip] >> today we are voting on the resolution to hold former chief of staff, former member of this body, mark meadows, and the contempt of the most contemptible, illegitimate january 6 committee. these people issued a subpoena, and you cannot win with these

folks. so here is the way it works, if you are steve bannon, and president trump exercises privilege, and you say i cannot really come in because i am under executive privilege because i used to work for the sky, they say you are in contempt. for others, you say that i can come in but on some items i will have to plead the fifth amendment because there is some privilege. they say you are in contempt. if you are mark meadows and your cooperating, having discussions, your attorneys and their attorneys, and then they issue subpoenas for your private records or that is after you provide them over 1000 documents, over 6000 pages of documents, and an agile 2400 text -- an additional 2400 text messages, they say you are in contempt. do you know what is contemptible? it is the chair of this committee.

it is liz cheney, the vice chair. these people have violated people's constitutional rights on a partisan witchhunt that is illegitimate. host: that resolution passing the house last night. the hill reporting on another measure that passed, congress passes bill allowing for easier national guard defense of the capitol after january 6. the house unanimously passed the capitol police emergency assistance act to empower the capitol police chief to request the assistance of the d.c. national guard without prior approval, following the events of january 6. let's hear from george in indiana, independent line. caller: hi, happy holidays to you, your family, and the c-span family. amazing you guys are there every day of the week all year round. host: thank you. caller: i want to comment man, we got some good callers today. maybe these people should be in

government. thinking about president trump, i was eight years old when jfk was assassinated, and even though he had many faults, after he was assassinated, we still regard him as one of the best presidents. and i think that is what is going to happen with president trump. i do not think he is going to run again. i think we will get some fresh blood. tim scott would be a good choice you watch. the democrats, they will be done when it happens. look at adam schiff, he said he had all the proof in the world to convict trump. he never presented nothing he made up a story about the insurrection. where is the contempt charge on him? let's be logical about this. democrats like to put this stuff in the media because they want to detract the attention about what is going on in the country, the inflation, the illegal immigration problem, russia and china, our biggest problem. russia and china is the biggest

problem we face. but we are all mesmerized by what is going on in the media. this is crazy. host: tina in kansas city, missouri, the democrats line this time. caller: yes, i was happy that they held mark meadows in contempt. i think americans, we need to know. we wanted to know what happened on january 6. we cannot let our democracy die. if people going to try to subvert elections, then we have -- we cannot say we have in america. in those -- we cannot say we have an america. and those who do not like elections, they need to leave america, not try to burn it down. this needs to come out. we need to find out everything and who all was involved, from lawmakers to everyone, even those with donald trump. this is a sad day when you

cannot have free and fair elections. so no, regardless of what these republicans are trying to call in and take over washington journal, do not allow them to do that. we get a chance to speak, and americans have a right to know. and i am a democrat, and we watch. but we love america. if the republicans don't, find somewhere else to go. but we're going to fight for free and fair elections are that is going to happen. thank you. host: one thing a number of members came together on was the marking of a tragic mark in the covid pandemic. this is the headline from npr. 800,000 americans have died of covid, now the u.s. braces for the omicron-fueled spike. yesterday on capitol hill, members of congress gathered outside the capitol for a brief vigil. [video clip]

>> ♪ god bless america my home sweet home god bless america my home sweet home ♪ ♪ host: the scene outside the u.s. capitol late yesterday afternoon , early evening, in washington, marking 800,000 deaths in the united states due to covid. john is next in watsonville, california, republican line. caller: hi, yeah, i want to say, any intellectual an honest person can tell you why january 6 happened.

for at least the past decade, large political demonstrations have been getting out of hand and turning into violent riots. burns buildings, dead bodies, and looted businesses to prove it. but the democrats would have you believe that january 6 spring out of the blue, some kind of unique organized effort to take over the government and destroy democracy. it is laughable. well, it would be laughable if it was not so sad that we're wasting money, time, and effort on this phony prosecution. and i also want to say that democrats all claimed that democracy is in danger. well, the only ones i see subverting democracy, american representation of democracy, are the democrats. they want to get rid of the electoral college. they want to stack the supreme court's. they are actively attacking our democracy while pretending that they want to defend it.

this is ridiculous. and nobody seems to be calling them on this. and i want to ask you, how many people have been thrown into jail or content -- for contempt of congress? can you tell me? i don't know. host: i can't. caller: you should know. host: i should, huh? caller: practically nobody. it shows the vindictiveness and hatred, people willing to use the power given to them by the people of the united states to smash the political opponents. this is terrible, what is going on right now. but it is par for the course. we had trump, russia, two impeachments, peoples houses being broken into by the justice department and terrorized. and i wish c-span would stand up and say something about it. our democracy is in danger by the democrats, and that is pretty much it. host: to the democrats line,

henrietta in fort pierce, florida. caller: i just got to say amen to that man, amen. more importantly, i am so sad about the 800,000 people who have died. however, i do not see the democrats talking about china, which infected the world. in addition to that, we do not see roy ebb being arrested. more importantly, release all the january 6 videotapes. that is what we want to see. elections have consequences, and stolen elections have catastrophic consequences, as we see happening in front of our eyes. it is disgraceful, disgraceful. host: this is the view of mitch mcconnell on the work of the house, the senate republican leader said this yesterday -- [video clip]

>> we are learning from the house select committee that a number of republicans have reached out to mark meadows asking donald trump to get more involved on january 6 to secure the building. were you personally and contact with mark meadows that day and other white house officials to urge them to do more? >> i was not, but i do think we are all watching, as you are, what is unfolding on the house side. and it will be interesting to reveal all the participants who were involved. host: taking your comments on the citation, the resolution of contempt against mark meadows, passed by the house last night, 222-208. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents and others, (202) 748-8002. a headline, december 15 child tax credit cash might be the final infusion. in the money section of usa today, it says, one final blast

of cash set to arrive wednesday for roughly 36 million families eligible for the advanced payment for the child tax credit. what happens in january? the money will stop unless congress passes the build back better social spending and climate package, which is installed in the senate. they write that families might see another round of direct payments in late 2022, but it is unlikely for any cash to show up a month from now. no one should expect a payment on january 15 as of now, said the director of individual tax programs for the nonprofit accounting aid society in detroit. the monthly payments were limited to 2021, and the last one is set for wednesday, today. to a call in alexandria, virginia, independent line. caller: good morning. on the january 6 situation,

being that it is my backyard when this happened, it is shameful that we have the so-called patriots that want this to go away, it is in the past, leave it in the past. i have lived in communist countries, and this is just a stage, let's see how far it can go. they went pretty far. i applaud ms. cheney and applaud adam, the only two republicans that want to see the light of day of what happened. jim jordan would sell a blind man glasses. he does not want people to know his text messages. i vote that they allow all lawmakers' text messages to be named. let's see who all these people were who were so afraid of what was happening and had direct contact with mark meadows. why can even donald trump, jr., contact his dad? when you see the text messages

act and forth -- back and forth, how is it fox news how to get in contact with people from the white house before anybody else? what is going on? this was an inside job, and we american so what happened. people died because of the consequences of this so-called stolen election. we have had tons of investigations for many things, and the light of the truth will come out. but we need to hear it, as americans, as people who love our democracy. we cannot stand on the world stage and talk about other people's voting rights and how their democracy works when ours is being tested. host: thanks for the call. this is from the abc news morning political note, money and tech fuel new-wave of january 6 accountability. they write that the traditional puffs this -- process is well underway for more than 700

people who participated in the right at the capitol, including over 100 who already put in the guilty pleas on federal charges. but the multiple and sometimes overlapping investigations are no were close to finished when it comes to who might be implicated. a lawsuit against the proud boys and oath keepers is an attempt to penetrate the shading financing of groups involved. that financing, the suit alleges, helped bring together the conspiracy that involves the organizations, in addition to their leadership and certain of their members and affiliates. and for all that is being made of the cooperation of former white house chief of staff mark meadows isn't providing for the january 6 committee -- to the generate six committee, the house voting to hold him in contempt tuesday night. what metals has already handed over could prove to be more than enough. joe is in chandler, arizona, republican line. caller: good morning.

yeah, i've been listening and watching the january 6 hearings, the arrests, and the outrage by democrats in this country for what happened on january 6. i found it pretty bad, too, did not particularly like what happened. but when you put it in perspective and you look at it through the lens of time, it was not that big of a deal. i think very strongly that the democrats are desperate to throw this country into total chaos. what is going to probably happen this time next year, i am predicting it, that the republicans are going to take close to 100 seats back in the house, and then we're going to be looking at an impeachment for not only joe biden and kamala harris but for members of the energy department and their secretary of state, antony blinken, who has done nothing to

put this country into a situation where our enemies are laughing at us and are working to move against us. we have a very weak government right now. we do not have a leader in the white house. this country is leaderless. we have to change that. host: next is a call from kansas, kathy on the democrats line. caller: thank you. i am so happy they voted to find him in contempt. we should all be. they read over -- i mean, information they received over and over again, and then they read the definition of treason. i think trump and meadows, all of them, clark, are guilty of treason. they literally tried to overthrow the will of the people .

