Joining us now, Jay Clayton, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former SEC Chairman. My date to the Correspondents' Association dinner, but like so many people, it's just a meet and greet. People are everywhere. And after I got on your hotspot, you left me and I had no Wi-Fi initially. And then it was a couple minutes later when everything happened. So I talked to you later in the evening. You can recount what happened. You went to a place where there were actually important people and you were swept away with him.
I was swept up with a number of the people because I was standing out.
You would have been swept away anyway. It doesn't mean you're an important person. I mean, they left me for, you know, they're not getting me out of there.
But it's the office, not the man.
It's the office, not the man. But you went to a secret, undisclosed location with everybody else.
Yeah, but let me say something that I think we were there, right? And I've seen the reporting. We all got caught up. I want to make two things clear. They've been reported, but I think first is the response of law enforcement. And the President has championed the response of law enforcement. But think about this. You know, obviously, securing the President and the First Lady, the Cabinet members, all the other people there, you know, they did that. They neutralized this person without a single, let's just call it, civilian being harmed. That is a remarkable exercise when you think about it. Everyone's talking about how crowded it was and the like. But I'm trying to, you know, there'll be experts, but I kind of looked at the tape and in less than a minute or around a minute from the time first noticed to being neutralized, maybe we'll find out a little longer, a little less, but not a single person got hurt with all that response. All of those people heavily armed and everything. To me, that was truly remarkable. They did an amazing job.
The second thing I want to say is, you know, I was close enough when I got swept up to see the President of the United States under this kind of personal pressure and the pressure of the nation, and the American people would be so proud. You know, what are the things that are going through a President's mind in times like this? You know, we don't want our way of life altered. And it's kind of paramount, right? I mean, this was an event to celebrate the First Amendment, the rights of all Americans to get together in the public square, exchange ideas, and to be protected in doing that. And this was clearly jeopardizing them, jeopardizing the ability of all these people to get together. I mean, think about the conversations that were going on in that room and all people exchanging ideas, people of different stripes and the like. And the President was like this: we can't alter our way of life. And he's thinking about the safety of himself, the safety of his Cabinet, safety of the First Lady, continuity of government. And at the end of the day, back to where I started, the safety of the people in the room. And with all of that, it was like, okay, we really want the show to go on. We really want to show that we can't be cowed.
He was on his way back in his mind, and we kept hearing that, that he wanted to come back. But it was a crime scene. It didn't seem like it was Joe.
It's all of those things. But his commitment to the First Amendment, to not letting our way of life be changed by people, right, was so palpable, so clear. You know, at the end of the day, if it was only the President's safety, he would have gotten back up on that stage. But it was everybody else.
Yeah. And I don't remember what, I think it happened at 8:30. I don't think we left till after 10. So we were waiting, fully thinking the show is, he's coming back. Wait a second. He's being, you know, people are saying that it's, you know, there was a guy on the floor at that point. We thought someone, there was, they were calling it a body.
And this was not.
But there was never panic.
Like, you know, we can go back through history of events that are congested with crowds of that size where panic ensues, concerts and the like, stampede and scary. So the Secret Service gets all of their people away without causing any kind of panic like that. Truly, truly remarkable.
It was. And they knew where every single person was, and they went over the top of tables to find people and take them out. And it was also a measured response later in the evening from the President about the kind of speech he had planned on giving and the kind of speech that he would give if he does have a chance next time.
Because we were all together there. But here's a time of immense pressure. You know, your life is under threat and you can agree or disagree with policy. You have the most transparent President of the United States in my lifetime, getting up there and saying exactly what was going through his mind, exactly what he was thinking, how decisions were made, and engaging with the American people. I thought that was, you know, that's another decision he made. He said, I'm going to talk to the American people. I thought that was incredibly, incredibly powerful.
Okay. We talked about the 60 Minutes interview. I don't know whether you saw that as well. There has been a, I can remember times where the name of the perpetrator wouldn't even be released. So there would be no publicity associated with it. So people wouldn't use that as a motivating factor. Also, the ravings of a lunatic, is that normal to read and to call them accusations or alleged and to read that? I thought that was beyond the pale yesterday.
I think that we all need to take a step back. I need to take a step back. Everybody in the media needs to take a step back and say, you know, are we amplifying hate and fringe elements?
Really, you don't know the answer to that. We are.
