Roundtable: Local Pols On Comey, Labor Split-up, Returning Seized Funds

MS: the firing of James Coney draws reaction from California and say date -- San Diego politicians. The AFL-CIO takes over the Imperial County Leo different legal counseling and fires a later. They seize the assets of a pot dispensary and the owners life savings and held them for over a year though no charges were filed. The KPBS Roundtable starts now. Welcome to our discussion. I am Mark Saur. Joining me at the roundtable is editor a public or, Chris Jennewein. CJ: Great to be here Mark. MS: Scott Lewis , hello. SL: Hello. MS: Ricky Young is the editor of the Union Tribune watch ducting. RY: Hello. MS: Joshua Stewart, hello. JS: Thank you for having me. MS: The fascinating reality show that has Donald Trump's presidency had a ratings busting episode this week. Transpired the FBI director investigating his campaign ties to Russia, hacking our election. Is just in time or the May sweeps. He reportedly thought this move would be held by Republicans and Democrats a lot -- like. Not so much. What was the original reaction and we will get to the point that the reasons evolves of the week. CJ: Lawmakers, and I think people across the country were surprised, even shocked that this would happen. Our Congressmen in this area, Scott peters, a put it in a colorful way. He said it was breathtaking. It was brazen. To me, what was surprising and shocking was not that he was fired. But the way it was done. There is a cloud of suspicion that raised over the Trump administration. Reminded people of Watergate. At the same time, you know, with the Russian challenge with the suspicion about Russian collusion going on, it sure looked like maybe that was why he was firing him, not for the recent. It did not help that the next day, he met with the Russian foreign minister. It was closed to the American press but open to the Russian press. What message that sent? MS: We have an extraordinary photograph on the New York Times with a photo credit to the Russian ministry press agency. That is amazing to me. You shaking hands pick CJ: If he was trying to lay the suspicion to rest by firing County, he did not. He blamed them. MS: The reaction that you mention, the local reaction here, these are senators that had different reactions. How would you characterize THIS. CJ: Kamala Harris. They are both on the same place. This is a former state attorney general, immediately said that the US Attorney General, just session should resign because he signed off on recommendation to fire Comey. She said there should be a special prosecutor to invest to gate -- and investigate collusion. Dayan was more nuanced. She said that Trump called her to explain the firing. She talked about what qualities the Senate might look for in a new FBI director. MS: Before we get to that, we do have a bite. I think her to change a little bit. This is her Senate intelligence committee hearing on Thursday. [Sound bite] As I reflect on the decision to dismiss director commie -- Comey, I am incredulous thinking about the ongoing investigation into Russia's interference with our presidential election and possible connections to associate of the Trump campaign administration. MS: That is stronger there but she is probably not running for her seat or have ambitions for higher office. Not so with Harris. CJ: Harris has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. What is interesting about what we just heard, she was not talking about the merits of James Comey. She was talking about the way this came out and the way that raised suspicion about Russian involvement. It underscored the chaotic nature of the Trump administration. Remember, many Democrats go to James Comey and said he was the reason he -- Hillary Clinton lost in November. MS: Right. That is why I said, you know, Trump and Republican say, you have been complain about this. We have this whole verdict from the Justice Department officially saying you know, there were emails with Clinton. Why are you upset? SL: In writing, the reason they fired him was because how poorly he had treated Hillary Clinton. That is putting the country on his face. What is interesting is the fallout and what has become clear is there is no such thing as a White House. There is a White House position on things or the White House's position on that. We used to rely on that in the past. This is the president's position. Now, the president has completely undermined this arrogance at the White House as they laid out this rationale for what happened. He said luck. I just wanted to fire him. Brazenly admitted that it was because of the Russian investigation. We have no such thing as a White House that is a credible source of information that reflects what the presidency is trying to do. I think that is fine for now anyway but when it comes to crises and other things, it is a harbinger of stressful future. MS: The president tweeted today. Let's cancel the press -- press briefings. SL: It is so weird what is happening. If we cannot trust one side of that -- the White House to say one thing that reflects the truth of the government, we are in trouble when it comes to a war or an attack or crisis. CJ: The irony of this is there were voices that said maybe it is time for James Comey to move on but that has been drowned out in the chaos and the mishandling of what happened. The Wall Street Journal does not mince words. In an editorial comment they said that some of what he did during the campaign but basically, they took them to task for not messaging it properly. MS: You mentioned Scott peters. He was adamant about firing law-enforcement officers. And pointing to her replacement. Something that happened in the dictatorship. There is a Republican that was people see him as one of the most viable seats coming up next year Congress. He said, he has bothered me for a long time and it is time to get rid of him. SL: It is a relief that the FBI director work for the president. We can talk about how much distance they place between themselves and how much freedom the officials have the fact is, he reports to the president and he can fire him. If we want to solidify the norms, we cannot just trust a president to do that. We saw the same thing when Bob took over the city of San Diego. He told them not to inspect buildings until he got what he wanted. When people break norms, it is up to us to decide whether we want to establish those laws or deal with the consequences that come with that. CJ: Comey said, he believed the president could fire the FBI director