Hey folks, Joyce Vance here. Preet and I are out with a new episode of the Insider Podcast. First, we break down the latest from Minnesota, including the investigation into the shooting of Alex Preddy and the criminal charges against journalist Don Lemon. Then we turn to the FBI's search of the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, at the center of President Trump's debunked election fraud claims. Finally, we discuss the latest Epstein Files release, which included over three million pages of information. If you're a member of Cafe Insider, head to the Insider feed or click the link in the show notes of this podcast to hear the full analysis. Stay tuned, listeners. Stick around for an excerpt from our conversation. Members of Insider help support our work and get access to full episodes and other subscriber benefits. We are living in unreasonable times, so join our community of reasonable voices. Head to cafe.com slash insider or staytuned.substack.com. Now, on to the show. So there are various things going on in Minnesota. Maybe we should start with an update, quick update, on what is going on at the moment with the Preddy shooting and the good shooting. So it's interesting to note how DOJ has been forced to evolve its position based on public opinion and public opposition. And that's how we're now in a situation where the homicide of Alex Freddie, I feel pretty comfortable saying homicide. The investigation will determine if that's actually the case and what type of homicide it is, murder or manslaughter. But that investigation is now being conducted by the Justice Department. after the initial snafu where DOJ took control of the scene, refused to give the state of Minnesota their investigators or local folks access, and then left the scene in disarray several hours later to complaints that they were going to spoil evidence. But now we're told that investigation is on and DOJ is looking at the case. That's not true of Renee Good's death, where at least as we began taping this podcast, DOJ had still not said that it would be involved in an investigation, and that one seems to be up to the state. Look, the public outcry, the backlash, not just from ordinary citizens, but from the people who represent them, has been really significant choice. And as cause such as it is, I don't want to overstate it, a little bit of a retreat on a part of the administration, and things feed on each other. so you have you know you have one republican saying this has gone too far you have one podcaster saying one podcaster i mean joe rogan saying this has gone too far that the focus should be on people who have committed crimes especially violent crimes rather than people who have been here a long time and are paying taxes and are gainfully employed and are raising children who are American citizens that all feeds on each other That all feeds on each other and emboldens other people to say what they believe to be true. There are talks about, you know, maybe drawing down some folks. Now, I know some people in Minnesota who I trust a lot who are warning, don't be fooled. There is not really a shift in position. You have Tom Holman coming in. He was the architect of this policy in the first place, even though he speaks in a more conciliatory way about some of the stuff. I'll leave aside, but note for the record, as I said, I think everyone always should. There's still the matter of the $50,000 in the paper bag with respect to that guy. And ICE agents there, they're still there. And they have the ability to stay there for many, many, many weeks, if not months longer. What do you think is going on? Yeah. I mean, I think the people who are encouraging folks to not look away are dead on the money. The original reason, you know, Donald Trump's original complaint about the Minneapolis area was, in his version of the facts, which aren't accurate, the Somali community was just a bunch of fraudsters. The truth is that there was, in fact, a significant fraud investigation going on, and some of the defendants were Somali Americans because there's a large immigrant community there, as we all know now. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis was more than capable of and was in the middle of prosecuting those cases. And one of the huge ironies of the moment, by the way, is that the prosecutors, the experienced career guys running that case, resigned as a result of this entire mess. It's not entirely clear why. Some of the problems, of course, that that office has faced involved not investigating Rene Good's murder. And then And there was some comments that were made by Mr. Bovino before he left Minneapolis about the U.S. attorney's religion, questioning why the Orthodox Jew wasn't willing to work on Saturdays and using some pretty inflammatory language that many people in the office took offense at, resulting in more resignations. So I think it's worth noting, right, that that's the context in which all of this is happening. there was this offer of assistance to a community that couldn't fend for itself and take care of its own problems. And it turns out that at every step, this administration has made it worse. And so the notion that Homan is an improvement over Bovino or that removing some CBP agents while permitting ICE to continue its surge, I think that's disingenuous. ingenuous. There was news yesterday, I'll be interested to see how this plays out, that all of the ICE agents will now be wearing body cameras. And of course, as you know, Preet, that's great. That means footage is available, at least hopefully