Save America Ministries

Chuck Crismier: It is said that no good deed goes unpunished. No good deed goes unpunished. Well, we don’t want to believe that, but indeed that very well may be true. Oftentimes, those who are actually doing the best deeds are the ones that take the most ruthless punishment for it. But that punishment does not come necessarily in the forms that we normally think of. It comes in other ways, even ways that supposedly are law-abiding, or at least using the law in surreptitious ways to undermine the very foundations of liberty that we have just celebrated through the remembrance of our 250th anniversary of the political birth of the country.

We like to say liberty and justice for all. Well, the Bible says where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. What happens when the Spirit of the Lord is not there? Well, we don’t often talk about that, but our guest today is going to tell us a little bit about what that looks like from the inside out. So, sometimes as a good trial lawyer, which I once was for 20 years in California, we want to make sure we qualify our expert witnesses to make sure they truly are experts. And you’re going to find out that our witness today is indeed a qualified expert, perhaps one of the more qualified experts we’ve ever had on this program, and we’ve had over 4,000 guests on this program over the past 31 years as we confront the deepest issues of America’s heart and home from God’s eternal perspective.

Today on Viewpoint, I want to introduce this with some words coming from our guest's book here. He’s quoting a fellow back in Germany, Martin Niemoller, who was a submarine commander and decorated war veteran. He studied theology, was ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 1929, and as Hitler rose to power, he initially supported the Nazi movement. But in the mid-30s, he recoiled against their harsh policies and advocated for the Christianization of Jews to avoid their detention. When the government arrested eight Protestant leaders in June of 1937, Martin Niemoller publicly challenged the Nazis. A month later, he was arrested, fined, and held without trial for seven months.

Then in 1938, he was re-arrested and imprisoned for seven years, during which he was nearly executed. Once he was released, he became a very vocal advocate for taking a stand when nobody else would do so. He said, "First they came for communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for socialists. I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for a trade unionist, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, but I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Well, welcome to today’s world, friends. Today we’re going to focus in the United States of America and some of the same things going on here. But how about the member of the Finnish Parliament who was arrested for merely having a Facebook quote saying that she supported what the Bible had to say about homosexuality? Those who hated her for her stand decided to take legal action. We call it today lawfare. Now, she didn’t really violate any laws, but they said that she did because they hated what she had to say.

And so they arrested her, tried her, she was acquitted. They tried her again for the same thing, she was acquitted. They tried her again, then it finally went to the Supreme Court of Finland, and they had a very hard time finding anything to convict her of. They found one little thing, and now she’s appealed that. And so she came, she was on her way to the United States of America to speak to Congress. And guess what? Our mother country, Britain, refused to even allow her to land at Heathrow Airport in London. Why? Because they disagreed with her stand on homosexuality.

Are you beginning to see what’s happening in our country? Well, just a few weeks ago, a prominent pastor in this country who has been on this program before had 60 federal agents come through his home at 6 a.m. in the morning, turned his house inside out, upside down, threw everything around, and now he’s trying to figure out what in the world sponsored this kind of abuse. It’s called lawfare, friends, and we’ve seen it in the name of politics, but it’s happening in so many areas of our lives today. Our special guest today is a guy who’s seen this from the inside out.

He’s seen it happen to many other people in the political arena. In fact, he was a consummate politician, and not only that, but what links us together is the fact that we both sold Fuller Brush when we were in college. His name is Bob Livingston, a famous former Congressman of 22 years. Bob, good to have you on the program, my friend.

Bob Livingston: Thank you very much, Chuck. And I am delighted to meet another Fuller Brush salesman.

Chuck Crismier: Yeah, well, you know, your signal is very low. Are you speaking into a cell phone? Are you on speakerphone, what?

Bob Livingston: I am going to change that right now. Hello. Is that any better?

Chuck Crismier: Oh, that is so much better. Perfect. Absolutely perfect because I don’t want to miss a minute of our conversation here today, Bob. And you know, it’s interesting, you were born two years before I was, right just before the end of World War II, and you experienced a lot of that. At least you were living in a time when a lot of that skullduggery was taking place there in Germany that we just talked about. But this kind of skullduggery is taking place increasingly in America and you write about that in your book. What prompted you to do that, though?

Bob Livingston: Well, I was prompted by a knock on the door from the FBI investigating an incident that had happened five years previously. After I had spent two years in the Navy, six years as a criminal prosecutor, 22 years in Congress, and almost 30 years as a private businessman, frankly a lobbyist, and I had kind of kicked back, come out of Washington, come home with my wife to be with my kids and grandkids and we were less than six months ready for retirement and just enjoying life.

I got this knock on the door and the FBI agents came in. Over a period of two hours, I always have engaged FBI agents through various facets of my life. I have used them, they have used me for investigations and for background and of course when I was a prosecutor I worked closely with them. So I didn’t think anything was wrong with that and they interviewed me for two hours. At the end of two hours, the lady agent stood up and said, "Well, thank you for your service, sir," and the guy handed me a subpoena that rocked my life for the next 20 months because they were investigating me for a proposed violation that really amounted to absolute nothing. After 20 months with after hiring very expensive lawyers, I successfully proved that we hadn’t done anything and a Democrats firm was never investigated for the same thing.

