Booktv continues now on cspan2, television for serious readers. Good afternoon, everybody. Its a pleasure to be with you and this merges several of my interests. The constitution,conservative politics , books about those things, the Heritage Foundation and my friends jason and julie j fitz. I first came to know the name Jason Chaffetz when he became a placekicker at byu. This date holds records including the most successful points after touchdown scored in a single game and i think in a single season. And he was also famous for the fact immediately after he kicked a field goal for or pat, the helmet would come off and then he had this awesome slow jog to the sidelines and he became known as the chaffetz and it resulted in something called the chaffetz rule but i actually think it played a key role in his success as a statesman in the state of utah. People came to know him and they knew who he was. I remember many years later, long after he had played for byu and had a successful career as a businessman, i met him in person for the first time. I was quite starstruck because it was a big deal. Met him while he was running governor huntsmans campaign for governor before he was governorhuntsman. And he, Jason Chaffetz himself convinced me that John Huntsman was the man to become utahs next governor in 2004 we had a long conversation about it at the convention and several months after that after governor huntsman got elected he called me and informed me i was under consideration or a position within thehuntsman administration and he said i didnt apply and he said i dont care, we want to talk to you anyway. We hit it off and we ended up working together i ended up serving as his general counsel at the time when Jason Chaffetz was chief of staff. But my most Important Role during that time was when i became his chauffeur. He and i live closer together and any two members of the senior staff and one point jason broke his foot, long story, we wont getinto that. It sounds like the punchline to a joke and it was quite serious but he fell and broke his foot and had to be in a cast, had to be elevated for several months so im going to pick him up at his home in utah and he would sit in the backseat of the car he could keep his foot elevated and i asked him if you wanted me to get a hat, chauffeur and i didntcharge them anything. The only thing i charged him was he had to agree to be subjected to my empty rants on constitutional issues and to listen to taperecorded Supreme Court arguments which who wouldnt want to do that . But i digress. Were not here to talk about any of that. Were here to talk about the fact that of all, Jason Chaffetz is a hero when it comes to defending individual liberty and fighting against Big Government and he someone was willing to call out the left, both those who identify themselves as part of the left and also those who just want to build Big Government. Someone who understands the fact that there is something of a zerosum game when it comes to defending liberty. That if you are a government as you get bigger, as you become more powerful as a government, you do so at the expense of individual liberty. He understands the fact that government itselfis not and never can be, never will be omniscient, omnipotent or consistently benevolent. Argument is itself the use of collectiveforce , organized force and its run by fallible mortal individuals. Consequently, we have to carefully constrain its power and we have to make sure its not abuse. In his latest book, powergrab , jason explains how the levers of government power have been orchestrated in such a way as to effectively weapon eyes the threatening power of government. In a way that advances the political agenda of the left for another way of describing it might be advancing the politicalagenda of those who would expand government at the expense of individual liberty. He blows a whistle on how they have weapon eyes the use of criminal investigations in order to achieve a particular political outcome. To be clear, as Jason Chaffetz makes clear in power grab, this isnt a simple question of the red team versus the blue team. This is a question of liberty versus centralized government power. We fought a war over that. We won that war and we shouldnt be eager to go back to a system in which government knows best and government holds allthe power. We as a people are the sovereigns and we cant go back to a time where that is not the case. Thats why Jason Chaffetzs book power grab is such an important tool for those who want to live in a land where they are free. Whether you call yourself a conservative or a liberal or libertarian or Something Else , it shouldnt matter. What should matter to you is the concept of liberty and the concept that government exists for certain limited purposes, to make sure were secure and to make sure we have an enterprise that uses collective force for the purpose of defending life, liberty and property. The more we deviate from that, the more we run into a very real risk of a power grab where we become less free and less secure in our lives, liberty and property. Theres not a day that goes by that i dont miss having Jason Chaffetz serving in the house of representatives. He was someone who in addition to being a trusted friend and colleague when we worked in governor huntsmans office was someone who i came to trust and love working with when he was serving in the house of representatives and during my term in office inthe senate. Its hard for me to remember an issue where he and i took opposing viewpoints. He and i worked together on countless issues. I take comfort though in the fact that hes able to do an enormous amount of good where he is and informing the American People about the risks of biggovernment and keeping them informed of whats going on in washington. And hes exercising a lot of