Did Aaron Ford Break the Very Rules He Wrote? Chuck Muth Breaks It Down | Nevada News & Views Thursdays

Alan Stock 0:15
And a good morning. Great to have you with us on this big Thursday morning. It’s Thursday. It’s got to be Nevada. News and views Thursday, which it is a great resource for all information you need, as well as great thought. People put great thought into what they write at the Nevada news and views, and you can find that at Nevada news and views, calm, whether it’s local, state or national, Nevada news and views.com I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already. I need more and more people are going there. It’s a great resource for again, information, whether it’s local or national, or anything in between. And joining us this morning, of course, on Vegas at eight, is Chuck Muth, the the brains behind Nevada news and views. How you doing?

Chuck Muth 1:01
I’m doing right? I don’t know about the brains part, but yeah, it’s good to be with you, Alan,

Alan Stock 1:06
it’s good to have you. I appreciate it very much. A lot to talk about, and one of these is this Aaron Ford character really amazes me, because in the last year, I know he traveled around about a third of the year around the entire country and and there were a lot of things that you were you were writing about this as it was happening. And now what has happened is that the Ethics Commission, they’re hauling before the Ethics Commission, and even a left wing insert into the RJ has come out and blast him about this whole thing. Give us the whole lay down low, down on this.

Chuck Muth 1:51
Yeah, there really, there’s two issues that they’re looking at. One, is that travel issue? And you’re right. I mean, this guy is DeMarco polo of Nevada politics. He loves traveling. He mixes business with pleasure on somebody else’s dime. It’s not necessarily taxpayer money, but he has business interests. Corporations fund this organization that he’s taken a lot of trips for and a lot of those corporations have the potential of being having cases heard or litigated with the Attorney General’s Office. So there’s a clear conflict, at the very least, a perception that taking these trips that are paid for by corporations that could come before His office is a potential problem. The other issue is using his government email account for the attorney general’s office, and he was doing this for a long time. I kept flagging it almost every time they would post something on Twitter, it was really just a campaign ad for his gubernatorial campaign at taxpayer expense, and they were linking back to his campaign website on the official government Twitter X account, that I think is an even bigger problem. All elected officials who are incumbents have a decided advantage by virtue of the fact that they have that office, but to use that office to promote their campaigns for re election or to run for a different office is really bad. I remember a couple I think it was probably 678, years ago. There was a sheriff out in Nye county who had these big billboards up with her photo on it recruiting people to join the sheriff’s department, and it was nothing but a campaign ad at taxpayer expense. So I think that’s probably a bigger concern on my part, working with candidates working in elections. I do know the inherent advantages that candidates who are incumbents have but to use their existing Office to promote re election is the real problem for me.

Alan Stock 4:01
So what? What can happen to him? I mean, what’s the worst that can happen to him? I’m not talking about voters now, looking at this and saying, I’m not going to vote for a guy that is going through all of this, but in terms of his personal liability, what’s the worst that can happen?

Chuck Muth 4:19
Yeah, well, the complaint was filed on these issues, and then three members of the Ethics Commission have to review the complaint and determine whether or not there is enough there there to send it to the full Ethics Commission, the full body, to make a determination. So that’s the next step now, now that it’s they’ve determined that, I guess it’s one way of looking at is, is there probable cause to continue pursuing it? And those three members determined that there was probable cause once the commission now takes a full review of it, Nick will probably take many months, but it could, you know, it. Come down before the election next November, that that’s still possible, they can determine if what’s really going to come down to Alan is whether or not they believe the Attorney General’s actions were willful. That’s the key. You know, if he did it, and I really didn’t know it was a gray area, I didn’t intend to do it that way. You know, it’s probably just a slap on the wrist at best. If they do determine however, that he knew what he was doing and he did it anyway, that it was willful, then you could be looking at some more serious problems, some sanctions and a heftier fine.

Alan Stock 5:35
Well, he can’t say he didn’t know, because he helped write some of those rules that he wound up violating.

