Larry discusses invoking the 25th Amendment with Cornell University Law Professor William A. Jacobson

William A. Jacobson is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic.  He is a 1981 graduate of Hamilton College and a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School.  At Harvard he was Senior Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal and Director of Litigation for the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.  Prior to joining the Cornell law faculty in 2007, Professor Jacobson had a highly successful civil litigation and arbitration practice in Providence, Rhode Island, concentrating in investment, employment, and business disputes in the securities industry, including many high profile cases reported in leading newspapers and magazines.  Professor Jacobson has argued cases in numerous federal and state courts, including the Courts of Appeal for the First, Fifth and Sixth Circuits, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court.  Professor Jacobson has a national reputation as a leading practitioner in securities arbitration.  He was Treasurer, and is a former member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, a professional organization of attorneys dedicated to protecting public investors.  He frequently is quoted in national media on issues related to investment fraud and investor protection, and in the past has served as one of a small number of private practice attorneys who trained new arbitrators for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.Professor Jacobson is co-author of the Securities Arbitration Desk Reference (Thomson-Reuters), updated annually.  Professor Jacobson also is the founder and publisher of Legal Insurrection, a popular politics and law website.  He is frequently quoted in the media on political and legal topics, has authored many Op-Eds in major publications, and appears on television and radio to discuss politics and the law.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is a podcast from WOR.Here's Larry Minting with more of the wr
Saturday Morning Show, Welcome Back.Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson made national news
for a column he wrote calling forPresident Biden to be constitutionally removed from office.
Professor Jacobson joins US now. ProfessorJacobson, thank you so much for

(00:24):
agreeing to talk with us today.You made Thank you for having me on.
Wonderful that you're here. You madenational news for saying that the twenty
fifth Amendment should be invoked, andyour reasoning for this goes far beyond the
twenty twenty four election, which everybodyelse seems to be focused on. Please
explain your position on this. Yes, it's very troubling that all people seem

(00:46):
to be worried about is will thishelp Joe Biden get elected or not help
him? And that's what the Democratscertainly are all talking about, whether this
will hurt his chances. But it'sa more fundamental issue, which is he
is the commander in chief. Weneed a president who has the cognitive ability
to deal with what could be emergencycrises. If the Pentagon goes to the

(01:08):
President and says there's an incoming missileand it's going to hit the US in
seven minutes. We need a presidentwho can make a decision because those are
the shorter of decisions that only apresident can make, is to follow their
military recommendations or not. And whatpeople are losing sight of is that Joe

(01:30):
Biden, by all appearances, byall performances, is incapable of making those
sort of decisions. He couldn't evenhandle a debate with Donald Trump under rules
that Joe Biden set. And sothis should not be a part of an
issue because we can talk about whatthe twenty fifth Amendment means, but if
it is invoked successfully, it's simplyreplacing one Democrat with another Democrat. So

(01:53):
this is not an issue that we'regoing to get rid of Joe Biden and
a Republican going to take his place. And that's what is very troubling.
I don't think I can't recall asingle Democrat politician who's been calling on Joe
Biden to consider stepping aside or tostep aside, who has said the reason

(02:14):
he needs to do that is becausehe cannot be the functioning president we need
at a nation. It's all aboutthe election. Yeah, just to clarify
what you're saying. The Democrats thathave come out, and it's really just
been a handful of them that havecome out publicly, but those that have
come out are just saying he shouldn'trun again, not that he should step

(02:34):
down from the presidency. And that'sa huge distinction, isn't it. It
is because the question is is heunfit or incapable of carrying out the duties
of the presidency? And I thinkthat what the answer is is, yes,
he is incapable. He may beable to handle most of them,

(02:55):
but he can't handle key national securitydecisions that might need to be made on
short notice that puts us all atgreat risk. We're talking with Cornell University
law professor William Jacobson, who gotsome national attention for writing an article saying
that we should invoke the twenty fifthAmendment. Now, the twenty fifth Amendment

(03:15):
is difficult to invoke, an evenmore difficult to see through to the end.
Could you take a minute to explainthe steps of the twenty fifth Amendment
to remove a president, in thiscase, President Biden from office. Yes,
Well, the starting point is thatyou would need the vice president,
so you would need Kamala Harris,and you would need the majority of the

(03:37):
executive officers of the United States,which is generally considered to be the cabinet.
So you would need a majority ofthe cabinet members plus the Vice President
to deliver a letter to the Presidentpro Temper of the Senate and to because
the Vice president is the president ofthe Senate, so the President pro Temper

(04:01):
of the Senate and to the Speakerof the House, if signed by the
Vice president and the majority of thecabinet, saying the president is unable to
fulfill the duties of the office.If that happens, the vice president immediately
takes over the function of the president. But it doesn't end there. The
president then has the ability to contestthat, and the president could deliver a