influence by writing books like power grab, which i highly recommend so with that join me in welcoming Jason Chaffetz, the author of power grab. Thank you, thanks for being here. Thanks to senator lee. He had a vote and now hes got another vote on the floor there. So its probably best that he do that. Right now i get totell my stories while hes not here, thats even better. I first said mike, this is amazing because we were at the utah county convention. Theres literally 1000 people at this event and this gentleman comes up and we Start Talking and he introduces himself as mike and i said do you have a card or something . Whats your name and he said mike lee. I knew he was the spitting image of his father who was, had been the president of Brigham Young university and he said mike lee and i said any relation to rex lee and hesaid thats my dad. I already knew that before he answered the question. I could somehow tell hes related. Rex lee was solicitor general for Ronald Reagan and he had argued some 100 cases before the Supreme Court. Fastforward, im the chief of staff and hes general counsel, one of the best things i did while i was chief of staff and it is true, i broke my foot. I broke my right foot so i couldnt use the accelerator. I tried to convince my wife i could drive leftfooted and she said im not going to do that and he would drive me to and from every day and what he didnt tell you is he had a cassette tape player in his car and he would listen to his dad argue these Supreme Court cases so he would literally put the cassette tape in their. Thats how much the guy loved the law and we would listen to the oral presentations before the Supreme Court. I learned a lot but thats what mike does forfun. Hes not listening to music or Something Like that. Youve got to love a guy whos that committed to it. Mike is going to walk us through a few things. I want to acknowledge my wife julie who is here with me. I appreciate her being here. I appreciate all of you being here. I want to thank the Heritage Foundation for making this all possible. Good heritage does in terms of informing people, being a resource while i was in congress, its such a great resource, so many good minds thinking through tough issues. The quick of why i wrote the book as i say at the beginning, even covey who is from our Congressional District wrote basic habits, seek first to understand, then be understood. And i wholeheartedly believe that. I also believe what Margaret Thatcher said. She said first you need to win the argument, then you can go out and win the votes and i always tell even before i went to congress, i it became more evident once i was there that republicans, conservatives, we were pathetic in our communication. We were getting no help from the mass media, the National Media was not going to be a conduit to which we could get our message out and have the platform or the time to be able to do that. So it was compounded by that. But ive always felt like we as conservatives have the right message. We just didnt say it very well and we didnt say it enough. And i remember when i was first in congress i met with eric cantor who had eight senior positionat the time, because i had been invited to be on fox news and i had , i couldnt believe it. So i called up eric cantor and i said are you all right if i go on fox news and hes like jason, are you kidding me . Go out there as much as you possibly can to get out our message and go on every other network you can get on and talk about why you believe what you believe. It was the right answer. It was good advice and i would argue that we need more people who can get in front of those cameras to go on all the networks to talk about what it is we believe and give that perspective. I dont buy into the idea that you need to just sit back and well, theyre not going to give us a fair shake so were not going to go on their. I did more interviews on msnbc and cbn, you probably didnt see them. Not that many people saw them. Then i did even on fox news. So 8 and a half years in congress and i left and i am blessed to have this continued relationship with fox but i always felt like i can still contribute in the Public Square because now more than ever i can get out there and talk about issues that matter for our country and at least from a conservative standpoint. And ive been blessed to have this relationship with harpercollins who did my first book called the deep state, newyork times bestseller and we launched this book literally seven days ago , power grab which is bifurcated into two different areas. How is it the democrats are using the levers of power that they have to do things that you all wouldnt necessarily see unless youd maybe been incongress or were really paying attention , but you need somebody draw your attention to them and what are the things that youre doing outside of congress to change the dynamic and the narrative and that was the first two chapters of the book that scared the living daylights out of you because they are doing some things on the left that will affect all of us whether you realize it or not. We as conservatives and republicans dont play off them nearly enough, democrats are always playing offense. And thats what i think i articulate here but mike is going to walk us through and then were going to do some q and a, at least i hope so s full disclosure, i worked for the former congressman when he was chairman of the House Oversight committee so a lot of this stuff in his book are some memories of the good times we had when he was running the committee. Ill go through a couple of those but id like to start off with your final town hall after trump was elected. Things got ugly. Thats a good table setter for whatthe environment looks like now. Tell us a little bit about that. I write about this in the forward area and i had one my fifthterm in