Chuck Muth 5:43
Yeah, that is the problem. If folks who are maybe, maybe new to our state don’t know he was in the State Senate before he was attorney general, he wasn’t just in the State Senate. He was the leader, the Democrat leader when he was in the State Senate. So you’re absolutely right. He not only voted on a lot of these rules, but he helped write them. So I think that’s probably why the commission is taking a serious look at this, because if it wasn’t willful, they probably would have just dismissed it out of hand. But I think you’re absolutely right, Alan, I think they probably see that because of his past experience in government, that he must have known, should have known, had to have known, and therefore it was willful. And that takes it to a much more serious level.

Alan Stock 6:26
And one last thing before we take a break, and that is that there will be people, people who say, Well, you know, Chuck Muth and Alan stock, they’re they’re not in support of this guy. You know, they’re more conservative. He’s a big left winger and all that stuff. Meanwhile, who helped break this whole story The Las Vegas Sun, which is a left wing insert in the daily.

Chuck Muth 6:48
RJ, yeah, when you’ve lost the Las Vegas son as a Democrat, you’re in serious trouble. I’m not sure how that they obtained the story. Maybe somebody tipped them off. Maybe they just discovered it on their own somehow. But the fact that the Las Vegas Sun broke this story, and usually they carry water for the Democrats, they’ll protect them. They’ll spin it and turn it. All you have to do is read almost any article in their paper every day, and it’s constantly Trump derangement syndrome. Republicans are bad. Democrats are wonderful. So for them to have gone and broken the story the way they did, that tells me that, yeah, there’s some there, there. There’s definitely something serious that even they couldn’t ignore it.

Alan Stock 7:35
I don’t usually pay attention to any I don’t take the sun seriously. I do look at a lot of people I know won’t even look at it. I feel I’m obligated to see it, probably, as you are, too. Best thing in the sun is the one comic, pearls before swine and but great, great comic. But the rest of the insert is not worth the bird cage floor. All right, listen, I

Chuck Muth 8:03
remember Alan that that back in the old days, that’s when where Dilbert was. That was the only reason I opened it was to read Gilbert before they got canceled.

Alan Stock 8:11
That is exactly right. And now they’ve got pros before swine so they got one comic consistently, and that all insert, which used to be the afternoon paper, by the way, in the old days, I remember that as well. All right, I want to come on back and talk about this candidate who says that is a candidate for Congress who’s saying that cops are not smart people. And if you’re a military veteran or a cop, you know, I mean, you probably are not very smart to run for office, which I don’t think his statements are very smart to make for a person running for office at all, but I do want to talk about that briefly with you as well. Chuck Muth joining us on our Nevada news and views Thursday, and we’ll continue in just a moment right here on Vegas at eight. You

Alan Stock 9:10
Annie, good morning. Great to be with us on this Nevada news and views Thursday here on Vegas at eight, and of course, joining us here on Nevada news and views is Chuck Muth, who is the creator of Nevada news interviews, Chuck, thanks for being with us. I appreciate it. I want to, I want to keep things always very clear and understanding so people know truthfully what is going on, regardless of what side of the island it lies on. There’s a story out of that the candidate, Cody Whipple, who’s running for CD four, has come out and said that cops are not smart people. Talked about ex if we are like the ex military and ex police generally, they’re not intellectual people. It’s. Cetera, et cetera. And so you said there’s more to the story than just this superficial quotes.

Chuck Muth 10:08
Yeah, we’ve we followed up on it when it came out. Now, someone sent me a link to the YouTube recording, and it’s just an audio it’s not a video. So it’s just an audio conversation that took place, and it sounds exactly what you said, Alan, it sounded horrible when I first heard it. It sounded like he said, cops and military veterans are not smart people and shouldn’t be serving in public office. And that’s exactly how it sounded to me. But then I reached out, we followed up to confirm. You know, what is this all about? Is there some context there that we were missing? And what Cody explained to me was this was a recorded conversation at some event, some meeting, and it was the story was broken, broken, I guess, by a guy named Rob Lauer, who runs a blog called 360 news Las Vegas. And as soon as I saw that’s where it came from, that set off my spidey senses, because Rob Lauer is this guy cannot be trusted to tell the truth on any given day about anything. So I asked Cody about it, and here’s what happened, and you won’t notice it at first, unless you’re looking for it, what Rob Lauer or whoever did do this? They took different parts of the conversation and then spliced it together. It was three or four different conversations, and then spliced it together to make it sound like he was talking about cops and military veterans when he was actually talking about certain party leaders. But they splice it together to make it sound like he was talking about cops. According to Cody, his lawyers are already on this. I don’t know if they filed the cease and desist order yet demanding that it be taken down, but that was the next step that he said he was going to go. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days, so I’m not sure where that is, but if you do listen to the recording again, you can hear where it is spliced, where it’s chopped up, but you really got to be looking for it. If you weren’t looking for it, you would have never noticed it, because, like you, Alan, I didn’t notice it. I thought this is horrible, what he said. But apparently that may not be the truth, and we’re just going to have to wait and see. And it’s something that the Whipple campaign is going to have to deal with. If it’s true that that’s what they did, that is a real dirty trick, political dirty trick, and it’s just unforgivable and unexcusable.