it was not a stolen election, as was proven over and over again. but instead of regrouping their party and saying, well, we need to find out what american people really need and they will vote for us next time, no, they want to overthrow the will of the people. i watched with horror all day long on january 6. i still reel from that when i see it, emblazoned in my brain. you cannot tell me that was peaceful and it was not that big of a deal and we should just forget about it. it was organized. i think there's members of the republican party, congressional party, that were in on it and that funded some of it, and i wanted to find out the truth. i cannot go forward. i do not feel safe in my country anymore because i do not feel like this country, that the will of the people is really going to be considered. and i think they are doing everything they can with voter

restrictions, republicans, they are. we need to find out, and trump needs to be held accountable. i do not think any of these people will probably go to jail. it is just the poor people that trump summoned to washington that are suffering. he needs to be in jail. he committed treason. host: a story in the "washington times," d.c. attorney general sues proud boys and oath keepers over january 6 attack. the d.c. attorney general, here is some of what he had to say. [video clip] >> while some desperately want to rewrite history and sweep the events of january 6 under the rug, the district of columbia and its residents have chosen to speak truth through this filing, through this complaint, through this case. it is for these reasons that the independent office of attorney

general for the district of columbia is filing the first civil lawsuit by a state or municipal government to hold accountable the proud boys, the oath keepers, and more than 30 of their leaders and members for conspiring to terrorize the district of columbia, for unlawfully interfering with our country's peaceful transition of power, and for assaulting our men and women in blue who valiantly defended the capitol, the district, and our freedoms. specifically, we are bringing this lawsuit, pursuant to local and federal laws, including the ku klux klan act of 1871, a reconstruction era federal law designed to protect our country against violent conspiracy, protect our citizens against violent conspiracy, like the attack that took place on january 6.

host: the morning consult has been keeping track of how americans feel about the january 6 investigation. support for generate six panel declines among republicans and independents, between october 16 and 18. 48% approved, down 5% from a similar poll held in the middle of the summer. among independents, down 5%. republicans, down 7%. opposition growing in both categories. michael in marietta, georgia. caller: yes, it is amazing to me how democrats can call in and argue and complain about the truth and what really happened at the capitol, and they have no idea that it is their own party that is actually blocking the republicans and democrats to sit

together and actually investigate the truth, what really happened. i would say so many republicans, they hate what happened at the capitol. nobody ever wanted to see these people go in there and break these windows and destroyed that beautiful building. that was not nobody's plan. what we wanted was to have our voices heard and seen by demonstrating that we were very concerned with some of the results of the election, what was going on. that is all we wanted. with those people did, the ones that broke in and threatened and yelled to kill the vice president and all that, that was nonsense, and those people do not represent the republican party. president trump was one of the best presidents we have ever had, and he was exposing the corruption. at nato, he exposed the corruption. at the united nations, he exposed the corruption that was being taken advantage of us by

china. and no other president did that, and that is why they hate donald trump, because he was the best president that took on the corruption of the world, not just here in the united states, but the corruption of the world. and the democrats it because that is what they represent. they represent pure evil. it is a party of the antichrist movement that is growing stronger to destroy america. host: that is it for this segment, that is it for all of the calls and comments. more ahead on the program. it is nearly 20 years after it opened its doors, the detention facility at guantanamo bay, cuba shows little sign of closing. we will be joined by jamil jaffer the founder and executive director of the national security institute at george mason university. later insider deputy washington bureau teeth dave leventhal will talk about is reporting will -- with members of congress and

their financial conflicts of interest. ♪ ♪ >> book tv every sunday on c-span2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction's book. on about books we talk with the

book review editor pamela paul about her book "100 things we have lost the internet" and some of her notable books of the year plus some of the latest nonfiction releases as well as industry news and trends. at 10:00 p.m. eastern, ohio republican congressman jim jordan talks about his book "do what you said you would do" which looks at the investigations conducted by congress and the trump brought trump presidency. he is interviewed by a former virginia republican. watch booktv every sunday on c-span2 and find a schedule on your program guide or watch any time at booktv.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: with us is jamil jaffer the founder of the national security institute at george mason university law school and testified recently on capitol hill about guantanamo bay. welcome back to "washington

journal." the tension -- the prison at guantanamo bay cuba, why was it started and why does it continue in operation? what is it on -- what is its ongoing purpose? guest: it was started right after the war on terror after the attacks of september 11, on the day in which 3000 americans lost their lives to a terrorists attack both in new york, pennsylvania, and washington, d.c. at the pentagon. and the reason guantanamo bay existed is that it was a facility where we brought captured terrorists captured on the battlefield whether in afghanistan or elsewhere, the detainees that we thought were most concerning were brought to guantanamo bay and we had a military facility that we have had on many years that we have on lease from the cuban government. and they were brought there in parts to hold law of war

detention that you hold an enemy until the end of the conflict so they cannot return to the fight. over the course of time, approximately 800 detainees have gone through guantanamo bay. most of them have been moved out, they have either been tried, and convicted and then released, or they have been transferred to other countries as security assurances. only 39 individuals remain at guantanamo bay including the key 9/11 plotters who are currently standing -- preparing to stand trial before a military commission. host: they will stand trial at guantanamo bay, correct? guest: that is the current plan. the idea has been for many years to try these individuals. there have been fits and starts and the question has gone up and down the supreme court twice. the evidence that might be utilized has been debated because of some of the interrogation techniques that were used.

but now, five of the 911 plotters are in the process. it might take and it still might take years for these processes to move forward in part because the death penalty is on the table which takes a lot of particular lawyering and the establishment of the facts for the death penalty if in fact that is there -- that is what they are tried for. host: "the new york times" has done a good job of tracking the detainees. in terms of the timeline of guantanamo, it might be helpful for our viewers to understand, he mentioned that the facility open shortly after 9/11, january 11, 2002. the first 20 detainees arrived on jan -- june 9, two thousand six. the supreme court rejected president bush's format for military commissions and then into thousand nine president obama orders the closure of the detention operations at

guantanamo. within a year, that did not happen. congress thwarts the closure and five men accused of conspiring on september 11 are arraigned in a new k's in 20 12. in january 2017, president trump takes office and reverses that closure order, and here we are, july 19 of this year and the biden administration makes its first transfer of the detainees for the prison. is the goal of the biden administration to closing that detention facility at guantanamo? guest: i think the goal of every president since president bush has been to close guantanamo bay. there are a lot of issues that go back to the early days including the conditions under which prisons -- prisoners were originally brought there. we remember pictures of detainees kneeling blindfolded outdoors. over time we have heard concerns

about treatment, primarily in cia custody, and not in custody of the dod, although there having questions about treatment at guantanamo. people have been concerned for a while and the question becomes what do you do with the detainees that were there now? do you try them, convict them, or hold them or the detainees that you will not have charges because the evidence you have against them was collected on the battlefield you do not have the chain of custody to prove your case, or obtained through interrogation methods that are problematic or a foreign service that you cannot bring into a court? what do you do to those detainees that present a risk? there are a number of detainees, one third who are approved for transfer to foreign countries that we cannot get good security assurances from countries willing to take them, what do you do with them? we are talking about 39 individuals and there might be others as a war on terror continues, and it does continue

and it is the question of what you do about that fact? host: the end of the u.s. presence in afghanistan, the military presence anyway, did that change the calculus? guest: that is a great question. there is an ongoing debate. on one side you might argue that that phase on the war on terrorism is over and as a result, perhaps the detainees captured in afghanistan ought to be released because that part is over. part of the problem is that the war on terror is global. we know that terrorists groups in afghanistan want to attack the united states as a long have including some members of al qaeda core that remain in the area there are new groups that we saw, like isisk, we saw the 13 americans and hundreds of afghans that were killed at the airport just a few months ago as we withdrew. we know that as a global matter,

terrorists groups are returning to afghanistan as they take advantage of the ungoverned spaces opening up of -- under taliban rule and we know that globally that al qaeda and isis continue to conspire to attack the united states at home and americans around the globe. host: you testified on capitol hill before a congressional committee on guantanamo, what did lawmakers want to know? guest: there were a lot of tough questions asked, it was a great hearing. the chairman of the judiciary committee called the hearing and the debate going on was number one, do we do with detainees currently there and how do we get as many out as possible, should you move some of them to the united states to be detained here? if show, what happens to them, what rules apply, where might you hold them, would you put them in regular federal courts? does that solve any of the problems associated with guantanamo bay and on the larger question of what is the nature on the war on terror today?

