Clay Donates $10K to Defend the Jan. 6th Political Prisoners
CLAY: Every now and then we have a guest, and they say something that really rocks me, and the fact that — according to our guest — 83 people are still being held and denied bail, charged not even necessarily with crimes yet but many of the people who are pleading guilty to these charges are getting reduced jail sentences, limited jail sentences. I don’t think there’s very many people that are serving significant jail time for what — let’s be honest — by and large, is not a very significant crime, in the grand scheme of things.
BUCK: I had Julie on months and months ago on Hold the Line on The First TV, a show that I do, and we talked about this issue. And, Clay, if people read what the judge… I haven’t read all of the different orders, but in one of these cases where someone was being held… Remember, everybody, this is pretrial. Clay’s a lawyer. We were talking about this on the break. Our whole system is set up so that this can’t happen to you.
CLAY: Right.
BUCK: You can’t just be held indefinitely on the whim of the state. This is why we not only have trial by jury, but it’s supposed to be a speedy, a reasonable speed of trial. You’re also supposed to be released pending hearing unless there’s a reason of either public safety or you’re a serious flight risk, right, and this is why they have bail set the way they do. They’ve been denied bail and the reason that one of the judges gave is:
“Well, if we let them loose, this person could have another insurrection to overthrow the government,” as if these people don’t realize what a disastrous idea it was to do anything that day involving either attacking cops or going into the building or whatever. As if they haven’t suffered enough essentially to realize that they would never… Their lives are destroyed already, Clay, right? So a judge won’t let them out because they might trying to have another selfie session in the Rotunda? Gimme a break.
CLAY: Buck, and this hits me as a lawyer because our job as lawyers is oftentimes to defend people who’ve been accused of heinous crimes. I have as a criminal defense attorney defended murderers. I have defended people accused of dealing drugs, of beating their — of domestic assault. That doesn’t mean that I agree with what those charges are or what those people are accused of doing.
That is the job of an attorney to zealously advocate for your client. I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do right now. I’m gonna donate $10,000 to this defense fund that she just gave out, Julie Kelly. I’m gonna donate $10,000 to PatriotFreedomProject.com, not because — and I’m gonna say this ’cause people are gonna cover it and they’re gonna be like, “Oh, Clay Travis…”
No, not because I’m saying these people didn’t do anything wrong but because I believe it is fundamentally un-American to hold people without giving them the opportunity to be released on bail, without charges being filed against them. And I believe that they deserve as good of legal representation as they can possibly get. So, today… I donate money to all sorts of different causes.
Usually, I don’t make it public, but I was so impressed by what Julie Kelly was telling us on the last segment that, as a lawyer who is currently licensed in multiple jurisdictions in the United States, I believe that these people are entitled to the best legal representation that they can get. And I don’t think it’s right — whether you’re Republican, Democrat, independent — to put people in jail for this long based on politics when it doesn’t appear to be that these people are a clear and present threat to American democracy.
So I believe they deserve the best legal representation they can get. They can get lawyers who will advocate for them zealously, as lawyers should be doing. And I’m saying this on behalf of somebody who has represented people who have done far worse than what these people are charged with.
BUCK: Where is the ACLU on this?
CLAY: Great question.
BUCK: Aren’t there these whole organizations that exist to prevent this kind of politicized abuse within the justice system? Really, human rights abuse by our own justice system. Remember, not only are they being held, folks, for those wondering about this, they’re abused by guards who don’t share their political ideology.
They’re often held in solitary confinement as if they’re in administrative segregation, I believe they call it, in the D.C. system. So, this is absolutely meant to be punitive and to send a message: You stand against this regime, you will not just be punished, you will be crushed beyond whatever the actual statutes are involved in your transgression.
