Guests - Keith Gross, Don Wilkie, Betsy Smith

Former FBI Director James Comey Indicted: Legal Expert Keith Gross Weighs In

The wheels of justice move slowly, but the Trump administration is getting results. Former FBI director James Comey has been indicted on two felony counts for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing their investigation.

Keith Gross, legal analyst and former assistant state attorney for Florida, explains: "Looking at the indictment, it's clear they must have shown the grand jury some specific and compelling evidence of a particular statement that Comey made that was a lie and that he knew it was a lie when he said it."

The indictment appears to center around questions Senator Ted Cruz asked Comey regarding Andrew McCabe leaking information to the public. Comey allegedly claimed he had no knowledge of these leaks or that he didn't authorize them.

"In order to prove that, they're going to need either a written communication or some person willing to testify that he did, in fact, authorize such a leak and that he knew he had done so," Gross explained. "That would make the necessary elements line up to get that felony conviction and put him in jail for five years on each of the two counts."

This marks a significant contrast to the previous administration's approach. "This is a massive shift of direction," Gross noted. "If you recall what happened with the Biden DOJ, they said, 'We know Biden had all these classified documents and it's clear that he violated the law, but we're just not going to prosecute him because we think he's mentally incompetent.'"

The legal expert suggests more indictments may be coming. He highlighted a disturbing pattern: "Before Donald Trump was even elected, when he was still a candidate, we had people in our intelligence agencies, in the FBI and elsewhere, who used information directly from the hands of the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton, which was full of fabricated so-called evidence—the Steele dossier and other things. They used that to get secret warrants to spy on a presidential campaign."

"They used that to create this false Russia collusion hoax, which has been thoroughly debunked now. And that fueled two impeachments, which effectively derailed President Trump's first term," Gross continued. "We voted for four years of President Trump and we got maybe one. The Democrat party, aided by our own government, our Department of Justice, engaged in a treasonous coup to steal the time that administration was supposed to have and block the policies that the American people voted for."

Understanding Freedom as a System: Insights from Benjamin Franklin Scholar Don Wilkie

Don Wilkie, author of "Freedom Revealed: A Simple Elegant System" and a scholar who has spent 20 years studying Benjamin Franklin, shared his insights on the systematic nature of freedom.

"In a system of freedom, everybody is treated equally under the law," Wilkie explained. "When you throw a program like DEI out, or affirmative action, nobody is treated equally under the law. Of course, you're breaking the system."

He continued, "The majority of people are the ones who eventually rule through their representatives. Lady Justice wears a blindfold. She's got the scales. She can't see who you are. This is how justice works. She doesn't know who you are. Everybody gets treated the same."

Wilkie argues that DEI policies fundamentally undermine this principle: "DEI does not do that. So it's bound to fail. It won't work in a system of freedom, and it will, over time, destroy a system of freedom."

Reflecting on American history, he noted, "We came so close to treating everybody equally in the 1960s, and then we started affirmative action. When we were founded, we had four rules of law: for men, for women, for slaves, and for Native Americans. Over our 200-year history, we have worked to get to one rule of law for everybody. In the 1960s, we were so close, and then we started all this affirmative action idiocy."

Wilkie emphasized that hiring based on characteristics like sex, race, or gender identity "obliterates finding the person that's best for the job." He stressed the importance of allowing the marketplace to function naturally: "Another big point of the system of freedom is you want the marketplace to work as undistorted as possible. The marketplace is where you create prosperity. So don't distort the marketplace."

Drawing from Benjamin Franklin's wisdom, Wilkie shared how Franklin addressed French aristocrats who sought positions in the new United States: "Franklin had to write a letter, one of those beautiful satires, and he said, 'In France, birth may have its purpose, but you cannot carry that to a worse market than the United States, where people don't ask who you are, but what you can do.'"

Explaining how Franklin secured crucial funding for the American Revolution, Wilkie revealed that Franklin's social skills played a key role: "Without Franklin, we'd have never won the revolution. He got the money to fight the war. Franklin was a masterful chess player, and he played the kings against each other. He got the King of France to finance a war to dispose of the King of England."

