'Anybody Think It Was An Appropriate Thing To Do?': Steve Cohen Asks Experts About Trump's Jan. 6 Pardons

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During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) spoke about President Trump's mass pardons for January 6th insurrectionists.

Transcript

00:00Gentleman yields, chair recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen.

00:03Thank you, Mr. Chair.

00:05Mr. Fox, I'm just curious, I was listening to your testimony,

00:10and that Sacco and Vanzetti, or whoever they were, Moore and Mitchell, or?

00:14Moore and Mansell.

00:15Yeah, we have Moore and Mansell.

00:18What should have been the crime for cutting that NOAA apparatus apart?

00:25Yeah, so going back to the point Congressman Kiley just made is,

00:28I don't think it should be a crime.

00:29I think this is a thing.

00:30Shouldn't it be a crime to cut something that you've got nothing to do with,

00:35it's not your area of jurisdiction, and to cut it and destroy it?

00:38Well, if they intended to do that, yes, but because they didn't,

00:41I think this is sort of a civil issue where the, I forget the person's name,

00:45but the person who had the research project should, you know, take them to court,

00:49and they should pay for the loss of the property that was damaged,

00:53but I don't think it's the purview of the government to get involved and prosecute them for it.

00:58And this goes back to the point of why men's right of matters.

01:01If they had gone in there intending to destroy it, yeah, I think that's very different,

01:05and then that probably would be appropriate to charge them and convict them with what happened,

01:10but that's not the case here.

01:12It was a mistake.

01:13They thought they were, you know, saving some wildlife, saving some sharks,

01:16and inevitably it was not poachers.

01:20Just curious.

01:20I looked it up and kind of didn't think it.

01:23I think it probably should be some type of offense to destroy something.

01:26You know, you really have no jurisdiction, and you don't make yourself the police,

01:30and you make a mistake.

01:31They should have taken a deal or something, but regardless of that.

01:34Mr. Tolman, let me ask you a question.

01:36Your name was familiar to me, so I Googled it for a long time,

01:39and I didn't find any Tolmans that I would have known of.

01:42Most of them were scientists and brilliant people like you,

01:45but there was a Tolman Hall at Vanderbilt, and I think that's where it came to the back.

01:48Do you know Tolman Hall?

01:49I do know the family.

01:51I tried to get into Vanderbilt Law School and was not admitted.

01:58It's good school, and I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, but it's good school.

02:02So over-criminalization, a lot of that is federal congresspeople looking for issued a juror

02:11and passing laws that probably should be state laws.

02:14Is that not correct?

02:15I wholeheartedly agree.

02:16Years ago when I was a state senator, there was a group of congresspeople that came down to Nashville

02:20and all talked about carjacking, and they wanted to make it a federal law,

02:24and I suggested that it was more of a state responsibility, and they passed it,

02:29some federal law up here.

02:30And now, I don't know what it was, I read somewhere there's a new carjacking law being proposed,

02:35I think by Senator Blackburn, and it changes the duty.

02:38I mean, the standard, right now you have to have an intent to murder or kill or do great injury

02:43to beat a federal crime, and now they're reducing it to being, I forget what it is.

02:49Do you know what the difference is in this proposed law and the law that exists now?

02:53I have seen that.

02:56I think the current carjacking law is an inappropriate federal law.

03:00It should be the state's, it is their primary role to enforce those laws.

03:06And sadly, the carjacking, and I would also say the Hobbs Act cases,

03:12which is in essence now the robbery of a Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example,

03:16I mean, this is an example of the headline of the day driving the lawmaking

03:21and expanding the federal code.

03:24Well, we'll have to look at that when a bill comes before our committee

03:26to see how we respond to it, because it's sometimes so easy to jump into something,

03:31which is really state law.

03:32Yes.

03:33Mr. Fox, I was listening to your testimony.

03:34You were talking about respect for the law and all these laws, et cetera.

03:38Do you think that the pardoning people that attack policemen just makes people think less of the law?

03:50Yeah, I think it's a case-by-case basis.

03:52I think the federal justice system or even state justice systems really don't work well at all.

03:59So there's obviously problems, but blanket pardoning people who violently attack police

04:04and try to overthrow the government, yeah, that's wildly inappropriate.

04:07Anybody think it was an appropriate thing to do to pardon all those 1,600 people in mass

04:12without going through them case-by-case?

04:15That creates a lot of people thinking it's who you know or what you do, et cetera, et cetera,

04:20and disrespect for the court system,

04:22because it was nothing to do with the prosecutors doing wrong or anything like that.

04:26It was just a class of people that he decided to do.

04:30And then there's been a lot of pardons lately.

04:31I don't know if you've kept up with them,

04:32but lots of folks in the crypto business who have been convicted,

04:38large monetary fines as well as jail time,

04:42and tremendous amount of restitution, and they've been pardoned.

04:46And that's, you know, and it happens.

04:47It used to be that the presidents had some shame,

04:50and even if they gave a pardon to their brother or to somebody that gave them a ton of money,

04:55they waited until the last minute, and they could get out of town.

04:59Now they put it on Truth Social, and they parade it around,

05:03and then they appoint them to be an ambassador somewhere.

05:07I yield back to the balance of my time.

05:08The gentleman yields back.

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