During Wednesday's town hall, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) answered questions about Trump's alleged court order violation regarding deportation flights.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Of course, if you are watching online, feel free to type it underneath the streaming player.
00:07But Congresswoman, our first question comes from Micah.
00:11He asks, what happens now that Trump is starting to defy court orders?
00:17Ooh, child.
00:18Now, Micah, Micah, you asking a lot of me.
00:24I know that my initials are JC, but they definitely don't stand for Jesus Christ.
00:29I truly don't know.
00:32Let me tell you what my thoughts are, and that's pretty much all that I can give you.
00:38If I was still operating in a world prior to having a Supreme Court that has given Trump
00:45any level of immunity, or if I had to take a guess in a world that is prior to a convicted
00:55felon being able to enter the White House, not being able to be kicked off the ballot,
01:01not being able to be taken to trial for an insurrection, listen, the list goes on.
01:08So as far as I'm concerned, I feel like the student loans that I'm continuing to pay back
01:15for law school should all be forgiven, because it seems like legal norms are not truly functioning
01:23in the way that I was taught, right?
01:26Looking at legal precedents and things like that.
01:29In short, we are in a constitutional crisis.
01:31We have been in a constitutional crisis, and it is only being further exacerbated every
01:38single day.
01:39So with Trump violating a court order, typically, if it was anybody but the president, and technically,
01:48no one is above the law, allegedly, but again, the Supreme Court gave him that immunity,
01:54and I think he's flexing with it right now, daring them to do anything else.
01:59Technically, when you violate a court order, you are to be called in for a contempt hearing.
02:06In that contempt hearing, you are to be given an opportunity to basically go through due
02:12process, and in that due process hearing, explaining like, oh, I wasn't on actual notice
02:18of the court's order, or, you know, I misunderstood the court's order.
02:24It could have been, you know, interpreted different ways, or my counsel did not convey
02:30it to this other, like, you're able to kind of give explanations for why the court should
02:36not find that you blatantly disregarded and said to hell with what the court said.
02:44And it's usually in that hearing, which the judge, who is the exclusive jurist over determining
02:53whether or not you truly should be held in contempt, then the court then decides how
02:59to deal with that contempt.
03:00Is it in the form of incarceration?
03:02Is it in the form of paying money?
03:05Like, what is the form?
03:07And so this is very different, because we're not used to a whole president or his administration
03:14disobeying a court order.
03:16And so what do you do, right?
03:18Like, does it present a further issue if you incarcerate the president?
03:23As far as I'm concerned, he should have been incarcerated a long time ago, so no, it doesn't
03:27present a different issue.
03:28He's not doing nothing but signing executive orders anyway.
03:30He can do that from a jail cell, as far as I'm concerned.
03:34And so, you know, we will see how the judge decides that they want to deal with this.
03:39Usually they don't jump to jail immediately.
03:42Usually if they find that you're in contempt, they usually jump to some kind of money.
03:46The problem is that there's usually limits on how much money, and there's usually limits
03:51on, you know, how long you can incarcerate someone, because it's not the same as kind
03:57of being charged with, like, a crime, per se, right?
03:59And so the issue that we run into is that we don't want the federal government, like,
04:04we don't want our tax dollars to pay for him and his wrongdoing, right?
04:08So it needs to be personal.
04:09It needs to be personal liability.
04:12And so that gets a little tricky as well, because he was, this was all done in official
04:17capacity and not personal capacity.
04:20And then it's like, whatever limits they have, it's a drop in the bucket to Trump.
04:25He doesn't care.
04:26Like, it would be a drop in the bucket.
04:28We're not talking about, you know, usually you can't get contempt and tax somebody like
04:32a million dollars.
04:33Like, you can't do that.
04:34But that's the only thing that he would potentially feel.
04:37So, you know, I think that everything that we're seeing, though, is additional fodder
04:44for us to create a record of why he should be impeached.
04:48And I know so many of you are probably wondering why hasn't he been impeached yet and that
04:52kind of stuff.
04:53It's simply a numbers game for us, right?
04:55We don't have the numbers.
04:57Right now, we don't have Republican colleagues that are about doing what's right.
05:01We do know with this continuing resolution that was passed, and we do know that with
05:06reconciliation that will be coming up, which is where they are going to go after Social
05:10Security, Medicaid, Medicare.
05:12When that happened, and we're unable to block it, which was another problem with them going
05:18forward, the Senate Democrats helping them by going forward, it was the only time that
05:24we had leverage.
05:25And so I'm sure many of you don't remember, but we were trying to get the debt ceiling
05:33raised at some point during Biden's administration.
05:37It may have been my first year of the Biden administration.
05:42And we were trying to get the debt ceiling raised, and the Republicans decided to deal
05:47with cuts to our budget during the debt ceiling fight when the two are completely separate.
05:54The budget, again, as we laid out, that goes from September 30 to September 30.
06:00So essentially, what has happened, and I don't know how often this has happened, if it's
06:04happened ever, is that the Republicans who have controlled the House, since I've been
06:10in Congress, have failed, along with now the Republican-controlled Senate, to do the 12
06:16appropriations bills for one fiscal year.
06:19Instead, they just did what is supposed to be a band-aid, and that's it.
06:24It's just supposed to be a band-aid to keep the government open.
06:26It is not supposed to be the whole shebang.
06:28And so what we were saying from the House perspective, because we don't have a filibuster
06:33in the House, is that the Senate Democrats needed to get assurances on Medicaid or Medicare
06:40or Social Security written into the continuing resolution, but they needed to get something
06:46for us, because by the time we get to reconciliation, we have nothing.
06:51They just get a simple majority.
06:53And so this was our only time, and they didn't get anything.
06:56So I say all that to say that we don't have Republicans that are simply invested in doing
07:04what's best by their communities, because Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, that
07:09affects everyone, no matter what their political affiliation is.
07:13The only people that may be immune from this are the very rich people who don't need it,
07:18okay?
07:19So it may be once their constituents lose all of their services, and they get mad, and
07:29they start believing that they're going to lose their election, that we could actually
07:33push forward with some sort of an impeachment.
07:36But remember, he was successfully impeached in the House twice, and the Senate was run
07:42by Republicans, and they failed to convict him last time.
07:46And right now, the Senate is run by Republicans again, and so I don't know that we could get
07:51a conviction if we could go so far.
07:54But at least we can start making a very sound record, including by starting with the fact
07:59that he is not obeying court orders, and has truly said that it's okay for him to be lawless.
08:07And then Holman went out there and said, forget it, we will ignore the law if we need to,
08:12as well as his Department of Justice head has said the same thing.
08:17And this also may be groundwork for some of those other people in his administration to
08:22be impeached later on down the road.
08:24And I don't think that they're, I don't think the Republicans are half as afraid of some
08:28of these people that have been appointed within the administration.
08:33They're not as afraid of them as they are of Trump.
08:36Okay, sorry for the long answer, but I hope that was comprehensive enough for you.