available if there's an incident. But the reality is that only means something if all of the body camera footage is being reviewed Because what we hearing are these relentless stories about agents treating citizens just in ways that violate their constitutional rights, whether it's assaults, whether it's threatening them with being included in the agency's new terrorist database. So you would literally have to give objective observers access to that body camera footage and have them review all of it for all of the agents for every shift that they work for that to mean anything. I point out that example just to say we should be careful about taking what this administration is offering as evidence of good faith in Minneapolis at face value, because often it's fluff with no real substance. Should we talk about Don Lemon? We should talk about Don Lemon, who looked great at the Grammys the other night, by the way. He's a young looking guy. I have been on the show a number of times when he had the CNN show. There's a backstory that I think is relevant, even though I've seen Republican officials, Todd Blanch in particular, disclaim that he knew there was any bad blood between Don Lemon and President Trump. Anybody who pays any attention to the news would know that there is. He is not alone in being critical of Donald Trump as a journalist, but he's one of them. Why don't we start with the basis of the arrest was and what he did. we should try our best to give the best possible gloss on the facts to the prosecution, just so we can show how wrongheaded it is, if that's what your conclusion is. He's an independent journalist. He doesn't have the backing of a big institution like CNN or the New York Times or CBS or anything else. He is presenting himself as a journalist. He was doing a story involving a church protest. I think the video shows he's making it clear that he was not part of the protest, but he was covering the protest. Why did he get arrested then, Joyce? Yeah, he gets arrested because DOJ essentially says he's part of a conspiracy to interrupt a worship service, which violates a couple of federal statutes, a Civil Rights Conspiracy Act and something called the FACE Act, which is a law that was enacted primarily to protect access to women's reproductive health clinics, but that also as a compromise provision inserted a measure that protects access and protects worship, essentially, in houses of worship. Let's look at the statute. I mean, the fact that it was inserted as a compromise doesn't change its status as the law of the land, right? No. I mean, this is, I think, a very important provision. I have used this statute before, and it's an extremely effective law when it's used in the right circumstances. Yeah, so you have Title 18 US Code, Section 248. The title of the section speaks to the primary nature of the enactment, right? Freedom of access to clinic entrances. But subsection two of the statute says, whoever by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction intentionally injures intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship, that person is subject to penalties, etc. And so the theory on Don Lemon, and others, by the way, he's not the only one who was arrested, that he, by, I guess, intimidation, was— Because there's no evidence of force or threat, right? Let's be clear about that. Or injury. Yeah. that he was intimidating people or interfering with people from their lawful exercise of their right of religious freedom at a church. What's interesting about this is you have two First Amendment principles and values and provisions coming into conflict with each other. There's also First Amendment right to the free press and no infringement on the free press. Sometimes we have provisions of the Constitution and even of the Bill of Rights that come up against each other and things have to give. So a layperson might say, well, it depends on the facts, right? And then the layperson would be right. Let's see if we agree on a couple of things. The fact that Don Lemon is a journalist, whether he's an individual journalist, an independent journalist, or part of a network, he does not have carte blanche to do anything he wants in a church under the guise of reporting, correct? Absolutely correct. Right. So there are limitations. If he came in, he started pushing and shoving people and punch him in the face and say, get out of this church, or, you know, tried to shout down the minister who was presiding, whether or not he had a camera and whether or not he was partially being a journalist, that's a different story. All fair? I think that that's right. Now, if he's standing at some remove from the church, doesn't go in, he's interviewing politely people who are going into and out of the church, asking them about various issues, and he's recording them on the spectrum, clearly not a violation of the statute in any way, shape, or form. Also correct? Not even this DOJ would charge that case. Okay. So what are the facts that the DOJ is relying upon to say that Don Lemon came closer to the first scenario than the second scenario? Lemon follows the protesters in, and the allegation and the complaint that if the whole matter weren't so serious... Thanks for listening. To hear the full episode, become a member by heading to cafe.com slash insider or stay tuned dot substack dot com. Membership gives you exclusive access to in-depth weekly episodes of the Insider podcast and bonus content from Stay Tuned. Don't miss out. It's never been more important to stay tuned. Thank you for supporting our work. you