for any reason or for no reason. That is true. It is up to Congress and up to us as Scott says, to make sure that there are some norms that are followed. MS: Check and balances is not a top priority on the president list. He is attacked the press. He has done attacked the Justice Department and the FBI and increment -- Democrats. The list is long. What about the people like Duncan Hunter and another local congressman? SL: A lot of Republicans say the chaos. People do not like K is. We lost the freedom to not think about the president all the time. That is going to cause conflict in the polls. You want to trust that things are okay. Republicans might be in danger of paying a price because of the turmoil. MS: Maybe things will change before 2018 expect to we get an intimate -- independent commissioner to look at this? CJ:I think there is a growing chance that there will be someone like that. There are enough Republicans who might go for, particularly as this chaos continues. MS: For political coverage? CJ: At some point, either the Trump administration or the Republican leaders are going to have to say, we cannot operate or get a legislative -- this accomplish under this. We have to clear this up. MS: All right. We believe that topic. There will be more to come on presidential reactions. Months of in fighting culminated with the labor Council. The leaders could clean house and there is a formation of a new labor poll. This is the San Diego Working Families Council. What was behind that? SL: Locally, the AFL-CIO which is a federation of unions. It is a federation of unions. It is represented locally by the labor Council. The president of that, he runs the union with one of the biggest unions in town. He is the chairman of the board. The leader of the labor Council, is Dale Bankhead. Mickey and Dale have left the AFL-CIO and put them into receivership. The new group that they form, along with other large unions, included the union that represents the county workers, the local union, they have formed a separate counsel. There is a who broke up with who first going on. The fact is, the institution, this is now out. There is a lot of restructuring going on. I spoke with Bridget -- Bridget Browning who owns that workers union. She is taking the union back and rejoining the Council. They lost some and they are gaining some back. She has hope that. We have asked if there is a huge rivalry and they said no. We work together a lot. They will not make people choose loyalties but this is a dramatic change. Mickey is a very important person within the Council. MS: This labor counsel get off the deck? JS: You know, labor counsel is its own probation. They will be run by appointees. They will through the bylaws .2 standard traditional replacements to fill their shoes. At the same time, they have lost a lot of members and political donors. Members have provided political contributions. Some of the weight is out. MS: Go head. Culture thought and I will get back with a bite. They claim the new counsel will be powerful. Here is that. [Sound Bite] We will be major players in political races such as county races, city Council races, state races and congressional races. We will be major players. The unions on the podium, I think they have a tremendous amount of influence in the city. MS: All right. He said they will be major players. That says the labor counsel will not be. It does seem to set up a rivalry. Doesn't not? CJ: I think that is a fundamental question. And press releases that the issued, they said we will have the bulk of the political money that the original counsel had in the past. Anytime you divide, your dividing it by two. That will have an impact. Is hard to say that dividing the union into broad entities will create a more cohesive union environment. JS: One thing is, this new organization is partnering with community groups and not just traditional labor unions and bargain for contracts. It does bring in different types of interest and different types of expertise that the labor counsel does not have. MS: Scott? SL: They did take major unions to the new organization but again, the hotel workers are going back. The teachers union relet -- remit -- remained in the labor counsel. They are powerful groups. There are others that are there. If they do not fight each other, maybe it will provide more of an outlet for people to express themselves. MS: How much of this is egos and how does that play out? Back it matters in the sense that there have been accusations. It is about the way he is managed with sexual harassment. Waste talked about that. There was coming a point where something had to give. There was no reconciliation possible at the labor Council. There still remains a bitter fight about that. It has played out in the fight for the city Council presidency and Democrats control the city Council this was a huge battle. A lot of people felt like they missed out or they got what they wanted. There is a rift. Labor is not monolithic. MS:How do Democrats react to this change? SL: most of them are trying to stay out of it. JS: They do not want to be forced to pick a side expect cautious statements? Back at the same time, Democrats are trying to reengage the Democrats with the labor youth movement. You know, labor has been traditionally a big ally but as we saw in 2016, union households did not come out with reliable numbers for candidates. MS: Not only that, I was curious. Union membership has fallen a lot. This is the US labor statistics. 10% of American workers are union members last year. In 1983, it was 20%. How big and how important are the labor unions? SL: It is important to remember, there is not a lot of professional interest. There are unions. There are attorneys. After that, it is all active as. That puts them at a disadvantage where it is eight different template when they go after Republicans who have restaurant and hotel interest. So, it matters in the sense of that infrastructure, bringing people out to vote and out to rally and to organize people. And then just pay. They float and support the mayor in 2014. They spent almost $5 million on his campaign. He leapfrogged and made budget runoff and ended up losing. That is the power. You can choose who the opposition is going to be. One thing like the hotel workers union, that is nothing compared to the Bay Area. 90% of the hotels organize. A lot of the energy is old labor counsel and they will try to be more organized. We will see if that actually happens. MS: It will be fascinating going forward. Especially with the next year