People are. But let me tie this to a recent event. I mean, this was horrible. Amplifying somebody like this, his message, you know, just stupid. Let's just call it what it is. Stupid. Okay. We had a case in the Justice Department last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the case at bottom. And these are allegations. But at bottom the allegations are that this organization was creating hate in order to expand their mission of combating hate. If that's going on, and it is, it's going on in America. It's going on through organizations like that. It's also going on with foreign actors funding these types of organizations because they want us to fight with each other. So everybody needs to take a step back and say, who is causing me to have these emotions? And are we creating an environment where those emotions are causing us to do things that are harmful to the American public?
I want to switch gears for a second to Jay Powell, if I could, for a second, because I'm curious where you land on this. So it appears that that case has ended as of Friday, but there's still the question mark about whether Jay Powell is going to remain on the board of the Federal Reserve for the next two years, which he's eligible to do if he decides to. And he appears to have suggested, at least previously, that it wasn't just the end of the case that would make him step down, but a sense that he was exonerated. And there's two elements to this that I want to ask you about. One is Pirro effectively said, look, if there's new evidence that comes or if there's a reason that warrants it, we could come back and bring this case again. So that therefore sort of leaves on the table the possibility that he's not exonerated. And this is not over, in which case maybe he would stay in this role. And then the second, which is a legal question, is whether you think that Pirro should appeal the subpoena issue in the case, even if she doesn't plan to bring the case, but for legal reasons, for precedent, whether she needs to appeal the subpoena issue in the case that the judge ruled against. So those are two sort of ones, a legal one, one's a sort of philosophical. Maybe they're combined.
I got you. Let me add something to the context that's important. You have an Inspector General now inserted into the mix, Inspector General Horowitz, who everyone respects, who's going to get to the bottom of the issue, which is why are these costs?
He was doing that from the beginning.
But it's now reporting to Congress, focusing on it. You know, exigent that he does his job and we figure out whether there are cost overruns. So that's an important part of the context. Jeanine Pirro, terrific person. Look at the job she has done in Washington. I mean, crime gone. She was on the crime scene last night, you know, taking charge, filing federal charges. Unbelievable. I have tremendous respect for her. She's going to handle this in the right way. The question, the narrow legal question you ask is not whether they're going to enforce the subpoenas, which she has addressed. It's a question of whether the judge's basis for his ruling is one that should stand.
And therefore, the question becomes, do you believe that she needs to continue the appeal process over that, even if she is not planning to pursue that case?
That happens because you don't want a precedent that you think is incorrect out there, particularly on these types of things. I am not as familiar with it as she is or as the main Justice folks are. I'll let them make that decision.
Jay, back to the Southern Poverty Law Center. You heard their defense. Is there any possible way to get people inside these hate groups that you're paying informants for information so that you're able to fight the hate better? The sums that we're talking about that were funneled to these organizations, is it possible that that was a legitimate use of funds to try to get inside the hate? Because that's what they immediately say, that no defenders of what we're talking about here. Is that possible?
Well, let me say there are allegations they're going to get that proved out in court. You know, a grand jury returned this. I think it's appropriate for me to take a little bit of a step back and put this in context. The amount, if I'm asked to authorize the spending of money on informants or this type of exercise, the rigor that we go through and the audit trail and the approvals all up through the system as to whether that is the right thing to do. Nothing like that was happening here. You know, instead, it's actually the other way around, setting up shell corporations to hide this. If you read the indictment, the indictment spells out clearly that those corporations made statements to the bank that the indictment alleges were not true. That's not why those shells.
Do you believe that, just to, do you believe they were informants or not?
I believe, look, if you read the, it's hard, just because you're an informant doesn't mean you're not a whole lot of other things. Okay. And that's what is clearly alleged in the indictment.
No, you're giving the indictment. You're giving people money to do a whole bunch of stuff. I understand that. The question is whether you genuinely believe in your heart that the people at the Southern Poverty Law Center actually are trying to, like, want the violence to be incited, or whether they actually are trying to get informants and then are effectively lying around the edges. Of course, that's what you're saying. But people are saying that they are ginning up the hate. Now, that's why I asked him. You don't need to re-ask it. That is the question. Do you believe that they're doing this legitimately to get an informant in there, or are they ginning up their own business to try to tackle?
Hey, I am going to take a step back from this case. I'm going to let... But let me say this. I absolutely believe, and I believe to a certainty, that there are many groups who do exactly that. That they gin up hate, gin up distrust, gin up controversy in order to raise money to then say they're doing something about it. And that's disgusting.