how big is the threat and how are we can -- and how concerned about some of these detainees being released. host: we are talking about the guantanamo bay detention facility and its future. we welcome your calls and comments. 202-748-8001, republicans. 202-748-8000 democrats. 202-748-8002, independents. the men, and i assume it is mostly men, convicted and guantanamo, have any service time in the united states. are any prisons of the united states housing former detainees? guest: the military for prisoners have very few trials of gone to trial. a lot of folks have pled guilty or have been can take -- convicted and are being held at guantanamo bay, none of them transferred to the united states to serve their sentence. the current plan is that if they

are convicted as of today they would serve their sentences at guantanamo bay or be transferred to a foreign country. there is no current plan to bring them to the united states and part because congress put restrictions on that. i have been down there to visit the facility seven or eight years ago when i was a staff member and i had the chance to visit the facilities. the facilities today are very professional in the sense that they are modeled around prisons in the united states. in indiana and in michigan, the facilities are run like american correctional facilities. that does not change the fact that what happened early on or the way that detainees were housed and treated, the reality is that today detainees live, at least what i saw seven years ago, they are in facilities where some of them are able to watch television in common spaces. if you remember seeing oz, it looks like the prisons in there. host: does the upgrading suggest

a longer-term presence for the detention facility at guantanamo? guest: now over almost coming up on seven or eight years ago, i think the answer is yes, the idea that this would be a long-term facility. they also built a trial facility. they have courtrooms and the like. so, there are facilities at guantanamo bay that suggest a longer-term thing. but since president obama made clear in that first executive order that he issued that he wanted it closed within one year, the goal has been to close guantanamo and president bush even said that. the fact of the matter is that there is a hard question about what to do. if you bring detainees here, do they have rights. if they are not convicted do you release them to, do they put them in -- in immigration detention and how long do you hold them before being released into the united states? these are difficult questions

that the government is grappling with and today congress has made clear that their view is that guantanamo ought to remain open and some detainees should remain there until they can be disposed of, transferred, or release from custody. host: when a prisoner is sent to another country, what is that process like? how do we ensure that that prisoner is secure there and will not be a further threat, and likewise that the treatment in that country is in line with u.s. human rights standards and prison standards in u.s.? guest: we have to work with the foreign countries to understand their facilities, understand their capabilities and willingness to detain these individuals. we will not transfer any individuals to a country where is a significant chance where they will be tortured, so we will not transfer for example. we had a number of uighur

detainees who were mistakenly put at guantanamo bay. when we realize that we transferred them to a less secure facility, so they were still held at guantanamo but they were in a better setting but we could not transfer them to china because, as we know, china detains one million muslim uighurs and these people would have been submitted to torture. we also -- we ultimately did transfer them to other countries, but for the detainees right now, you want rhea stork -- reasserting says and over the entire course of guantanamo bay if you look at these 729 samad people that have been -- some odd people have been transferred , 220 nine have returned to the fight or suspected of returning to the fight. this is about over one third of the detainees of guantanamo who have been released or transferred even under security assurances. that is obviously a concerned --

a concern if 230 people are returning to the fight. host: jamil jaffer, a graduate of the chicago school of law and also former chief counsel with the senate foreign relations committee. let us get to your calls. john in hampton, virginia. good morning, democrats line. caller: i am retired military and i think guantanamo bay should remain open due to the fact that we do not know what next conflict or terrorist might come towards us and once they are captured we want to keep them in a very secure prison system. i know there is maximum-security in colorado where a lot of the -- i believe the unabomber went there and some other guys, and they are in that prison in colorado, but i would hope that the united states would keep that facility open. thank you. guest: john raises an important

point, we have facilities designed to house worst of the worst. he mentioned the administrative maximum facility in colorado known as super max. we have a number of terrorist suspects there as well as robert hansen, the spy for the russians who was in the fbi. a number of other folks, richard reid, the shoe bomber in this maximum facility. the conditions at max are actually significantly tougher than most detainees at guantanamo bay go through in the sense that they are in their cell 23 hours out of the day, they have an hour of rec time alone. i visited that seven -- that facility in 2007. a prison is a tough place to go. the reason why we cannot bring these detainees to florence or the facility in indiana or illinois that is particularly tough and holds him in close custody and there is a memory limited chance of -- very little

chance of escape, we know that in guantanamo bay they have a limited right to habeas corpus and right to review their detention. beyond that they do not have the traditional rights that americans would get in federal court. the question becomes we want to afford the detainees those rights. if we do, or if we don't, what might bring them to the united states give them the full cannot believe rights? what about the fourth american -- amendments, to bring the evidence used against them in certain cases. we were captured on the battlefield, the evidence has not gotten through chain of custody and what they were no search warrants. what about the right to confront witnesses against you and a variety of rights that you might think will not apply and the congress has says do not apply to the military commissions act and might bringing them here might giving them rights. and that is a question that congress and the executive branch and the lawyers are grappling with. host: if you could explain how

does a military commission differ from a regular trial? guest: a military commission is a body made up of military officers. the jury is officers in the military. it does not have your traditional appeal to a federal court of appeals or the u.s. supreme court. you appeal to a military commander and the convening authority of the tribunal. you have limited appeal rights, you have limited right to trial in terms of the type of evidence that it has brought in. hearsay is admissible. that would not normally be admissible in federal court, you do not need the traditional chain of custody. there is a variety of procedures and policies which have been reviewed by congress and debated in the courts, all of the detainees that had the right to have their detention challenged in the u.s. federal court system. and through the habeas proceedings and many of them have. there are certain protections

that detainees have under our law the constitution of the united states. these are foreign nationals captured overseas on the battlefield during a time of war but we traditionally never have given them the right to habeas corpus such detainees. the supreme court decided they have that right. would we give them the full set of rights that apply to an american in their courts if we bring them to the united states? host: lee and grant gorge, new york, republican line. caller: can you hear me? host: yes. caller: it is my understanding that president biden wants to close guantanamo bay because it is too expensive. i think it is a great security risk, even if all the prisoners were removed it is only 90 miles from the u.s. border, and i feel that china, who has been enticing other countries with infrastructure and so forth can easily move in there. and also, it should be a

military commission that is in charge of prosecuting, thank you so much. host:'s expense one of the real concerns over at guantanamo? guest: it is a huge debate. senator dick durbin is very concerned about the expense at guantanamo bay and it is an order of multiple higher than what it would cost. many multiples higher of what would cause to detain an individual in the united states even in our most secure facility at the administrative maximum in florence, colorado. we are expended a tremendous amount more per detainee but it turns on this question of guantanamo is not a remote island, but a remote outpost and it is hard to get to. everything has to be brought in by vote -- by boat. you cannot flyover, typically you have to go around to deliver supplies. and so there is a huge cost to run this facility so the

question becomes if we bring them here how does this change the legal landscape for the united states in terms of prosecution and the detainees and how does it change the situation here. if you recall president obama made clear as part of guantanamo bay that he intended to bring the 9/11 plotters to new york and try them in a federal court in new york and what was interesting is that he did not have supports for the deaf support from the democratic or republican party especially senators from new york to do that because of security concerns bringing guantanamo bay detainees and that would heighten the security threat, not a people escaping about the security threat to new york or another part of the country if they were brought here. i should say that senator durbin , the senator from illinois has made clear that he would be fine with bringing detainees to illinois and housing them in a facility in illinois. host: up next on the independent line from northern virginia, go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my

call. i just noticed that earlier he was talking about the lease on guantanamo bay that we arranged with cuba and you referred to it as a long term lease. it is actually a permanent lease which the united states basically forced on cuba following the spanish-american war. we pay the cuban government something like $4000 a year for this massive property, which the cuban government does not accept the check from. the leases of dubious legal status. that is my comment. guest: is an important point that bob raises. the reason i said long term i was trying to recall if it was a permanent or 99 year lease. bob is right. it is a very long-term lease, and it is at a very reduced or

nearly zero cost. and it is debatable. the cubans believe they should have that facility back. the u.s. believes that regardless of how we got there, it is ours to keep as long as we want. and, there is not -- it is not like there is an actual conflict going on. the cubans know that we have the facility and know we are detaining people and they know that the military flights come in. there is not been any efforts to interdict the flights but we have an awkward situation that bob points out as a result that as we go to visit guantanamo, or when i went seven years ago you could not fly directly over cuba you had to go around cuban airspace to get in, and then you land on one side of this bay and cross the bay to get to where the facilities are and you take these small sort of boats. and so, bob is right that the nature and lease on the facility

lead to odd results. host: what branch of the military is in charge of overseeing guantanamo? the military and what security agencies? guest: it is a naval station. so it is a navy facility. it sits on the bay there, but obviously there is a tremendous number of other agencies there now including various military and intelligence components, and they rotate out the guard force, and it is interesting. you think about the guantanamo facilities and you look at how the detainees are, and where they are today, and again, not to make any excuses for the challenges that we faced early on, but the facilities are very -- fairly professional today and you look at the food for the detainees, quality food, haul all -- halal meals, and our

soldiers are eating mre's and it is an interesting dichotomy when you arrive. i was there a few years back, and the public story about the history of guantanamo and the like. the reality of guantanamo, nobody is saying it is perfect, ideal, or good. it is, in a lot of ways as we are talking about the ongoing war on terror, it might be one of the only options that we have that we can utilize given the concerns we have about returning to the fight and bringing detainees to united states given the unclear legal landscape. host: brian in washington, d.c., independent line. caller: good morning. you mentioned the battlefields, and i am saying at first of all, they all should be released and, it was an illegal war, there was no declaration of war in afghanistan if this is where

