U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson says he’s pushing his GOP colleagues to pursue recess appointments to quickly confirm President Trump’s cabinet nominees.
“Democrats are going to keep running out the clock here and denying President Trump the confirmed secretaries for his departments. I mean, it’s pretty grotesque from my standpoint,” Johnson said on WISN’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “If Democrats won’t cooperate, allow these individuals who are going to be confirmed in a timely fashion, President Trump needs to get his team in place, and if that means recess appointments, that’s the route we should take.”
Entering the second week of the Trump administration, Johnson, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said he was unaware of any increased immigration enforcement currently underway in Wisconsin.
“The Trump administration is going after people that are a real danger to society, the real criminals,” Johnson said. “In those law enforcement actions, if they find people in this country illegally, they’ll also be caught up in the law enforcement actions.
“Local law enforcement ought to cooperate with federal law enforcement,” Johnson added when asked if state and local officials should be prosecuted if they obstruct deportation efforts.
Last week, a federal judge halted Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, a move Johnson said he backed.
“I understand his opinion,” Johnson said, referring to the judge. “It’s what conservative judges do, they apply the law as they interpret it. From a standpoint of just international law, we’re only one of the very few nations that allow birthright citizenship. I know why we passed the 14th Amendment. I think it definitely applied in that circumstance. Supporters then, I’m not sure the people passing the 14th Amendment, would anticipate wide open borders and this flood of illegal immigrants coming uncontrolled into this country, somewhat incentivized by birthright citizenship. So, times have changed. We’ll see how this is adjudicated in the courts.”
On Trump’s sweeping Jan. 6 pardons, Johnson said he would have been more cautious.
“There was a grotesque miscarriage of justice throughout the Biden administration,” Johnson said. “Certainly as it relates to people that participated in Jan. 6, a lot of that misjustice had to be rectified. I would have probably gone at it a little more cautiously. But in the end I think President Trump said let’s just pardon them all. I don’t have a real problem. I think the people who did commit violent acts, I’m not sure I would have pardoned them, but I think they served jail time, and you have to really take a look at what jail time they served versus, for example, violent criminals in New York and California that are just being let on the streets.”
Attorney General Josh Kaul says he is “not intimidated” by the new Trump administration and Justice Department memo calling for local officials to be prosecuted if they obstruct deportation efforts, calling it a “disastrous first week in office.”
“These are intimidation tactics,” Kaul told “UpFront.” “I’m not intimidated. I know that my colleagues in other states are not intimidated because we uphold the law, and we’re going to do what’s in the best interest of the people of our state.”
The Dem AG said he has not been in touch with any ICE or federal officials but explained what he sees as the state’s role in federal immigration enforcement.
“The issue that’s going to come up is when we have discretionary decisions to make, how are we going to allocate law enforcement resources?” Kaul said. “So at the Department of Justice, our focus is on investigating and prosecuting the most significant cases or cases where there’s nobody else who can step up and bring an investigation or prosecution, and I don’t want to see resources to be diverted away from homicide investigations or the investigations of other serious crimes to make state law enforcement agencies sort of deputies for a federal agency.
“Certainly, if there’s somebody who has committed some horrific, violent crime and there’s an effort to deport them, nobody wants to see those folks remain in the country,” Kaul added. “But at the same time, I don’t want to see some of the extreme stuff we’ve seen from the Trump administration, like potentially having immigration raids at churches or schools, against people who themselves have committed no crime other than being here undocumented.”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Republicans will introduce legislation that would “require that everyone has to follow the law and cooperate with ICE.”
“I’ve seen the speaker’s comments in the press, but we haven’t seen any potential bill drafts,” Kaul said. “And that’s unfortunate because if you want to have effective law enforcement efforts, having collaboration, and having an opportunity to think through bills and make sure they’re effective is a good thing. What I think we’re seeing instead is an effort to play politics with this issue, and that’s concerning, particularly when we have police chiefs and sheriffs around the state of Wisconsin who make judgments every day about how to use their resources most effectively. That’s who I want to see making decisions about law enforcement resources, not Robin Vos and not the Legislature.”
Madison-based attorney Peter Moyers, who represented several Jan. 6 defendants in Minnesota and Wisconsin, said Wisconsin client Charles Walters was surprised by Trump’s pardon.
“He had always said, look, ‘I know I was wrong,’” Moyers told “UpFront.” “‘I shouldn’t have been in there. I just don’t think I did that much damage,’ and he was certainly prepared to take his lumps and take his punishment, which he saw something he had coming.”
Walters was still awaiting sentencing. Prosecutors say he kicked through fencing and confronted police.
“We now live in the digital age, and a lot of this is stuff that no pardon or commutation or anything like that can erase,” Moyers said. “You can still find out all about it. Unfortunately, this is going to be all my client’s top Google hits for their name, maybe for the rest of their lives.”
Moyers says he’s politically “on the left” and learned himself from his clients.
“On Jan. 6, 2021, I was really upset, I was horrified, and even though I’m a criminal defense lawyer I said in my heart I don’t care what happens,” Moyers said. “I think all these people need to be put in prison. And then, as always happens in my work, you meet people and you see that it’s a little more complex than that. And it put me in contact with a lot of people that I otherwise might not even spend time with because they think so differently than I do. And so, you know, it was kind of an odd way for me to meet people who think very differently than I do. It gave me some insight into as divided in this country as people are, people sometimes screw up.”
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