(04:26):
letter saying they're wrong, Yes,I can carry out these duties. If
that happens, the same people vicepresident and majority of the Cabinet have up
to four days to deliver a replyto that which says no, he's not.
If that happens, the vice presidentassumes the duties of the presidency,
pending a vote by both houses ofCongress, and that vote has to take

(04:53):
place within twenty one days of whenthey're called into session, So they have
to be called into session within fourdays of that last step, and they
have up to twenty one days tomake the decision. Pending that decision,
the vice president is essentially the president. But if the vote fails and they
are unable to get two thirds ofeach house to vote to remove the president,

(05:17):
then the president resumes the office.So you have a process which could
immediately remove the president, but onlyon a temporary basis, pending ultimately a
vote by the House and the Senate. And it's a two thirds burden,
so it is a high burden.So it's not an easy procedure to invoke,

(05:38):
but I believe it's warranted to atleast start the process here. I
think the vice president and the cabinetowe it to the American people after what
we saw and what we've been seeingreally for two years, to protect our
country. And again, this isnot a partisan issue because it simply means
Kamala Harris becomes the president as opposedto Joe Biden. Yeah, they make

(06:00):
it purposely difficult to do, andI understand that because you're talking about removing
the president of the United States,but can you explain how that could possibly
happen. You have Kamala Harris,you have a Biden cabinet who are Biden
loyalists. Then you have a DemocraticSenate and a Republican House with razor thin

(06:21):
majorities in each. It is soonerous to go through that process, and
we only have a few months leftin this administration. I don't think that
feasible, do you. It maynot be feasible, but we would hope,
I know this sounds very naive,We would hope that even some Democrats

(06:41):
in the House, in the Senatewould do the right thing, because again,
we're replacing a Democrat with a Democrat. We're not replacing a Democrat with
a Republican. No, you makea great point. I want to talk
about one other thing and get yourthoughts about this. Apparently a lot of
people knew that President Biden was sufferingthis mental decline and was having a difficult

(07:03):
time doing his tasks. People inhis administration were protecting him from outsiders getting
to see him. They were verycareful about news conferences. As you know,
he hasn't held one since last November, except for the one that's being
held this week, and the mediaknew all this, and the media covered

(07:24):
this up. This is one ofthe biggest cover ups in decades, don't
you agree? Well, I thinkit is. And cover up is the
right word, because everybody when theythink of media collusion against Republicans thinks of
the Russia collusion, which obviously wasnever proven. But the media was trying

(07:45):
to convince us that something we couldnot see existed. Bits of information,
sometimes disinformation, but bits and pieces. They tried to put it all together,
that Trump must be a Russian agentor something like that, but we
could and see that. Here they'retaking something we all saw for really a
number of years. We've seen JoeBiden's decline. I went back and I

(08:07):
looked at our coverage at my websiteLegal Insurrection in twenty twenty, and Democrats
were criticizing Biden for the very samecognitive declines. So in that Democrat primary,
other contestants in the primary were criticizinghis mental abilities. So this is

(08:31):
something that's been out there since atleast twenty twenty, and we've all seen
it, and we've saw all ofthe clips of him freezing at different events,
staring into the blankness, and themedia tried to claim all those were
cheap fakes. They're not fake,but they're deceptively edited, they're trimmed down.
You're not really getting the full picture. And they all know that was

(08:54):
not true. The same people whothree weeks ago or the week before the
debate were saying these were all cheapfakes and Republicans are trying to make something
out of nothing. Now we're sayingwe've known this for six months, we've
known this for a year. Well, if people were whispering to us from
the White House about the problems,these are what they're reporting now. I

(09:15):
forget who it was, which network, but you know wrote a lengthy article
about the whispering campaign and what she'dbeen told since January about Biden's problems,
and they're even worse than we nowknow. Well, why did you remain
silent for six months? So everybodysaw this. Everybody knew this, and

(09:37):
it was one grand scheme to coverit up, and it hit the road
when he was on TV for anhour and a half because they couldn't call
it a cheap fake. It wasa CNN sponsored debate, It was debate
rules proposed by Biden. It wasa debate that Biden initiated, and it

(09:58):
was an hour and a half oflive streaming and it was brutal. And
that you know, if you thinkof a damn you know, you see
water trickling through, Well, that'sbeen happening for years, and then all
of a sudden it blows open andthat debate blew it blew open the hoax
that was being perpetrated, that JoeBiden's okay, and that it's all something

(10:18):
his political opponents have invented. Andit turned out that that's not true.
Right, And when you consider right, and they can't cover this up anymore.
We're kind of out of time rightnow, Professor Jacobson. I apologize
for having to to wrap this up, but where can people read more of
yourself? Sure? Our main websiteis legal Insurrection one word, legal insurrection

(10:41):
dot com. Wonderful. Thank youso much. I really appreciate your time.
Take care, Cornell, Professor WilliamJacobson. This has been a podcast from wor