these people originally came from. and i would shape -- say that american should be chilled as to the united states using overseas prisons, who where they are held and tortured. the united states -- if the former president released 5000 prisoners over in afghanistan, which he did as part of the negotiation when they left afghanistan, then there is no reason to hold these people. this is a human rights violation, and the united states is totally wrong. it seems that someone, maybe an attorney like yourself, would see that, that you do not have the right to hold people indefinitely when there has been no legal battle. everything done over in

afghanistan was done without the approval of the american people. there had been no formal declaration. there is no legality to hold those people. guest: so, brian raises really important questions about the authority for this war on terrorism that we undertook in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the human rights situation in treatment of detainees. what is talk one by one. speaking of legal authority brian raises the point that we did not declare war in a formal sense after 9/11 and he is right. he probably knows that we have not declared war since 1945. the united states has been in many conflicts, international conflicts, internationally recognized conflicts since 1945 but we have not formally declared war. what we have done in lieu of declaring war since 1945 is that congress engages in passing

things called authorizations for the use of military force. so, for example in both persian gulf war one and two, congress authorized use of military force by bipartisan majorities in both houses and we saw when it came to 9/11, nine days after 9/11, congress by vast majorities in both houses signed by the president into law authorized use of military force to respond to the terrorists attacks and to hold accountable those plan to harbor those associated with terrorists attacks of 9/11. we have had bipartisan consensus , congress and the american people's representatives weighing in together. to be fair to brian, he is right that for 20 years that authorization has remained in place and has not changed. there is a debate about if we ought to modify the authorization or to repeal it. so, we have had a lot of wars in

1945, and i think the general consensus in the united states amongst the courts and legislature, and the president is that authorized nation -- authorization for use of military force passed into law is sufficient to identify a war condition and military conflict and support -- sufficient as the supreme court said and authority to detain individuals in the courts. to his point about how long does that conflict go on, can it go on forever and can you detain people during a conflict that might never end? that is a great question and one that we grapple with. the reality is that we do not have to look at whether we think a war is ongoing, our enemy told us repeatedly that this war continues. they will continue to plot and conduct attacks. on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a few months ago, the leader of al qaeda made it clear that he

wants al qaeda operatives to attack members of the united states around the globe. members of isis made it clear that they want to attack americans around the globe and at home. the last thing i will say and then let you get to more callers, he raises an important point about human rights and the idea that guantanamo bay is a good log overseas or we are detaining this veg -- these individuals without authority and under poor conditions. the reality is that we did hold some of the prisoners at guantanamo bay and cia sites around the globe. the president declassified that information, and we engaged in aggressive enhancement interrogation techniques some of which may have crossed the line. there is a debate about if people say this was torture or not. the department of justice said that it could be authorized, but there is a debate going on. the reality today at guantanamo bay is that it is professionally run by the military.

there are not the type of techniques that were previously used being utilize at guantanamo bay. the reality of guantanamo bay today, i think it is very different and even the early days and certainly the other programs in the u.s. government in the course of the war on terror. host: roseann, san diego. good morning. caller: i have a couple of issues i would like to talk about. one is my understanding was that most of these detainees are held in facilities like the one in florence, colorado, super max where they get 23 hours of isolation and one i aware of outside activity. and the information you say is seven years old and that is not exactly current so we do not really know about -- what it is like today. they are not there because they were on a battlefield and you

know that as well as anyone else. they were either kidnapped, or, -- from their homes, or they were sold by unethical people to america to be captured. to say that they were all on the battlefield is a play on words because the whole world is not a battlefield. i just wonder if america wants to actually favor indefinite detention without charge, trial, or conviction. are we going to be that kind of a country that is going to do that? and, the war is over. biden brought all the people back. this log and get mo -- gulag and gitmo was established for the afghan people. it was not for afghans, they are from all over the world. host: a couple of points from our caller in california. maybe focus on her allegation of

prisoners who have been sold and people who have written about this, and people who were not necessarily terrorists, but had been turned in. were there instances of that happening, or is that largely not true? guest: she makes an important point, there were individuals that we brought to guantanamo bay and held in other places during the course of this 20 year long conflict that is ongoing in my view. you know, that were given to us or we identified through intelligence sources, some of who we paid. of course we pay our sources all the time to get information. some of those people were likely -- like the architect of the cold bombing and the architect of the 9/11 attacks. we capture those folks not necessarily on a traditional battlefield, roseann is right to say not everyone was captured of a traditional battlefield.

a lot of people were taken out of safe house is. if you remember that famous picture of him looking disheveled and a t-shirt or a vast after we captured him at a house in pakistan. osama bin laden himself was found in a facility in pakistan. no doubt that not everyone was identified or caught on a battlefield during a hot conflict. and yes, some individuals were found through information that might have been paid for but that does not change the fact of who these individuals are and whether they pose a risk in this ongoing conflict. and, to her point about was this prison for the afghan people? we had facilities in afghanistan for a lot of the detainees at bagram, which i had a chance to visit and where after once during the agreement with the taliban a number of detainees were released, that is correct. in a number of people were released after the taliban took over and as i swept across afghanistan freeing hundreds of

terrorists and terror detainees. these 39, again, we transferred out over 700 individuals. the people that rosanna is talking about have largely been transferred out and now these 39 last remaining individuals, some are clear for transfer but the majority of whom are hard-core terrorists and the question is should they be released on a global battlefield because the reality is that al qaeda and isis operate outside of afghanistan and from those places they are plotting against the united states, should we release them with a chance that they returned to the fight, that is a hard question. we should also talk about what impact can one detainee have? does it matter if one returns to the fight. in my view there are examples where it can make a huge difference. host: some of the reporting on the hearing you are a part of, following the judiciary committee hearing in the senate. "afghanistan complicates new

push to close guantanamo, releasing the detainees to another country means that some could later launch attacks against the united states, the senate analyst told." mike in crescent city, florida. independent line. caller: it was 1966, i was part of the marines in guantanamo. it was -- you said it was hard to get supplies and we never had supplies. if these peoples are terrorists and guilty, why haven't we brought to -- brought them to trial. why are we spending all that money down there? guest: it is a great question. one of the challenges when you have detainees that are captured during the course of a conflict whether it is this war on terrorism or world war two or the persian gulf war is that

when you capture somebody whether it is on a hot battlefield and -- or in safehouses, you are not going through the normal process of bagging and tagging evidence that would stand up in a federal court. you are not in that chain of custody. you cannot get a warrant for overseas. and some of the information you have might come from intelligence sources and methods cannot be -- that cannot be revealed. there are procedures for bringing that kind of evidence into federal courts and a lot of people have argued that we should bring some of the detainees for whom we have charges into federal court and there are reasons why, as i talked about the legality and the rights that they would get that would make it hard to do that and to convict them. what do you do if they are exonerated? do you release them into immigration detention and how long can you hold them there?

you have to eventually release them. these are hard questions that arise and you take them out of guantanamo bay and when you take them out of the military commission system and that is part of the reason. to both the caller's and roseann's point earlier, do we want to be the kind of country that holds people without charges, as a general matter and it is harder because this is a long-term conflict that may go on for all of our lifetimes as long as the terrorists come after us and believes there is a war condition with us, traditionally it has always been understood that when you are in a conflict, in a war that you can hold the enemy until the end of the conflict at which point you are supposed to return them to the other side as part of an armistice. we do not have an armistice with al qaeda or isis. they made clear that they do not want one. the question becomes what do we do with people who might return to the fight. it is not beneficial to our

security to do that and the conflict continues. that is a hard question that we are all grappling with and both the caller and rose and made important points. host: prior to the u.s. leaving, did we transfer back to afghanistan any prisoners from guantanamo? guest: it is interesting, congress put in place restrictions on transfer without security assurances and notifying congress. in the obama administration as part of the deal to get one of our soldiers who had gone awol back from taliban associated forces, we actually traded five senior taliban detainees and what the government accountability office says was a violation without a notification of town -- of congress. he transferred those detainees and they are now in senior leadership positions, some of them are, within the taliban government. and so, it is a challenging

situation. at least some of them have been transferred back to afghanistan and our government leaders in the new government post as we consider withdraws from the country. host: republican line, los angeles. this is susan. good morning. are you there? ok, we will go to dave in oakland, michigan, also on the republican line. go ahead. caller: good morning, i wanted to touch base with the reason we are at guantanamo, i believe it is because we have irreconcilable's that we have taken off the battlefield. that is basically what it is and these guys are in for the long haul, obama let some of these guys out on a trade, and let us face it, one man's terrorists is another man's freedom fighter. when bush announced the global opposition against terror, that