election. Civil libertarians have been outraged with the practice of seizing a drug suspects aspects. Cassia property can be taken even when there are no charges brought, much less a conviction. Initiated case, it is the district Attorney office that got busted. Monte found herself on the wrong end of a ruling involving a medical marijuana businessman. Start with what happened in this case. What were the high points? RY: January 2016, federal and -- agents came to Kearny, Mesa. They distributed oils, cartridges, some things like that that were made of marijuana. They had agents filing in with sledgehammers and breaking down doors. They took the equipment, all of the money with $324,000. That is not actually the point of issue. What is at issue, $100,000 they went after for the owners personal money that belonged to his wife, his kids college fund and his mother's safety deposit box. They did a full take of his property. He contested that. He lost in one round but then recently this week, he won an order to get the money back. MS: I'm in, this is remarkable. The judge in a ruling this week says, he was not buying the DA arguments. What was the deal? RY: the first was more on the merits that he lost in November. You know, he tried to prove that everything was on the up and up and he should get his money back and did not succeed. That was in part because the case -- charges were never filed and it was not adjudicated. At some point, time ran out. There is a 12 month statute of imitations. He went back and said, I would really like my money back. He won on that point. MS: We do have a bite from the owner, James points out that the police come by and they show him the operations. He had a business license. Let's hear this. [Sound Bite] I did not know anything about it until it happened to me. It is an amazing dark secret of the American justice system that money is considered guilty until proven innocent. MS: The idea is the personal funds in the bank accounts were ill-gotten gains and we can take your money because it derives from the same thing pick RY: This is like the people versus a pile of money. He is not the defendant. The money is. You know, there is the Institute for Justice, I think it goes -- it is call. They represent him for free. They saw his case as particularly emblematic as what can be seen as abuses by the government. They went for the personal money first and then the business Monday -- money is pending. MS: There is another pile of money. RY:Yes. That is being held. MS: No charges have been filed all this time. CJ: This is common in a lot of other areas. Vehicles and firearms. RY: If you have a pile of hash in your motorcycle or your airplane, it is all suspect. It is a lower standard. It is not clear and convincing evidence or, you know, it is just probable cause. If they have probable cause that they think that this money has to do with criminal activity, they can take it. The burden of proof is on you to get back. MS: There have been restrictions. The police have restricted this power. RY: It is a threshold. Used to be if you had over $25,000 that they could take it and not have to give it back. That is except if you win. Now, that threshold has gone up to $40,000. They are going after big fish. It is not casual users. SL: Jill Anderson, I think is trying to do this. You know, we saw the president of the United States say he wants to harangue somebody for efforts to rein this in in Texas when the sheriff complained about this as a major source of revenue. It can be. RY: These are millions of dollars to local law enforcement for use in any number of ways, including fixing the budgets. They have a lot at stake here. As Scott points out, there are civil libertarians on both sides who do not like this MS: Who gets the money? Is that the police or the DA? RY: they divvy it up. This case, it was the feds breaking down the door but it was the San Diego police detective who signed the warrant. As we saw, it was Dumanis and some of the many. There are task forces that work together to go after crime and other people say the money they can get. MS: The proprietor here of this says this is a classic example of policing for profit. RY: He believes they went after him because they knew he had money. He had had many officials there is place. He signed off documentation. He payed taxes. He was a high profile business across the street from a Mercedes-Benz dealership. He was not hiding. One day, they took it all. 35 people were out of work. MS: No charges have been filed. There are details on what the prosecutor and police think they have against the suspect. What is the probable cause where he says I have nothing to hide. RY: This was a dispute on whether he was refining or extracting marijuana. I forget which is okay and which is not. First, they had proof that they offered anything was proof about him moving money around anyway that came to be laundering in the opinion of the police detective. SL: In this quasilegal environment, there is no safe place to put your money. You cannot use federal banking institutions. MS: It is a cash business. SL: It is awkward. They would love to have a bank. MS: Right. It brings up the point that since this happened, California voters have legalized pot for recreational use. This is medical marijuana shop. Does that change the equation? Of course the feds, this -- the feds have laws restricting marijuana even though states like California have loosened that. SL: Technically in California, you are allowed to have marijuana and you can grow three buds. You cannot buy it. It is awkward. They say those rules are problem. The problem -- the federal government says it is illegal. There is no place to put the money. There is no easy way to get around that. Evaded turn -- an attorney decides to crack down on it, I doubt this president will bring them in expect right. MS: Session says he will crank up the drug war, right? JS: Yes. He said I go for the biggest charge possible. MS: Yes. We have a short time let. Body was going to appeal the ruling and keep the assets? RY: She initially said the case is under investigation. They might appeal the ruling. They have decided not to appeal the ruling. They reiterate though that they will. We will see what happens. It is a fascinating story. MS: That wraps up a week of story at the KPBS Roundtable. I would like to thank my guess , Scott Lewis, Ricky Young, and Joshua Stewart. A reminder that the stories we discussed today are available on our website at www.kpbs.org. Thank you for joining us today on the roundtable.