WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:22.080 Eric, Tony, thanks for joining us. 00:22.080 --> 00:24.800 It's great to be with you to talk about the Attorney General's race and the importance 00:24.800 --> 00:26.400 of it for Wisconsin. 00:26.400 --> 00:28.760 So give me a sense of why you decided to run again. 00:28.760 --> 00:32.280 It's not often we see repeat candidates for these statewide elections. 00:32.280 --> 00:37.080 You know, within a week of that race back in 2022, I had so many people already encouraging 00:37.080 --> 00:41.240 me to do it, but it wasn't sure it was something that I would want to do because there's a 00:41.240 --> 00:44.880 lot of time and energy that goes into these statewide races. 00:44.880 --> 00:48.600 But for me, I really had a clarifying moment in 2023. 00:48.600 --> 00:54.600 I ended up in probably August when I later learned to have a mini-stroke in the office, 00:54.600 --> 00:57.360 lost control of my legs for about 20 seconds. 00:57.360 --> 01:00.320 I was impatient at the hospital here in Fond du Lac. 01:00.320 --> 01:05.720 The next day, cardiologist at some testing came in and said, your aortic valve is destroyed 01:05.720 --> 01:07.280 and you need open heart surgery. 01:07.280 --> 01:12.480 I was starting to think about what do I want to continue to do if this surgery goes well. 01:12.480 --> 01:16.360 But I was, at that point, just trusting God through the hands of my medical team that 01:16.360 --> 01:20.600 hoping and praying things would go well, and as it got closer, knew that I would want 01:20.600 --> 01:21.600 to run again. 01:21.960 --> 01:27.280 When we're looking at a rematch in this environment, what should voters be thinking of in terms 01:27.280 --> 01:31.600 of how did I vote last time or what's different about this match up this time? 01:31.600 --> 01:35.400 One of the things people can look at with me is what I've done since then, as the president 01:35.400 --> 01:39.120 of the District Attorneys Association, I've always talked about putting public safety 01:39.120 --> 01:40.240 over politics. 01:40.240 --> 01:45.520 I stood with our attorney general after that 2022 race, helping him get more crime lab 01:45.520 --> 01:50.040 positions in that state budget, working with Republican legislators behind the scenes. 01:50.080 --> 01:54.000 I helped get a transformational investment into prosecutors, public defenders in our 01:54.000 --> 01:59.280 judicial system in that budget that the Wisconsin Law Journal awarded me as an unsung hero for 01:59.280 --> 02:02.120 what they described as helping and a constitutional crisis. 02:02.120 --> 02:05.600 Those are all things we do together, working with the Democrat governor and the Republican 02:05.600 --> 02:08.160 legislature to deliver those results. 02:08.160 --> 02:13.680 And then in contrast, you see, during the tenure of our attorney general, we've seen periods 02:13.680 --> 02:19.240 of record homicides in places like Milwaukee, record drug deaths, and other increases in 02:19.240 --> 02:20.240 crime. 02:20.240 --> 02:23.240 And I've never been one to say it's one individual person's responsibility when that 02:23.240 --> 02:27.440 happens because there are so many different factors that go into why crime happens in 02:27.440 --> 02:28.440 different areas. 02:28.440 --> 02:32.560 But what we have to look at is what are people doing with the resources they have. 02:32.560 --> 02:36.760 And so what we saw our attorney general do during this period is put a hiring freeze 02:36.760 --> 02:37.760 in place. 02:37.760 --> 02:41.240 And so I mentioned those crime lab positions I helped him get. 02:41.240 --> 02:46.160 Well, over a year later, we saw a nonpartisan audit released of our crime labs, and they 02:46.160 --> 02:48.520 said he hadn't even filled those positions. 02:48.520 --> 02:52.360 We saw that he had less DNA positions filled compared to 2020. 02:52.360 --> 02:56.320 And we see that they're taking for DNA, for example, taking on average over twice as 02:56.320 --> 03:00.440 long to test less from when he started to where we are now. 03:00.440 --> 03:05.680 So the attorney general points to crime statistics being down in Wisconsin as they are across 03:05.680 --> 03:06.680 the country. 