is when we declared war. the nw always on the march. guest: dave makes a point on the nature of the war on terrorism and he has right to say that not only did president bush announce that we were going to fight this war wherever it took us, congress by huge majority authorized the president to conduct this conflict. that revolution -- resolution remains in place. there are debates on whether it should be appealed or modified it remains in place and congress can take action if he chooses to do so to modify or appeal that authorization and in this idea of irreconcilable's, the fact of the matter is that of these 39 detainees, putting aside the one third authorized for transfer, the remaining two thirds, these represent some of the most significant terrorists that we have captured on the

battlefield. again, the planner and designer of the 9/11 attacks, the planner and designer of the attack of the uss cole that killed so many sailors. these are not sort of your average bear al qaeda operatives, they are not just your facilitators, although some of them are core facilitators. these are the hardest core terrorists out there, that even though they might've cooperated over time are likely to return to the fight if they choose to do so. remember the man subject to it difficult enhanced interrogation techniques handle is held onto the question on whether the person who let us to osama bin laden, he lied to us about the courier and said he is not important and has not been in the game for a long time. he is not associated with bin laden, and of course he was a guy who when we followed him

identified for us the location that led us to identifying and killing osama bin laden under president obama's time in office. host: the first commandant of gitmo was major michael leonard. i wanted to play some of what he had to say and get your response to what he had to say. [video clip] >> the vast majority of the 780 men sent to guantanamo never should have been there. among the 39 prisoners who remain there are some who need to pay the price for their crimes. what we have now is not just days. there is no justice for the detainees, but more important for the relatives of the ones who died in 911 and those who deserve closure and not getting it. who gains by keeping guantanamo open? not america. those who harm us point to the existence of wonton at -- one, no -- guantanamo is proof.

they do not want us to close guantanamo. some of you might be thinking my constituents don't ever ask me about guantanamo and you would be correct. most of america has forgotten about guantanamo. hear me when i tell you that our enemies have not. closing guantanamo responsibly restores the reputation of america, ensures accountability for those who committed crimes against us and provides closure for the families of those they have harmed. [end video clip] host: a very strong view on closing guantanamo, what were your thoughts on the testimony? guest: he is to be thanked for his service, many decades of service, and he clearly has a very strong perspective of this. guantanamo has and does continue to be used as a recruiting tool for our enemies. yes the 9/11 families have not gotten the justice that they rightly deserve having the 9/11

plotters convicted and held for their crime and punished for their crimes. i mean, i testified right next to one of the 9/11 family members who feels strongly at this point, and this -- and this was her view early on, but 20 years on justice demands that these individuals be convicted, whether that involves a guilty plea or whatever it takes, she is willing to take the death penalty off the table and have the prosecutors agree on a guilty plea and have them held on life or whatever it might be inappropriate facilities and she would be comfortable being brought here, but her view, and if you've a lot of the families is that we want justice, and it must be done not by just them being detained or killed on the battlefield as other terrorists have been, but actually incarcerated under our laws after conviction and some manner of proceeding whether through guilty or otherwise.

these are important points, and you cannot discount them and the importance of giving our 9/11 families who lost so much, more than the rest as it was to dachshund as harmful as it was to the rest of the nation and they feel that they deserve finality and closure and the question becomes what is the best way to achieve that and how do you hold them in a way that keeps a country safe and hold some long-term and prevents another attack like that from ever happening again in this country are 3000 people lose their lives in just a few moments with terrorists using planes as weapons? host: he is the founder of the national security institute at george mason university law school, thank you for joining us this morning. still ahead on the program, we will be joined by insider deputy bureau chief dave leventhal on his recent report of the members of congress and their financial

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chief with insider and here to talk about his investigation and reporting on the finances of members of congress. "conflicted congress, key findings from insider's five-month investigation into federal lawmakers' personal finances." thank you for joining us. what prompted your investigation? guest: really, the 22nd history is going back about 10 years when congress passed a law called the stock act, this was a very bipartisan law passed by barack obama, passed by congress. it was supposed to be a bulwark against conflicts of interest. it was supposed to be a defense against corruption in congress when it came to the personal finances of lawmakers on capitol hill and throughout the

government writ large. 10 years on we wanted to do an exploration of whether the law was working. there was lots of anecdotal evidence in applications that it was not for example in 2020, we saw the cases of several lawmakers, former senator kelly loeffler, richard byrd, dianne feinstein who got crosswise with this law, whose stock trades were very much called into question, and in our reporting in insider, epic sought -- epic -- episodically, we found numerous examples of lawmakers who seem to be at best operating with indifference towards this law. they were not for example disclosing their stock trades as they had to be at this stock act, in a timely fashion, so instead of having to disclose them or instead of disclosing them within a rapid period of time, they are weeks or months in some extreme cases, years

later. we decided this summer to take a very deep dive into all of the different facets of this issue and that is how conflicted congress came into fruition. host: typically who is responsible for making the reporting known or is that up to the individual member to have their accountant or financial advisor make that report known? guest: the buck stops with the member him or herself, the law does not say anything about staffers or financial advisors or brokers or family members ultimately it is the responsibility of the house member or senator to make sure that these reports are filed. the reality is that many of them as they make their financial trades, as they buy and sell stock or other types of assets they have somebody either involved with the process, or doing that on their behalf, but when we reached out to many, literally hundreds of members of

congress to discuss this issue, we got a whole variety of answers as to why ultimately they were not complying with the law or had trouble. a lot of it was yes, it is my stockbroker or financial advisor's fault, and some were pleading ignorant saying that we did not know the rules or understand them and was not aware of it. which i suppose is all fine and well, but there might be some viewers saying, yes. if i am speeding and i said i was not aware of the speed limit i did not know i was going 45 in a 30, that is not exactly going to wash when it comes to paying the ticket. ultimately, we found that the stock act is inconsistently followed. the penalties that exist for violating it in one form or fashion are very inconsistent -- inconsistently applied and in some cases not at all. in essence we have a situation where congress is making its own rules for itself.

it would be like having a hockey game where the teams had no referees and had to call their own penalties. you can imagine how that situation would ultimately transpire. say for very extreme cases where you might have something that is tantamount to rank criminality, at least a civil enforcement of the act has left a great deal to be desired based on the reporting we have done. host: as you pointed out it was signed by president obama in 2012. it outlaws insider trading by members of congress and staff, and mandates increased levels of financial transparency and reporting. ironically, does that make it easier for you as a reporter for through the freedom of information act anyone else to find that information on stock trades? guest: theoretically, and this information is supposed to be available, clear, and free to the public. u.s. house and u.s. senate both

have online databases where you can go and access this information. there is a caveat, and that is a couple of things. number one some of the disclosures that we found are very difficult to make heads or tails of. they are not consistent, some are handwritten. we have had a few that looks like chicken scratch and it is very difficult to know what they necessarily say. then you have the problem of if these disclosures are being made late or if they are not being made at all, that flies in the face of the notion of transparency. finally, and we have a very detailed, and i would say rollicking first-person story by three of my colleagues who went on this journey of several months up on capitol hill where for senior-level staffers in congress, this information is likewise supposed to be public. these are supposed to be public

records about the financial trades that senior-level staffers are making, for example, general councils, chiefs of staff, but the reality of the situation is you quite literally have to go to two offices on capitol hill which sometimes are open, sometimes are not. you have to go to computer terminals that may or may not be working on any given day, and access the records that way. they are not downloadable, they are very difficult to search, and as a result if you want to get a comprehensive look at what top aides and top-level staffers to members of congress are doing on this is an incredibly laborious process. we did it anyway, it took hundreds of hours to do it comprehensively, and that really speaks to the bottom line of how difficult it is to access. i can only imagine someone in california, texas, or florida once to get access to the -- wants to get access to these records. if you want to do it immediately, you have to go to

capitol hill. host: we are talking about financial conflicts of interest among members and senior staff. the reporting of insider on this,1 for republic -- 202-748-8000 for republicans. free democrats, 202-748-8001. for independents and others is 202-748-8002. you have done quite the service at this graphically robust report at businessinsider.com. "we rated every member on the financial -- they get a green rating, yellow means caution and their actions are borderline. red means danger that a member has multiple issues that could oppose -- expose them to ethical problems. typically among the red, what was the biggest problem? guest: multiple problems. to give you a sense of scope, we

have so far found 49 members of congress who to one extent or another have violated the act, where we have found them doing so here in this calendar year. likewise we found 182 senior-level staffers who have violated the disclosure provisions of the stock act. that information coupled with a variety of other different metrics, you can read the full methodology of the report contributed to the ultimate ranking whether it is green, yellow, or red. for the red, people who fell into the red there is a lucky number 13 of them who fall into the red category. often times it is because the member him or herself had a stock act violation. at least one member if not multiple have had stock act violations. there might be issues with the legibility of their disclosures, white be issues with them refusing to comment publicly on whether they paid a fine.

a couple with other information. i should note that one of the factors that we looked at was whether members of congress had created a qualified blind trust, and effectively that is a vehicle that they can put their personal financial interest in. it is banded -- managed by a trustee and approved by the senate or house ethics committee. as a result, it is something that congress deems to be the kind of highest and best vehicle for avoiding and preventing conflicts of interest where the member him or herself literally has no contact with his or her own money, they do not control it, they cannot tell the trustee what to do. they have it even more than at arms length. we only found examples of one dozen members of congress who have gone through the official formal process of creating a blind trust of this sort and so, you can take that for what it is, it speaks for itself.

