BUCK: He was formerly the attorney general for the state of Nevada. He is now running as a Republican Senate candidate in that state, a critical state going into this midterm election. Adam Laxalt is with us now. Adam, thanks for calling in.

LAXALT: Thanks for having me. As always, appreciate it.

BUCK: You must have seen the headlines this morning the news breaking about an imminent threat to Justice Kavanaugh’s life. As somebody’s who’s worked on the prosecutorial side, as somebody who has understood and been part of the judiciary for a long time in the past, what do you make of this situation the country is in right now?

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— Adam Paul Laxalt – US Senate Candidate (@AdamLaxalt) October 18, 2021

LAXALT: This is exactly the face of the left. If they don’t get their way, they believe they’re entitled to tear down our institutions. And nothing could be a more grave threat than for the Democrat Party to be encouraging violence against sitting Supreme Court justices. To hear Chuck Schumer, everybody may remember, was standing on steps saying, “Kavanaugh, you released the whirlwind. You will pay for this.” This is inciting-violence language. Whether they call for packing the Supreme Court or, in this case, with the leaked Roe opinion, to basically instigate people to protest in the neighborhoods, at the homes of justices, that is a crime first and foremost.

And the Justice Department should have been clearing those neighborhoods and making sure the protests were limited to the Supreme Court steps. We have a huge, huge problem right now. And I’m not seeing my opponent, Catherine Cortez Masto, speaking out against this. And you’re seeing President Johnny-Come-Lately Biden saying he condemns this now, after the fact, after we suggested for weeks on end that this would be the end result of their rhetoric.

And, by the way, what happened to the leaker? Tell me why we still don’t know who the leaker is, why there’s been no movement on that activity. If they don’t find this leaker, then this is going to undermine the court forever. But I just don’t think Democrats are interested in preserving these institutions; they’re interested in winning, always, and they’ll do whatever it takes.

CLAY: Adam, should the Supreme Court expedite the release of this opinion? I’ve been arguing basically since this draft opinion leaked that what it did and what it was intended to do was put a target on these conservative justices because until the opinion is officially released it’s not law. And it seems to have been a motivating factor between the attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. Should the Supreme Court expedite the release in your mind?

LAXALT: Look, it would have been unprecedented for them to release it, but I felt this was an unprecedented circumstance.

CLAY: Yep.

LAXALT: As Justice Thomas said, this breached the entire trust, decades-long trust in that court. And I said at the time that we all knew why someone leaked it. In my opinion, it definitely came from the left. I know there’s some people who think maybe it didn’t, but I’m pretty sure it came from a liberal law clerk, and they wanted to change this opinion. They wanted there to be so much public pressure, so much outrage from the media and all these people, that perhaps that opinion would be either scaled back or one vote would flip.

That is straight-up tampering and something that cannot be excusable. I was also worried at the time, and I know I wasn’t the only one — I know a lot of Nevada voters were worried about this — that it was going to put an actual, physical target on the backs of one of these justices that is presumed to be in the majority of the Roe decision. And here we are. Fortunately… We don’t know the details of how they discovered this, but fortunately they found this person and they’ve arrested this person.

But this was very predictable. In fact, a lot of us did predict it, and I might add the Senate went in and voted 100-nothing to immediately enhance security for these justices, and Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats of the House have refused to put that funding through. Maybe today we’ll finally get them to do their job and protect the justice system, but that was also an inexcusably partisan and dangerous step.

CLAY: By the way, the federal affidavit is out. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, Adam. I’m reading from it now. This would-be assassin flew from California to D.C. He took a taxi to Brett Kavanaugh’s Chevy Chase, Maryland, home with the intent of killing him. He had a pistol, pepper spray, hammer, screwdriver, crowbar, et cetera with him. He told arresting officials that he wanted to “give his life purpose.” He found Kavanaugh’s address online, and he told the detective he was upset about the leak of the Supreme Court draft decision and the recent school shooting in Uvalde and he had decided to kill Brett Kavanaugh.

LAXALT: Look, there is this new phenomenon, thanks to the media, thanks to all the crazy cultural influences we’ve got going on right now, for martyrdom. And people feel like they’re going to have their five minutes of fame to do some terrible, terrible act. We’ve got to reverse course immediately. And on the Uvalde shooting, the media has been instigating guys like this. To think that somehow this has something to do with the Supreme Court, when it is clearly about hardening of schools and Democrats’ refusal to support the most common-sense efforts of arming people, arming security guards in schools, and creating a more secure footprint in these campuses.

It’s outrageous. But, like I just said, it’s all politics for Democrats all the time. They have their world view. They will use whatever happens in the world, whatever tragedy, in some way to try to influence voters and try to ram through the radical agenda. And they’re radicalizing people across the country. And there’s no question they radicalized people in 2020 during the BLM riots. People like Kamala Harris were supporting the bail fund and trying to get people back on the streets that were arrested in deep-blue cities for doing very, very bad things. These were the worst of the worst.

And she still was supporting bail funds for these folks and acting like they’re victims and they’re standing up for truth and justice. This party is so radical. I do believe that’s why you’re seeing these massive shifts, though, in my state and in the American electorate. I think from 2020 on, people finally have seen the face of the left. Guys like you and I, we know what the left’s all about. I’ve been fighting against the left since I was elected attorney general in 2014. But a lot of people, I don’t think, truly understood how far they would go to get their way, and we’re seeing it every single day now, and it’s dangerous and it’s escalatory, and they’ve got to reverse course.

BUCK: You were the attorney general in the state of Nevada. After you left in 2020, there was a substantial increase in murders in Las Vegas for example. These progressive prosecutors in many cities all across the country have unfortunately gotten their way. Now to your point, finally, it seems there’s real pushback. Chesa Boudin, the district attorney of San Francisco, just got clobbered in a recall election. You were at the top of the prosecutorial food chain in Nevada. How do you actually…? If you want to bring down violent crime — and really all crime, but we’ll start with the most important statistic, which is homicides, from a criminal justice perspective — what do you do when you say, “We actually want to bring down violent crime and keep people safe”?

LAXALT: Well, you certainly don’t elect these Soros DAs that are pledging to be second criminal defense attorneys in the case. Their job is to prosecute and protect the public, and instead, they’re taking passes. Everyone saw the Dave Chappelle situation where that DA down in Southern California somehow didn’t charge that guy for a knife on the stage. It should give everybody a very clear understanding of how dangerous these policies are — and what I like to tell Nevada voters every single day is, “This is your opportunity to tell the middle and moderate Democrats that the rise in crime is a direct result of Democrat policy.”

And you don’t have Democrats standing against this. Senator Masto, who is a former AG herself, she doesn’t stand against these policies. They’re all scared of the left and their base, and therefore, these policies continue to rein, certainly in blue cities. It’s really not rocket science. You have to get the bad people off the streets, and this whole no-bail and open-door policy and reducing sentences and reducing in general prosecutions? There is a straight line to what that leads to.

And I would add, when you demonize cops, when you attack the whole law enforcement industry as a whole, rather than understand that every single jurisdiction has a different culture with different elected officials — when you attack the whole group, broadly — you invite all this that’s going on. You’re restricting their ability to do their job. You’re restricting recruiting. A lot of good cops have left because they’re just fed up, and so this is all the fault of Democrat policy.

CLAY: He’s Adam Laxalt. He’s running for Senate in Nevada as a Republican. We appreciate the time, and good luck in the primary.

LAXALT: Thank you so much. AdamLaxalt.com, June 14th. Appreciate it.

CLAY: Very soon, coming up, that election, people will be able to weigh in.