03:06.680 --> 03:10.400 He also singles out that crime statistics in Fondolac County are up. 03:10.400 --> 03:15.560 Why should either one of you get credit or blame for crime statistics when as the, you 03:15.560 --> 03:19.520 know, either the prosecutor or the attorney general, you don't control whether crimes 03:19.520 --> 03:22.080 are committed or even how they're investigated. 03:22.080 --> 03:25.480 That's a great question to ask the attorney general because he's been the one trying to 03:25.480 --> 03:30.280 take victory laps when he see crime numbers go with what he thinks is in his favor, despite 03:30.280 --> 03:31.840 cherry picking what those stats are. 03:31.840 --> 03:36.520 I don't think anybody heard from him when we were seeing record homicides in Milwaukee. 03:36.520 --> 03:40.360 But now because we're seeing crime down in many areas, including Fondolac County, crime 03:40.360 --> 03:41.360 is down overall. 03:41.360 --> 03:45.480 And I've never taken credit for the crime numbers we've seen during my almost four 03:45.480 --> 03:49.280 or 14 years as a district attorney because I know it's a team effort when we do these 03:49.280 --> 03:51.600 things and crime doesn't stop at county lines. 03:51.600 --> 03:55.440 When we look at attorney general's races in the past, historically they followed right 03:55.440 --> 03:57.360 below the gubernatorial election. 03:57.360 --> 04:02.400 The last time there were members of different parties was 2006 to win these races. 04:02.400 --> 04:06.960 So are you trying to separate yourself from Tom Tiffany in his race for governor or do 04:06.960 --> 04:09.320 you think you're going to follow right along with him? 04:09.320 --> 04:13.760 I'm running my own race from when I got into this back in October of 2025, I talked about 04:13.760 --> 04:19.560 the forensic testing failures, the fentanyl epidemic, and how partisan our attorney general 04:19.560 --> 04:20.560 has become. 04:20.560 --> 04:25.840 I mean, we have driven home issues that affect people in all 72 counties, and that's what 04:25.840 --> 04:30.600 I've been focused on is what our Department of Justice can do to help protect everybody 04:30.600 --> 04:33.120 in Wisconsin by putting public safety over politics. 04:33.120 --> 04:36.800 Again, it all comes back to what do you do with the resources you have? 04:36.800 --> 04:41.200 And so what we're seeing is broken promise after broken promise from our attorney general. 04:41.200 --> 04:44.920 He campaigned on the fentanyl and opioid epidemic, and there is accountability for 04:44.920 --> 04:50.000 pharmaceutical manufacturers, but talk to anybody in law enforcement or public safety, 04:50.000 --> 04:54.240 and they will tell you the overdoses that we're seeing by and large are coming from 04:54.240 --> 04:58.560 fentanyl, which is coming across the border, and then here into Wisconsin, and parents 04:58.560 --> 05:02.520 are burying their child, and our attorney general's broken that promise, he won't even 05:02.520 --> 05:08.600 talk about that issue because it doesn't maybe be popular with his liberal base. 05:08.600 --> 05:12.240 We look at the forensic testing, he actually promised back in 2020 that we were going to 05:12.240 --> 05:17.680 see a dramatic improvement in DNA testing because he had more analysts in his predecessor 05:17.680 --> 05:21.680 and he had improved technology, and his own policies were the reason that they were testing 05:21.680 --> 05:25.360 less, limiting what law enforcement can send in, and now on average, he's taking over 05:25.360 --> 05:30.560 twice as long, and he campaigned against all of the political lawsuits when he first ran, 05:30.560 --> 05:35.000 and now that's effectively what he's running his entire campaign on is those lawsuits where 05:35.000 --> 05:36.840 he's putting politics over public safety. 05:37.200 --> 05:38.720 Well, let's talk about those lawsuits. 05:38.720 --> 05:42.200 Obviously, the Department of Justice has filed and joined a lot of these federal lawsuits 05:42.200 --> 05:44.160 against the Trump administration. 05:44.160 --> 05:46.800 If you were the AG, would you have joined any of these? 05:46.800 --> 05:50.720 So one of the things I've always talked about is putting public safety over politics, and 05:50.720 --> 05:54.200 when we see the attorney general, he's not filing lawsuits. 