it is a time-consuming process and expensive but most numbers have not decided to go that path. host: looking at the report the viewers can see a visual look at the house and senate floor and members rated in the three ways and they can also search by member or by state, and just randomly picking among the 14 that you have the -- 14 that you have listed inrepresentative cr. this member of congress ratings is computed from six metrics. jacobs of new york, 12 light disclosures. violated the stock act 12 times. $356,000. the member refused to comment or didn't respond when asked about paying applicable fines. typically what are the fines and the civil penalties? >> congress has set it up in a way where the fines are animal. -- minimal.

some number into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of the value of the different trades that are being made. when i say trades, i mean stocks like anyone could trade. it might be very esoteric stocks that people might not know about. not only do some of them in terms of the value into the six figures but in a few cases if don to the seven or eight figures. we are not talking necessarily about small change here. we did find some cases worth hundreds of dollars. host: question for you, dave

levinthal. actions the predate the law. >> we talked about the history of this going back to the years that predated it. there was in a free-for-all going on where the notion of insider trading in congress. that is acting financially on information that they would be privy to as a member of congress. that was happening in a notable way prior to the stock act being passed in the stock act was in a way of response to that type of activity. and prevent stuff like that from happening again. host: in oklahoma, republican line. you are on. go ahead.

>> the problem will never get fixed until it gets turned around, the employees demand that they be able to give themselves pay raises even if their performance is bad. there's no reviews of that performance. they demand perks with no accountability. they act like they are royalty and those employees are the politicians. the citizens should demand performance transparency, term limits. all politicians with harsh punishments because how do politicians wind up being multimillionaires. the citizens are not the servants, but we are talked down to by pelosi and a lot of them

like we are their servants. host: dave levinthal. >> if you read the first amendment along with the freedom of speech and religion as the right to assemble. the freedom to petition your government for a redress of grievances. so on this issue if you want to make your concerns known to your lawmaker, everyone in america fundamentally has that right. we have gotten the question in response to readers who have asked, republicans must be doing this more than democrats or democrats must be doing this more than republicans. and i know that we like in this country so often to put things in a red bucket lou bucket. left versus right. conservative versus liberal. based on reporting, this is a truly unabashedly bipartisan phenomenon.

there are multiple examples of democrats engaging in the type of activity that we report on. alterable republicans. nobody seems to really want to address the core foundational issue which is is this law working. our members of congress abiding by it. and our staffers abiding by it as well. so there's a number of different elements that factor into the question is congress living up to the rules of the road that it created for itself and the answer in many cases appears to be they are not. host: is there any oversight on it? >> most notably congress itself. that's where the action really takes place. 95% of the enforcement of the stock act and the application of the stock act to members of

congress is happening internally. it's a bad parallel but i will use it anyway. it is like the internal investigation department and a police force where there is internal action taking place to determine whether the officers in a police force are doing the right thing. congress has the ethics committee also serve an important function. there's not a great deal of transparency into the process and we have asked dozens and dozens of people probably hundreds of questions for the past year about the process of who is responsible and very few people want to talk or provide any real information about it.

we filed a freedom of information act to determine if members of congress were saving checks to pay their fines. the law stipulates that you have to pay a fine to the u.s. treasury. they came back with no responsive records. it didn't provide us and the public after that and ability to have a window into whether lawmakers are actually doing with the losses they need to do. host: todd on the independent line. caller: you called it a bipartisan phenomenon. i would like to stop eating politically correct and call it like it really is. it's called greed. these guys get in office and a

couple years later they are multimillionaires. the people are getting tired of this. i'm on social security. i use the v.a. for all my medical needs and i'm really angry. and people are getting angry. that is the problem. the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. a fraction of the top 1% are the ones paying these guys off. the only time in history when there's ever been any real change in society has come to violent revolution. i would like to see some guys from rt america on this show like jesse ventura or rick sanchez. and start hearing the truth about what's really going on. host: some specifics on the findings in terms of the

conflicts that members have. have you found stocks related to the work they do on capitol hill including obviously the covid pandemic. what do you find? >> i should note when the stock act was first passed there was originally language in that bill that would have banned members of congress from making individual stock trades so they couldn't trade in the company's stock. many of these companies spend millions every year to lobby the federal government including members of congress and staff and also to have hundreds of contracts at stake because of the decision congress has been making. that is the big concern that was

being addressed by the stock act. flash forward 10 years and we found evidence of 75 members of congress at least in 2020 or buying, selling or holding stock in highly covid-19 pandemic centric sensitive stocks like moderna, pfizer and johnson & johnson. also to other companies that make and sell and trade in ppe. protective equipment masks and also do covid tests as well. there was definitely a time when members of congress were making very critical decisions that affected the entire nation on all sorts of matters related to the covid-19 pandemic. they had a personal financial stake in the companies who are going to be wildly affected by

those decisions being made. likewise we oftentimes hear members of congress talk about the media, social media, facebook. facebook i bring up by name because we found at least 30 members of congress who themselves by and settle facebook stock and some of them are very outspoken. the top official of congress as testified mark zuckerberg four. members of congress are investing in that as well. us -- nancy pelosi was speaking out against facebook, on the same day her husband was executing stock options to buy a huge number of sales and facebook. you can decide whether you think

that matters are not that was one example among many of when we found members of congress who were trading in stocks at a time where they also had action going on with the companies that they were personally invested in host: elizabeth tweets, we the american people are tired of financing a government to be used as an insider trading factory. greed and religion are destroying america. the stock act is a joke. senator booker probably laughed at it when he read it. democrat line. good morning. caller: it's just a shame. i'm 86 years old. i will not vote again for a croak. it's not only in federal, it's down in the state and local. just like our great speaker of the house in ohio took $60

million to pass a law to protect the energy companies. that got overturned and now we are paying for that. it's just a shame. i lost my home back in 2002 to the predatory lenders. i won't mention the guys name. we went to court and everything. i just called him the dinger. he's no longer got his mortgage business in the united states. he got rich by selling it out to hsbc. after they bought it out, they found out what a scam company this guy was operating. now they pulled out the united states. when you've got crooked politicians what to expect i will never vote again in my life. guest: the color spoke to the

state level and i think it's an important point that our project focuses on congress as the name suggests. there are for free -- there are 50 sets of rules at the state level as it applies to financial conflict of interests of lawmakers. in essence you have 50 different systems to deal with the same issue state estate. there's a whole lot of action in state houses. the same could be said at the municipal or county level. tons of elected officials all across the country who operate at those levels who have various financial interests that may be of great interest to their

constituents. and can also tell you anecdotally that the system is very different. that is something local officials are dealing with that local news outlets are -- for their own localities and citizens need to be aware that this is also a thing at their own local level. host: it's worth pointing out the raw numbers. the total numbers in terms of compliance with the stock act. 200 14 solid, 50 are borderline in compliance and five in danger. 63 borderline compliance and eight in the danger rating

according to insider and one solid, one borderline. to those numbers surprising you at all? guest: they didn't surprise because in our reporting leading up to the project we had seen how both republicans and democrats were in one way or another finding themselves in a bit of hot water in this regard so the numbers are not 50-50 right in the middle. they are pretty close. it's definitely ballpark. no one is completely green and the other side completely red. there is an almost even mixture of partisan considerations when it comes to potential conflicts and financial transparency in the metrics that we measure as part of the index and the rating system.

host: we will visually show you some of the ratings of the members of kentucky. we'll go to rick on the independent line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i was wondering if you would have any information on people in and connected to the white house and the democrats and the house and senate. any information on their financial interest in the solar panel and windmill industries. thank you very much. host: one of our stories looks at a very related issue, democrats very highly rated. very highly voted members of congress.

we found members holding stocks for oil companies. in addition to power companies that have an energy portfolio highly biased towards fossil fuels. there also plenty of members of congress who do trade in green energy and wind and solar and other types of companies. environmental issues are very much part of this and environmental or energy stocks oil stocks are very popular among members of congress. we have another story that shows

the most popular investments among members of congress. we ranked the top 50, collected all the information, created our searchable database. but in the meantime we have an article that shows what members of congress like to invest in. that kind of goes along with yet another story we wrote that looks at the most wealthy members of congress. the provable amount that we can say overall they are worth based on their own disclosures. there very wealthy members of congress with myriad financial interest and hundreds of different stock holding. host: should a member of congress be making stock trades directly?

or should that be through a blind trust? >> the stock act is neutral on that. it is legal for them to do it. there is no prohibition at this moment for a member of congress trading in individual stocks. there no law that says you have to put all of your financial assets in a blind trust. there is no law that says you have to simply stick to mutual funds or government bonds or something that would be safer and more conservative from a financial standpoint. there is a bill in congress that seeks to ban members of congress from engaging in individual stock trades with the goal of that legislation being to protect and defend against conflicts of interest. that was introduced earlier this

year and obviously it's now december. where has that gone? the bill has gone nowhere and doesn't appear to be in any situation where it's going to be taken up by congress soon. as it languishes in committee it will be curious as to whether there will be any movement on that particular bill supported by a handful of members of congress but definitely not at this juncture and overwhelming number of members of congress. host: republican caller. robert and kentucky. go ahead. >> hello. that's pretty well common sense. congress is not going to be passing laws against themselves.

