SFR sits down with Rep. Lamar Smith

Frank Gaffney: Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio this is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. It is a great privilege to have a man that brings uncommon intelligence to the war for the free world and has done so for a long time in the House of the United States Congress where he represents the people of the 21^st district of Texas. He has served as the chairman of the House Judiciary committee. Ranked as the most effective member of the House by UVA and Vanderbilt University. And also recognized as a policymaker of the year by Politico which is no small thing for a conservative republican. He is also now the Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology committee and serves of judiciary and homeland security committees as well. Mr. Chairman welcome back to Secure Freedom Radio. It is a pleasure.

Rep. Smith: Frank, thank you for such a nice introduction. Good to be with you and your listeners as always.

Frank Gaffney: I wanted to first and foremost to get the breaking news and your response to it. The people of Britain voted to exit the European Union. What are your thoughts on that?

Rep. Smith: Right. Well contrary to maybe a lot of folks here in the United States, I actually would have voted that way myself. I think they have taken a stance for their independence. I think they want to control their own destiny. They want to make their own laws not have them made in Brussels by the Europeans. They want to control their own borders when it comes to immigration laws. They want to control their own economy. So I thought it was a good vote and quite frankly I think it may indicate how Donald Trump is going to do in the presidential election as well.

Frank: Yeah I am reminded of the parallel of 1979 with Maggie Thatcher being elected with Ronald Reagan the next year. We will be following this closely needless to say. You have of course been besieged in the halls of Congress, as I mentioned earlier, by those who’ve argued, notably some members of the democratic minority in the house, that gun control is the appropriate response to the attack in Orlando. What are you thoughts on what the democrats have been doing, sir, and specifically that proposition?

Rep. Smith: It is hard to imagine that the president of the United States and a lot of his democratic allies would think that the solution to terrorist attacks is gun control. They’re using this tragedy and other tragedies to advance their own political agenda because in the case of the Orlando attack, in the case of other mass shootings, in the case of killings that they link to gun control, not a signal piece of legislation that they’ve proposed would have prevented any of those mass murders from occurring. And so it really is just trying to change the subject and advance part of their agenda.

Frank Gaffney: One other thing that you’ve been very active on for a long time, again our guest is Representative Lamar Smith of Texas: this idea of border security. A big issue down in your neck of the woods in San Antonio but of course for the country as well. The ruling of the Supreme Court yesterday was significant I think. Tell us what your thoughts are?

Rep. Smith: The Supreme Court left intact a lower federal court ruling. It basically said that the President’s executive amnesty efforts were beyond his authority. he is president of the United States, admittedly but he cannot make the laws by himself and he cannot change laws that had been duly enacted. So I thought this was a great decision that left that lower court opinion stand. It is put a hold to the President’s amnesty efforts. This is exactly as it should be and we need to secure the border. The president says the border is secure and let a half a million people are coming into our country illegally every year. That doesn’t count another several hundred thousand people who come in on tourist visas and business visas and over stay the visas and become illegal because of that. So, the border is out of control. The president is doing nothing about it other than encouraging more illegal immigration by offering amnesty of people coming to the country illegally.

Frank Gaffney: I was struck by his comments in response to the Supreme Court ruling congressmen smith. He said we’d have to live with this until November. Did you read anything into that? That after the election there may be some trick up his sleeve?

Rep. Smith: I think what he is hoping that if Hillary Clinton is elected, she will appoint more liberal supreme court justices to the supreme court and maybe they can overrule it in the future. I, of course, hope that the next president is Mr. Trump and he will appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court and we will lock in that particular ruling and perhaps overturn some other liberal rulings. He blamed the republicans for not appointing his nominee. That was a full admission that his nominee was going to be a liberal, was going to side with him on giving to amnesty to millions of people in the country illegally. So he really tipped his hand on his own nominee and what he hoped the future of the Supreme Court would do. We have to stop that.

Frank Gaffney: One of the other things in which you’ve really be heroically active, i think congressman smith, is the so called criminal justice reform initiative. Raising serious questions about the advisability of letting many dangerous people out of our prisons. Could you give us a sense of why you are concerned about that and where the legislation stands?

Rep. Smith: I’m concerned, I’m really disappointed that some of our leaders are promoting this sort of effort to release individuals back into our community who have been convicted of some very very serious crimes. You might almost call it a jailbreak of historic proportions. That somehow drug offenders and drug traffickers should be put back into our communities. One of the arguments that they use is that there are a huge number of federal prisoners and yet our federal inmate population is at a ten year low. They say these individuals are nonviolent offenders. But 99% are actually drug traffickers not just in prison because of simple possession. And a lot of those in allegedly because of simple possession are there because of plea bargains and they were actually charged with far more serious crimes. So i do no think we should be releasing these individuals back into our community. It’s curious to see liberal democrats say that they are suddenly worried about the cost of something. A point of view I can’t think of money better spent than to keep our communities safe. And we’ve also seen statistics for when these people are put back into our communities a high percentage are arrested for more crimes within the next three years. So why would we intentionally inflict this kind of harm on innocent Americans by releasing people who ought to be held in prison.

Frank Gaffney: Congressman Lamar Smith, let me just turn finally to one of the issues I know you’ve been concerned about as have I and has particular relevance to your work on the science and technology committee. That is the vulnerability of the electric grid. I had your colleague congressman Weber on recently and we talked about the work his subcommittee is doing. Give us a flavor of the importance of trying to protect against not just attacks but space weather?

Rep. Smith: Well the cyber attacks on our electric grid, which have occurred, will occur, and we hope never be successful are clear and present dangers to our country and quite frankly to the world. We’re told repeatedly that the next major terrorist attack isn’t going to be a lone gunman, isn’t going to be people flying aircraft into tall buildings. It is going to be a cyber attack. A cyber attack brought Wall Street to its knees or dismantles the California electrical system will put us into a devastating recession/depression for years to come. That’s where we ought to be looking to defend ourselves. We really aren’t doing enough. We need to spend more money quite frankly on research and technology to come up with technology to mitigate these cyber attacks. We need to have better cooperation between the private sector and government. The private sector is not recording the number of cyber attacks that they are being hit with and they need to do more of that. And the answer to me is not necessarily more government regulation it is more and better technology and cooperation. It is acknowledgement both by the private sector and government, which is not always forthcoming that this is a huge danger to our economy, to our country, and to our citizens.

Frank Gaffney: your leadership in all of these areas is deeply appreciated sir. We look forward to talking about it in the near future. Keep it up in the meantime. Have a good forth of July.