Franklin's celebrity status in France—comparable to "the Beatles coming to America"—gave him access to influential social circles. "In France, they had salons—social gatherings where the wives of aristocrats competed with each other. Franklin fit right in, and all the women who hosted these salons couldn't get enough of Franklin. The same women were the wives of aristocrats who ran the bureaucracy, and Franklin sold them on the American cause, and they sold their husbands on it."

ICE Under Attack: Immigration Enforcement and Public Safety Concerns

Betsy Brantner Smith, spokesperson for the National Police Association, discussed the current challenges facing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the broader implications for public safety.

"We're seeing attacks, physical assaults on ICE agents are up over 1,000 percent from this time last year," Smith reported. "This has got to stop. You don't get to attack police officers because you don't like them doing their job."

Smith highlighted a recent incident involving an ICE agent who was suspended after a confrontation with an illegal immigrant at a New York City Immigration Courthouse. "A wife of an illegal alien, who herself is a 'quote-unquote asylum seeker'—she's an illegal alien too—runs up to this ICE agent who came out to explain proceedings. She's screaming hysterically, she touches him, pushes him, grabs him three times. The third time, he pushes her back."

The incident was immediately posted on social media from a selective angle, leading to the agent's suspension. "Less than 48 hours later, he's back on the job because they watched his body camera as well as video from different angles," Smith explained. "He acted appropriately, and I'm hoping they're going to charge this woman with felony battery of a police officer."

Smith also discussed the situation in Portland, Oregon, where the ICE facility has been under attack for nearly a decade. "You see the ICE headquarters there, it's all boarded up by plywood. There's not a single open window in that building anymore. And that's not an architectural design—it's for the safety of the people who work there."

President Trump is deploying the National Guard to Portland to address these ongoing attacks. "The president, along with the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, can deploy the National Guard into any area of the state that they want to protect federal resources," Smith clarified.

Similar situations are developing in Chicago, where additional Border Patrol agents have been deployed. "We've got to protect the men and women of federal law enforcement," Smith emphasized. "We can't allow for these constant physical attacks."

Rising Crime in Tucson: Community Safety Concerns

Tucson is experiencing troubling levels of violent crime, becoming what Smith described as "the most dangerous city in the state."

A well-known local cyclist, Enrique "Kicks" Mercado, was recently stabbed to death on the Chuck Huckleberry Loop trail, a popular bike path in Tucson. "He got into some sort of altercation with a homeless guy and got stabbed to death," Smith reported. "A lot of people are very angry at Regina Romero and her city council, and they plan on going en masse to the next city council meeting."

Smith emphasized that while homelessness itself isn't a crime, "it is a crime to camp on the public way. It is a crime to be so drug-addled you don't know what's going on. And yes, it's a crime to stab people to death."

In another incident, two men were found dead in a car on Tucson's west side, their bodies decomposing for several days before discovery.

The rising crime rate is affecting the city's reputation nationally. "I was just talking to a friend of mine who just got back from a national law enforcement survival training in Las Vegas," Smith shared. "And he's like, 'Oh yeah, everybody was talking about how stabby Tucson is.' We're making national news for all the wrong reasons."

Smith noted that staffing shortages in law enforcement are contributing to the problem. "The Tucson Police Department is still woefully short-staffed, as is the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Those officers, as many as who can leave, run for the suburbs where they're going to get paid more and treated better."

She pointed to issues with prosecution as well: "It's difficult to hire police officers when you have a county prosecutor who doesn't really want to prosecute. Cops work really hard arresting people and building a case for court, but if you don't prosecute them and put them in jail, what's the point? And what's the deterrent?"

With city council elections approaching, Smith and Winn urged residents to consider the impact of their votes on public safety. "If you think that this isn't the city that you know and love, it's because it's been co-opted and corrupted by government officials who think they have power, who think they're in charge, and they think they know better than you. Don't continue to put them back in office."