During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Russey Fry (R-SC) spoke about the Department of Justice and the prosecution of former President Trump.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 I'll recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Frye.
00:03 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:04 Thank you for having this hearing today.
00:05 Mr. Tolman, in your testimony earlier,
00:08 you mentioned a few reasons why over-criminalization
00:11 is a problem.
00:12 You said that the average American commits
00:14 three felonies a day without even knowing it.
00:16 What are some of those examples?
00:19 Well, the crimes on the books right now,
00:23 there are many that are almost laughable.
00:25 A federal crime to write a check
00:27 for under a dollar, for example.
00:29 I personally had a case in which a father and son were cold
00:34 and didn't think they would make it out of the wilderness,
00:37 and they cut up a park bench and burned it to stay warm,
00:41 and they were charged and put in jail.
00:44 So it's examples like that we could go through.
00:47 Those would be the low-hanging, easy fruit for Congress
00:49 to get rid of many of those laws.
00:51 My understanding is one of them is to sell malt liquor
00:53 labeled as pre-war strength.
00:55 Yes.
00:56 Like, what is that about?
00:57 Yeah, you know, the liquor business is very, very serious.
01:00 You can't label it.
01:04 When they were regulating it very, very tightly,
01:07 then there were issues with how they would be labeled
01:11 in order to not falsely advertise the contents.
01:16 And you developed the bottled-in-bond laws,
01:19 which required certain levels of alcohol.
01:24 Those are still on the books.
01:25 So the good stuff was the pre-war stuff.
01:27 That's right.
01:28 Just to be clear.
01:30 You also spoke that the current DOJ is choosing
01:32 to throw away the rule of law when they attack
01:36 political enemies.
01:37 Can you talk about that a little bit,
01:38 and give me some examples of how that's happening?
01:42 It is a recent, I think, more recent development.
01:45 There's always been, at times, pressures.
01:48 When I was US Attorney, I received a phone call
01:50 from a member of Congress to investigate
01:52 his political opponent.
01:54 And I indicated that I would not,
01:57 and that if he had a claim, that he should submit it
02:00 to the FBI.
02:02 But I think there are good, well-meaning individuals that
02:05 try to make those good decisions.
02:07 But there's no question, you cannot simultaneously
02:10 proliferate the laws, and expand the power of the prosecutor,
02:15 and at the same time, expand immunity protection.
02:18 You can't take away accountability
02:20 and give them more power, and not expect abuse
02:24 to come as a result.
02:25 You know, Mr. Tolman, I think it's interesting.
02:27 Prosecutor abuse happens.
02:30 It's happened for years.
02:30 I mean, you look at it in the case of politics.
02:32 You look at Senator Ted Stevens as an example
02:35 several years ago.
02:37 But to me, it seems to be much more in your face
02:41 than it has ever been before.
02:42 Would you agree with that?
02:43 I would agree with that.
02:44 And I think the prime example would probably
02:46 be the prosecution of President Trump under federal law,
02:51 and quite frankly, under state law, too.
02:53 Well, you have a prosecution going on right now
02:55 that individuals on both sides of the aisle
02:58 have commented on the lack of evidence,
03:00 the inapplicability of the law, the attempt
03:02 to manipulate the facts in order to go after.
03:06 Whether you like him or don't like President Trump,
03:09 it should be concerning that a prosecutor would
03:11 be able to manipulate their way into the courtroom
03:14 against a political opponent.
03:16 Correct, and I'm going to switch gears on you again.
03:19 You've mentioned several examples,
03:20 writing a check, the pre-war stuff, pre-war liquor.
03:24 How can we, or even federal agencies,
03:26 start to rein in this growth, quite frankly,
03:31 in the administrative state?
03:32 How can we do that?
03:34 I think there are plenty of professors, advocates, groups,
03:42 even like Right on Crime, the organization I'm with,
03:44 or many of the other organizations here,
03:46 that would be willing to lend a hand to identify
03:49 the criminal statutes and the criminal regulations
03:52 that are outdated and could very easily be taken off the books.
03:55 And that process should begin, and it should maintain.
04:00 So you should continually be doing that as we move forward.
04:04 Otherwise, we're just collecting and compiling
04:06 and bloating our criminal code.
04:09 Thank you, Mr. McLaughlin.
04:10 I want to turn to you.
04:11 The expansion of our federal criminal laws
04:13 and encroaching on areas traditionally governed
04:15 by the states, creating constitutional tensions,
04:19 redundancies in statutes.
04:22 Prior to Congress, I served in the General Assembly
04:24 of South Carolina.
04:25 And I want to make sure that federal laws don't really
04:27 overcomplicate the efforts that are happening
04:29 on the state and local level.
04:30 Can you talk a little bit about how federal regulations
04:32 are affecting state economies and local businesses?
04:35 Yes, thank you.
04:40 It's a subtle effect in the work that I've done.
04:45 Generally speaking, there's not a single regulation
04:47 that will put a business out of business.
04:49 But it's the death by 10,000 cuts sort of effect,
04:52 or in this case, over a million cuts.
04:54 So I've found that as federal regulation accumulates
04:57 over time, it slows down investments in new ideas.
05:01 And then it slows down innovation.
05:03 And that ultimately makes businesses
05:04 suffer because they can't put out new products,
05:06 can't employ more people.
05:07 There's all sorts of consequences
05:10 all the way down the line.
05:11 So death by 1,000 cuts, the straw
05:13 that broke the camel's back, these
05:14 are the things that local businesses
05:16 are facing every single day from the growth
05:18 of the federal regulatory overreach.
05:21 Absolutely.
05:22 Gentlemen, this time has expired.
05:23 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
05:24 I'll yield back.