Alan Stock 12:28
So my question is this, he was blasting Republicans. All right, I get that, but in your conversation with him, did he make any statements to you about about his thoughts about cops or veterans and their their intellectual ability to be able to run for office, that? Did that come up at all? Or did you try to clarify that with him?

Chuck Muth 12:58
What I think, what his point was, and again, I’d rather have him explain it than me try to be his campaign spokesperson. But what? And a lot of people have said this Alan, and it goes back to a Supreme Court case that you and I have talked about for years, about government employees serving in the legislature. It’s not that they’re not smart, it’s that they have different experiences. When you spend your entire career working for the government, you have a certain perspective about government that’s much more favorable towards government than people like you and I on the outside in the private sector, especially if you’re a business owner. So I think that’s probably what he was referring to, not that they weren’t smart, but you know that they have different experiences, and maybe it’s not a good idea to have government employees serving in the legislature where they’re voting on issues that directly affect their own jobs. And that’s been a that was a Supreme Court case at Nevada policy, you know, took to the Supreme Court.

Alan Stock 13:59
I and you and I, again, we do agree with that people who who, and I know that’s been going back and forth in the courts for as long as I’ve been here. But the question is, I mean, should people who are working and for government agencies serve in the legislature that oversees their job directly and their raises and all their circumstances of their employment. And, of course, the answer, the answer I always thought, should be, no, they should not be allowed to even though we have a part time legislature, it’s still, to me, reeks of some kind of suspicious behavior. I mean, I’ve never thought it was the right thing to do.

Chuck Muth 14:38
Yeah, I remember when, you know when you came to Las Vegas. So this is ancient history for you and I, but when we first met back in the old days, the Republican Party position was exactly what you just said. Government employees should not be serving in the legislature. It’s too much of a conflict. And then all this, and then one Republican government employee, I think it was a. Teacher, got into the legislature, ran, got into the legislature, then all of a sudden Republicans started backing off of that and saying, Well, it’s okay, because it’s our people, you know, it’s a republican government employee, and that’s it’s still just as bad. We’ve got government employees in the legislature right now who are Republicans, who vote very, very badly on issues that you and I hold near and dear to our hearts, about limited government and whatnot. So it is a really, really bad idea, and I really wish we could really clamp down on that and remove that problem that we have even, even former government employees they can serve, but they just don’t have the same experiences that people with experience in the private sector have it’s just different.

Alan Stock 15:43
All right, you know what? We will try to get a Cody Whipple on. You got his contact, right?

Chuck Muth 15:49
Yeah, I’ll text it to you after we get off the phone. All

Alan Stock 15:51
right, do that, and I’ll try to get him on and let him clarify on air what he said or what he believes, or what he believes was misconstrued by Rob Lauer in that conversation and what was spliced in tapes. You’re right. I know you can do anything splicing tapes, believe me. I mean, I work in creating commentaries every day, and I know what it’s like to be able to, you know, splice things up and to edit and you can, if you’re nefarious, you can do almost anything at all. Chuck Muth, joining us this morning, Nevada news and views. You can find more about Nevada news and views. Great resource for information, local, state and national. Go to Nevada news and views. Calm. Nevada news and views.com. And I wholeheartedly endorse it, Chuck, thanks for being with us. I appreciate it, and I’ll look forward to getting that from you, and we’ll talk soon,

Chuck Muth 16:47
Always a pleasure, and give Rhoda my best.