insider trading is against the law. the system has failed the people of this country big time. in my opinion but not independent from the congress and the president and all the political situations. even the local law enforcement. our justice system should be independent from elected officials. guest: the justice department could get involved. if the justice department found evidence that somebody was a member of congress or congressional staffer was doing something that violated criminal law in regards to any of the aspects that we have been talking about this hour. they could investigate. have they done that?

guest: not really. we brought up richard burr earlier. he was investigated. that does lead to one other thing which is a dark course issue. a colleague at has a great article about today, whether the sec will get involved because they continue to look into senator burr from his activities taking place in 2020 even though the justice department has effectively dropped its investigation into it. so we explore whether the sec is going to become a bit more aggressive perhaps in looking at these issues and holding members of congress feet to the fire so to speak. caller: in new jersey. democrat line. caller: can you hear me? host: a little noisy in the

background. caller: i am at the gym. i couldn't keep silent today. i won't add to the legions who expressed their either at members of congress. for your guests, could you offer some practical routes of redress. i know everybody is mad. i want to maybe get the word out about some ways we might be able to actually affect change. have you been invited on any of the mainstream news channels? and then cut that gentleman off after he mentioned already. i don't like that the most cogent news in our country.

host: dave levinthal if you want to respond. >> people far and wide,. the color made another point. i'm blanking on that point. host: what can the public to based on the findings you have -- findings you have reported on? guest: you can contract -- contact a member of congress directly. you can go to a down-home meeting. if you are in washington, d.c. you can obviously come to government offices and even capitol hill itself. there are opportunities for direct action.

thousands of special interest groups many of them directly lobbying the federal government and membership organizations. we talked about environmental groups to the nra to other types of organizations are other types of issues. those are very well-funded moneyed interests. social media very much in play as well when it comes to the ability to communicate to lawmakers or otherwise make your voice heard in the political process. host: part of that is reporting on an article meet the 25 members of congress. craig is next in garner north carolina.

mcgrath line. >> how are you doing dave? host: i'm doing well. caller: i wanted to say to everybody watching this it's been a long time and it's a really good show. i know people get really emotional when they call. like the gentleman from the gym a while ago. i just want to say that i appreciate the good work that you are doing looking at ethics and things like that i just want everybody to note there is one name and that's jesus christ. during this holiday season. host: thanks for the good wishes. independent line. caller: i'm calling about a

topic i want to raise this morning one installation. when the republican was in the white house. go from 10,000 down to 100. gas prices hitting the roof. there was no talking about installation. we print like 10 trillion to fight the war. i want the democrat to go to the congressional budget to find out why this is. why are we talking about inflation now. there was no talk of inflation.

host: cheryl in manteca california. democrat line. >> i have more of a comment based upon what you just disclosed to us. from the lens that i sit and watch this, it's very disturbing and it's disturbing because the people. we are fighting against ourselves as we actually are getting this information about what is going on on both sides. i think the american people have to get to a point they understand we are not each other's enemy. what we are out fighting is bright and wrong. i don't care whether you

democrat, republican or independent. what is wrong is that we defend what is wrong instead of fighting against it together. host: dave levinthal, any closing comments? guest: new lawmaker has trade individual stocks. maker has to conduct their personal finances in any particular way at least as the law is written and stated right now. it's a very fair question that we honestly have been asking. we have put it on the page where we pose a question. do you trade individual stocks or not. we list whether they do or whether they don't. this is something where if they

choose to abstain. you can ask your member of congress why they trade stocks and whether they will continue to do so in the future. host: washington bureau chief for insider. key findings from insiders five month investigation into federal lawmakers personal finances. thank so much for being with us. guest: thanks for having me. host: we will have open forum. we will let you: with your thoughts on major public policy issues. for republicans call (202) 748-8001, democrats (202) 748-8000 and independents (202) 748-8002. if you want to talk about mark

meadows or the growing omicron virus, though ahead and start dialing. >> sunday on q&a, joshua prager talks about the complicated life and times of jane roe, the woman behind the case. and the impact her actions had. >> her life is such a mirror and a window into this whole thing of abortion in america. she never had an abortion.

she actually is a fascinating sort of testimony to the cost of adoption. she struggled emotionally with what it meant to have to relinquish her three children to adoption. host: you can listen to q&a and all of our podcasts on the new c-span now cap. >> washington journal continues. host: it is open forum here in the program. president biden adding to kentucky. some reports on that departure this morning from sung king traveling on air force one with

biden. when asked if he has made progress toward passing his build back better plan, leaving the white house for kentucky to check out the tornado damage there. let's hear from columbus north carolina. >> there's a columbus i believe in every state. this january 6 commission, it's really disappointing. can i say that? it's because it should be, me being an independent. i want to see fairness both ways. that's why i never joined a party either way and i vote both ways. they should have more republicans and it should have been chosen by republicans.

it's disappointing to even see that. liz cheney -- they are not going to like anything trump has to do with anything because of the way he debated jeb bush. those tweets they are reading from meadows, that's an average tweet. there's nothing there and that's just my opinion. i just wish they had chosen more republicans and then i would be willing to watch it. but you guys have a blessed christmas. host: next in chicago. caller: morning. i'm so glad you had your last guest on. made a call last year and i said on the it's them against us.

people need to unite. because all of them to get there to us the same way. they fattened their pockets wildly stay in the same boat. they are taking everything. i don't know if capitalism can exist without this greed. that's what it's all about. that's my comment. host: the senate banking committee is holding a hearing on disaster recovery assistance in the community development block grant program. later this afternoon, it is a hearing on airline industry oversight with airline ceos testifying. live at 2:30 here on c-span.

both of those hearings available on our mobile apps. bailed out airline chiefs face lawmakers among -- amid rising cancellations, soaring complaints. 54 billion dollars in covid-19 government aid and why they are still grappling with thousands of canceled flights, staffing shortages and frustrated customers who can't get refunds. in new york next. go ahead. caller: good morning. i have concerns about the way january 6 was handled for a few different reasons. i marched on washington as a nurse in the 90's. and if you look at the group who

were unruly on january 6, we can say they were group x. but there's still a problem where the representative that i vote for there sent to washington to put laws into plates -- place were not protected that day. there is still the risk that this could happen again and i think they are heavily focused on the person responsible for january 6. when i send my representative down there, i want to know washington is taking care of these and protecting them.

caller: i've noticed that many ceos get -- for millions of dollars. do you realize that the minimum wage with $50 now, that would be like $100,000 a year. if it was $100 an hour, it would be like $200,000 a year. i was just wondering couldn't the minimum wage be that high, $50 an hour or $100 an hour? a lot of these would claim that jobs would disappear. that's not necessarily true because a lot of these fast food places and stuff like that i don't even go to anymore. so i'm just wondering how can ceos get golden parachutes worth millions. a $50 minimum wage is $100,000 a

year and that's not living like a king. so i understand why the men wage is so low. host: air force discharges 37 service members over vaccine refusal. the air force removed people for not obeying orders to get the coronavirus. apparently marking the first dismissal of those who refused the shot. tens of thousands of active-duty members have declined vaccines. many of them have sought rarely given exemptions. it's open forum on washington journal. caller: i just want to say we need to go back to the fairness

doctrine of the 80's. nothing can get fixed unless people are told the truth about the world situation. the fairness doctrine mandated that both sides have the say and that's something we need to go back to. i don't know if the sec can mandate by itself or congress can give it back. but the fairness doctrine of the 80's will put this country back in the right position where you hear both sides and not just the spin. thank you. host: in new mexico, this is chris. good morning. >> i have a couple points. the first is free julian assange. the second is i think attorney general garlin has stated that

nobody has been charged with insurrection on january 6 and that confuses me because i remember watching the brett kavanaugh hearings and seeing tons of protesters trying to interfere with a congressional hearing. were any of those people charged with insurrection? they were causing lots of havoc. the great thing about c-span was brian lamb who always put controversial writers of in controversial subjects. even when other media outlets weren't touching it. would c-span please put on miranda divine and not be part of the other media conglomerates who are shutting that story down? that would show me that c-span still has the spirit of ryan lamb and it and doing its

original focus. i'm asking for miranda divine to be put on book tv. host: will go next to monty in spring texas on the independent line. >> it's very disheartening to hear someone comparing civil disobedience to an out and out right where police officers were assaulted and members of the house threatened with death. it's constitutionally ignorant. we all know the vice president holds no power to do anything but provide a ceremonial count of the electors votes and it's embarrassing for conservatives to keep on with this ridiculous hero cult of personality worship of a man who doesn't understand the basic principle of separation of powers. you cannot have the vice president the judge over state electors. that would be like having your first base coach be an umpire in a baseball game.