congress. I was left to get 73 percent of the vote. This was roughly 4 or five weeks as i recall after donald trump had been sworn in so were talking the heart of winter in utah and all of a sudden im having town hall meetings. I have had i dont know how many town hall meetings. I love town hall meetings. Usually a group of this size, people can interact. I learned a lot by the questions that are asking, its a good format. The quick of it is democrats got a hold of this and had this group called indivisible utah which had a national presence, but they had a specific manual about how to take over a town hall meeting. This thing blossomed and blew up into thousand plus people that were showing up and they wanted to create thisillusion. Its a recurring theme but they wanted to create this illusion that a conservative republican in a state safe district who just happened to be the chairman of the oversight committeewith the newly minted president of the United States donald trump , that his voters were mad. That he didnt do his job and we need to hold the president accountable and he needed to do this and do that and they had this long list of demands of things they wanted me to do much of which i didnt think were in the purview of the United States congress. And so much so that it got out of control and it youve got to read the account but we had 30 Police Officers who had people openly carrying weapons withmasks in the parking lot. We had swat teams. It turned into quite a fiasco. The highlight of which ill give you is that there were two members of the National Media that had shown up. I dont remember ever having National Media show up to my town hall after i won my fifth election with 73 percent of the vote, we are weeks into the hundred 15th congress. Really . This one reporter insisted she interview me and i said let me talk to her on the phone first. And i said to her, why are you here . Why are you here . We have a source in San Francisco that says theres going to be a writerand perhaps a fire and i said really. Did you ever think thatmaybe, did you tell Law Enforcement about that . Did you call my office about that . Youre only telling me this because i asked you why youre here. And she said no. And i said, youre going to literally put 1000 people in danger if you think theres going to be a riot and a fire, potentially telling me people might die. You believe there is enough credibility, thats why youre here and these people were doing a live shot from my town hall meeting. And i call it the last town hallbecause it was the last one i ended up doing but this is how these people play. There is this kind of recurring theme in here that they really do believe on that radical far left side, they throw all these labels like fascist and all these negative terms on donald trump. But what i see them doing is exactly what they claim the president was doing. That in order to protect our freedom, they needed to take it away. In order to make sure the First Amendment is safe, they need to take away our rights under the First Amendment. Its a recurring theme but i could go on and on about this particular town hall meeting but it was used as a tool and the prop. A paid people to come in, there were people from all kinds of states but they wanted to create this illusion that it was a organic utah phenomenon and that there were all these stories that say look how many problems Donald Trumps was creating for everybody you get into a lot of examples of double standards or hypocrisy and one of the most telling ithink is when you first came to Congress Republicans were referred to as the party of no. But now the media and others like to call the left the resistance. This mythological name that connotes some positive justification. How often have you heard the republicans are the party of no. Because were somehow opposed to a Public Policy position that barack obama and the democrats were championing that we were the party of no but if all of a sudden now you dont wear the liberal credentials, unless your antitrump no matter what, no matter what position he possiblytakes , theyre going to take the opposite one. I did that when i was in third grade. Id say yes you didnt, no you did. They didnt know how to answer the question. And its very true. I sent somebody today on the streets wearing a black shirt with white lettering and it said resistance andthey were proud they were part of the resistance. Lets be a little bit more adult about it and tackle this issue by issue. If we disagree but disagree but lets have that debate and i believe the more conservatives actually have the debate, we win that debate and ive been going around the country telling people, i want to share this message with you. I do believe we cant be afraid of havingthat discussion. But lets also talk from our hearts. Im tired of conceding the compassion card to the democrats. They are not the more compassionate caring group and what i worry about is when we have the debate and discussion we want to smother people with statistics and numbers andthis study. I think we also as conservatives, ive got my campaign hat on a little bit, need to talk about why we believe what we believe. I think we are partly successful because we talk about principle. But go back up to the principal. My guess is if youre here at this meeting, you have a set of principlesthat you believe in. But i think that a lot of conservatives forget to step one, lets talk about why you believe what you believe, then we can argue about how we get there and individual policy issues. But the democrats want to shut down the debate. I want to create this evil appearance that how dare you, thats why i think all this bullying that we do day after day on television and newspapers, its just a bunch of hogwash. People dont want to admit out loud that theyre going to vote for donald