05:54.200 --> 05:55.560 What he's doing is called joining them. 05:55.560 --> 06:00.360 So the vast majority of those lawsuits, whether he signs on to that or not, are going to continue 06:00.360 --> 06:04.160 to move forward because other attorneys general across the country have actually done the 06:04.160 --> 06:05.560 legal work on those. 06:05.560 --> 06:10.120 And so what I will be doing as attorney general is making sure we are prioritizing our resources 06:10.120 --> 06:15.000 for public safety, ending the hiring freeze that's been put in place by him to make sure 06:15.000 --> 06:20.080 we have those crime lab positions filled that we're always filling our DCI and other public 06:20.080 --> 06:24.920 safety positions, and we'll evaluate any case that's been filed on a case-by-case basis 06:24.920 --> 06:27.160 to make sure that we're following the facts and the law. 06:27.160 --> 06:29.680 One more question on the federal lawsuits. 06:29.680 --> 06:33.360 In some of those cases, if you weren't a member of those, you didn't get the benefits. 06:33.360 --> 06:38.160 And Wisconsin has seen some of those benefits from being a part of those winning cases. 06:38.160 --> 06:40.560 As AG, would you have joined any of those cases? 06:40.560 --> 06:44.480 So one of the things that we have to do at our Department of Justice, it can't be who's 06:44.480 --> 06:47.320 in the White House or who's in the governor's office. 06:47.320 --> 06:50.680 We have to look at these on a case-by-case basis, and unfortunately, we haven't seen 06:50.680 --> 06:52.640 our attorney general do that. 06:52.640 --> 06:57.720 He's talked about joining over 60 of these lawsuits in the last 18 months or so, compared 06:57.720 --> 07:02.360 to probably five or less during the four years of the Biden administration and has effectively 07:02.400 --> 07:04.040 given a free pass to Tony Evers. 07:04.040 --> 07:07.600 So to me, it's not going to matter who's in the White House or who's in the governor's 07:07.600 --> 07:08.600 office. 07:08.600 --> 07:10.760 We're going to make these decisions based on the facts and the law. 07:10.760 --> 07:14.560 So I would expect, whether it's a Republican or Democrat governor, president, that we 07:14.560 --> 07:18.480 would be joining lawsuits when it's needed to protect Wisconsin. 07:18.480 --> 07:22.800 One of the issues that Josh Call says is interesting about this rematch is looking at some of 07:22.800 --> 07:26.840 your position statements from the last race, and he brings up abortion specifically. 07:26.840 --> 07:30.840 At that time, he had filed a lawsuit that eventually was passed by the Wisconsin Supreme 07:30.880 --> 07:33.640 Court, which guaranteed the right to abortion in Wisconsin. 07:33.640 --> 07:37.080 He, at that time, you criticized his part of that lawsuit. 07:37.080 --> 07:40.800 Do you still think that was the wrong choice for him for the state to file that lawsuit 07:40.800 --> 07:42.480 against the 1848 abortion law? 07:42.480 --> 07:46.800 Well, the original Dane County judge actually didn't support the ultimate legal finding 07:46.800 --> 07:50.480 that was made by the Supreme Court, but we have to look at where the law is now, and 07:50.480 --> 07:53.160 there are five-month protections in place for women. 07:53.160 --> 07:57.440 I have not, and I'm not advocating for any changes to the law in Wisconsin, and if there 07:57.440 --> 08:00.800 is going to be any change, that's something that needs to be voted on by the people of 08:00.840 --> 08:04.720 Wisconsin, and not decided on by politicians in Madison. 08:04.720 --> 08:10.120 We need to create an environment that supports women and girls in our state in every corner, 08:10.120 --> 08:13.760 and you look at what our Attorney General's comments have been in recent years on this. 08:13.760 --> 08:19.280 He was actually asked about those five-month or 20-week protections in 2024 in the fall, 08:19.280 --> 08:22.280 and he said it's not a protection, it's a restriction. 08:22.280 --> 08:26.400 He said there should be no government intervention calling for the legislature to take action, 08:26.400 --> 08:30.000 effectively arguing for a nine-month abortion here in Wisconsin. 08:30.160 --> 08:31.360 Eric, Tony, thanks for your time. 08:31.360 --> 08:32.360 Greatly appreciated. 08:32.360 --> 08:32.400 Thank you.