host: we get a view of the ad this morning in the new york times. it's a full-page ad. it says joy to the world. the ad reads, greetings of the winter solstice season. and happy anniversary to our secular bill of rights. the ad says the scales of justice have been alarmingly tipped in favor of a privilege status for religion in our country. the capture of the supreme court by christian nationalist forces is complete. a third of our high court and almost a third of our federal judiciary were appointed by trump and their influence and decisions are imperiling the precious american principle of separation between religion and government. all personal and civil rights

are in jeopardy. it's from a state church watchdog. this full-page ad in the new york times. james on the democrat line. open forum. caller: the diversity in this country, what i'm looking at is just ridiculous. those other countries are looking at us and just saying that's a very weak country. look at fox news. all they do is criticize democrats all day long. that's their program. it's just so much adversity. if the republicans get in, what are they going to do?

they are not going to do no better than the democrats. probably worse. why they can't just get together, collaborate on things. the senate collaborates. they can't do that. caller: as far as the vaccine, it's already precedents. it was called an anthrax vaccine. many soldiers refused it. it was experimental. i experienced it. i refused it. i was one of the million that did that. for those that don't remember history, there's a little bit of history. the riot. i have only posted or picked fights about this. the d.c. right. trump had on his inauguration

day there was a right. demonstrations, mostly peaceful from the beginning all the way to the election of 2020. people in the street talking about burning down the white house and killing the trumps. i have a guess that more of this is coming because years of riots with threats and constantly trying to burn things and debase things. it's not going to stop. the writers from all that time set a precedent of patterns of behavior. the guy who talks about division, that's part of that division. threatening to kill people. unless something settles down or people can come to an agreement

about how to behave generally speaking. a lot of people in my opinion believe people in congress were all cooks and swamp creatures. host: this is a report from the new york times this morning. he writes that democrats are divided over how hard to push senator joe manchin to vote on the climate and social spending bill before christmas with some lawmakers favoring an aggressive approach while others worry about killing legislation by moving too hastily. charles schumer has said for weeks that he wants to vote on bidens build back better plan before christmas. on tuesday he declined to guarantee a vote next week. he said the bottom line is there are good discussions going on.

the president has been speaking with senator manchin. schumer said when asked if he would guarantee a vote by christmas. here is lee in los angeles. caller: i want to address the january 6 select committee. they have the opportunity to do that. but the people that were put forth to contribute might have been some of the ones being investigated at this moment. my other comment is has anybody looked into government contracts and how the senate or any of the

congressman have interest in those because i know they can't be awarded contracts. the family should not be awarded contracts. it's interesting to find out how that affects how they vote for things. host: brenda in melbourne, florida. go ahead. caller: hello. just to respond to that last caller, she needs to not watch cnn 24/7 because jim jordan is not under investigation for anything. but the whole january 6 thing. i don't understand why they are all upset about this right when there was over 500 all summer long. were people and police were killed. not where one civilian was

killed by a d.c. police officer. that's the only death. the police officer that died died two days later of natural causes. they are obsessed with trump. they obsessed with putting his name in the dirt. it's like move on already. we can't get anything done because they are just obsessed with taking this man down and people that love him are going to love him and the people that hate him are going to hate him. move on and let's get this country back on track. host: linda in delmar, new york. caller: i'm worried and i would like to know if anybody else is as worried as i am on the similarities on the road to world war ii where three allies gathered together to consult

what they were going to do can now we have china, russia and iran consulting together. in congresses -- conferences and the russians are speaking for the chinese when they speak to india. china wants the south china sea. russia once ukraine. iran wants to be friends with the enemies of their enemies. so thereafter the jewish state. so i'm wondering if anybody else is as worried as i am that they may do a simultaneous attack. in world war ii, we had the industry to resolve this against authoritarian states but now we no longer have that. call in and tell me if i'm right to be worried or just worried for nothing. host: two more minutes of open forum. tracy is on the independent line.

mute your volume and then go ahead with your question or comment. all right, we go to agnes in jacksonville florida. caller: good morning. i'm an 86 euros veteran of the korean war and when i heard the last lady start off on the january 6 thing, our capital was attacked and i commend nancy pelosi for not putting the rabble-rousers on that the republicans wanted to put on because they were only there to cause trouble and jordan from ohio, i'm originally from ohio. i commend nancy pelosi. stick to your guns. america, stick to your guns.

it was an insurrection. host: the secretary of state's cutting short his trip to asia. antony blinken's cutting short his weeklong overseas trip and returning to washington, d.c. due to reasons related to covid-19. blinken expressed his regret that he would not be traveling on to bangkok from malaysia. next up john is on the republican line. good morning. caller: there seems to be a lot of complaining by everybody and it's understandable, but i think we have to give our hats off to the essential workers. i'm retired now, but in construction you have your suits and your workers.

when you lose respect for the suits, you get angry. you get upset. everything falls apart. that's what's happening and is sad. the lady who just called as a good point. i really believe the essential workers are the ones who are going to catch on and straighten things out like they always do. host: in brooklyn new york, alan is on the line. caller: good morning. i think people need to have better civics education overall and if they understood two critical facts about our history and constitution, a lot of the division we are suffering would be easier for them to understand. there is nothing about networks in the communications act. why does that matter. individual stations are licensed

to broadcast in the public interest. to individual file, we were basically immune to the requirement -- terminate the license of any one affiliate without upsetting the network is very powerful politically. so that has basically prevented the fcc from ending the licenses of broadcasters that no longer serve the public interest with honest content. similarly there's nothing in the constitution about party and we now have congressional leaders who are more loyal to their party. so when they joined together with the present of their party -- that's not the way the founders envisioned things. so the founders were not really at fault here.

now the government is functioning by customs outside the law and constitutions. there is no network in these things have taken control in a way that divides us and weakens the national interest. host: did the forming of parties have been pretty soon thereafter the constitution so this is of a slayer problem long in the making. caller: that's true. but that wasn't something that was part of the constitutional structure and it's only very recently that you see leaders taking party loyalty to the point where they will defeat the purpose of separation of powers. separation of powers was meant to have democrats and republicans in the senate more loyal to the senate then they are to the president. once you have combinations of people in the senate and white house from the same party acting

together to serve the party before the country, that has never happened before the mcconnell leadership in the senate. for most of our history people were still in support of keeping separation of powers alive and that's why we have no dictatorship. only when branches are vying with each other to check each other do we keep tyrants from taking control. we have lost that because they are more involved in serving the party than the public interest. host: eric is on the republican line. caller: real quickly, this january 6 thing. if that ain't rigged, they want their pound of flesh. they don't want that guy to even

be able to run for school president. we are living in a time of great corruption and deceit and people are believing whatever they want to believe. people are not even believing the truth because they have so much hate. as far as i'm concerned, both parties are corrupt. host: that will about do it for the program. we have a call or two more. in south carolina. go ahead. caller: on behalf of these kids that's been shot, when we just make it against the law to teach our children to be murderers? you teach them to shoot, you are teaching them to be murderers. a gun is only made for one thing. to kill. stop teaching kids 8, 9 years old to shoot guns.

you teach them to be murderers. a gun is made only to kill. host: all right, good morning, stockbridge. open phones. caller: i watch you guys every day, i'm a retired teacher. i have a couple of comments. that last georgia caller who said don't think anything about that insurrection on january 6, you know, i know the democrats just want answers so this don't happen again. talk about lies. you can't believe anything a republican says. i laughed. when i was a democrat i said i didn't know i'm a socialist. i didn't know a lot of things. one thing i want to talk about, jim jordan. i just seen him the other day,

last night, again. they had the audacity to try to put him on the committee to get answers about the insurrection. they didn't put them on the committee, he's on there just to cause trouble. my dad had a famous saying, big mouth, little mind. every time banks or jordan talks, i just, i find their contact number and leave them a message about how ignorant they are. people with ged's know better than that. i appreciate you taking my call. we got to get together, through small steps. think of the planet and the future, you know? don't reelect trump and then go backwards into burning coal and oil with dancing technology.

host: a couple of more calls from massachusetts. hello. caller: one question. actually, facts. the king of beer, budweiser can bottle water for flood victims down in pennsylvania. what year was that? host: i'm afraid you have got me on that. we will go to gresham, oklahoma on the democrats line. go ahead. caller: yes, good morning. i just wanted to say that it is so painfully obvious to me that these people on january 6 were traitors committing treason by trying to overthrow our government and what came out is pretty much proof that trump was the head of it. mark meadows and all of his

little fan club there on the capital were part of it. and it's really sad that people can't see it. host: that will wrap it up for this morning's program. we will be back tomorrow morning here on c-span and hope that you are, too. next, live to capitol hill. the senate thinking committee having a hearing on disaster recovery assistance. live, next. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] senator: we are in a hybrid format. the witnesses are all appearing virtually. i think we had to because of senator dole last week, we had to change the hearing last week. for those who have not done this, the witnesses, when you start speaking, there is a slight