Chuck Crismier: It’s amazing. It’s utterly amazing, Bob. We’re going into the break here. We’re going to have to pick up on the story because it’s echoing throughout the country. It’s frightening. Liberty is being executed.

Welcome back to Viewpoint. I'm Chuck Crismier. It was the summer of 1996. I was so distressed at what was happening in our country, particularly within the broader Christian community in our country, and I had left the practice of law at the height of my career because the Lord had spoken to my heart in 1992. He said, "Son, you’ve been pleading the cause of men long enough. I want you to plead my cause to the land as a voice to the church declaring vision for the nation in America’s greatest crisis hour."

So, I was so distressed, my wife said, "Chuck, you’ve got to get out of here and hear from God." So she found a place in Colorado Springs, right where our present guest lived, and it was called Prayer Mountain. And so I went there for a whole week of prayer and fasting for our country and for the church in America. Concluding that, I went up to America’s mountain, Pike’s Peak, 14,000 feet above sea level, looking over the fruited plain of America. And there read the book of Isaiah and Jeremiah over the watershed of America. At the top of Pike’s Peak is a memorial, a big brass or bronze memorial of Katharine Lee Bates.

She wrote "America the Beautiful". In her song, "America the Beautiful", which many thought should have been the national anthem for our country, she said these words: "thy liberty in law." Is it possible, though, that her words have been completely turned upside down so that law actually is being used and manipulated to take away liberty? That’s what Bob Livingston is talking about today in his book, "The Rainbow Chaser: The Man Who Gambled for Success and Broke Even". It’s an amazing, shall we say, part autobiography, but also speaking into one of the more dangerous things happening in our country today.

I urge you to get a copy of his hardbound book. It’s a $30 book, yours for $20 on our website, saveus.org. Give us a call, 1-800-SAVE-USA. That’s 1-800-SAVE-USA, or write to us at Save America Ministries, P.O. Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255, writing a check and $6 for postage and handling. Okay, Bob, you have an amazing history. You came out of Colorado Springs, didn’t you?

Bob Livingston: Yeah, I was born there. And I always say I made a career decision to come to New Orleans when I was six years old.

Chuck Crismier: What caused you to go from the West to the South, the bayou country?

Bob Livingston: Well, my family came down. Dad came down to get a job here and then he stayed around a couple of years and then went on to other things and my mom raised my sister and me down here in New Orleans.

Chuck Crismier: Your mom raised your sister and you. What happened to your daddy?

Bob Livingston: He went to Spain to avoid alimony.

Chuck Crismier: Sounds like things that I encountered during my 20 years of law practice in the largest family law department in the country, the Los Angeles Superior Court system. So, you were not involved when you became a lawyer, you were not involved so much in the family law area or in civil law. In fact, you came to detest civil law and you went into criminal law. Why? Did you have more reflection, more allegiance to criminals than civil people? What was it?

Bob Livingston: Well, I was a criminal prosecutor. No, I didn’t like criminals at all. And I believed in law and order very, very much after a couple of years in the Navy and then finally getting through college and law school. I just really decided after two years of civil practice that I couldn’t stand it, and I got into criminal prosecution just by a fluke. But I enjoyed it. I was good at it. And Chuck, it would never have occurred to me to bring a case against anybody for political or personal reasons. If we had the evidence to go after a person and thought that they'd violated the law, I went after them with vigor, and I was very good at it. I did it in three separate agencies and that experience gave me a little resume and I ended up running for Congress and ultimately winning.

But I believe in criminal prosecution. I did not have any idea that some 50 years later, I’d get the knock on the door and be accused of an incident that I knew I was innocent of. I wasn’t going to, even my lawyers tried to convince me at first to try to cop a plea, as they say, try to plead guilty. And I wasn’t going to do it because I knew that I was innocent. We ended up after 20 months proving that I was innocent.

The Justice Department, and I have to say it was the Biden-Garland Justice Department, was going after Republicans. They were going after religious protesters, they were going after school board protesters, they were going after right-to-life protesters, they were going after hundreds of Republicans and political opponents. And I was just one of many.

Chuck Crismier: Well, a good friend of mine, Bob, was arrested together with a bunch of other guys who were pro-life. And they were facing some serious problems until Donald Trump came in and decided to pardon them all. What was happening was a direct and open lawfare attack on freedom.

Bob Livingston: Oh, absolutely. And they don't only do it in the courts. They actually disbarred people like John Eastman, who was an advisor to the president, who was simply giving advice to President Trump in his first term. So this kind of stuff went on. But I was about to tell you earlier that there was a firm that represented the identical client that I did, the same very same client. They represented her for four years. I represented her for 10 months. They didn’t report anything according to the law. We reported everything. And guess who was investigated?

So I knew I was innocent. I fought it. I spent a lot of money. And finally, the Justice Department just finally when we filed our 88-page brief, the Justice Department went like crickets. Never heard from them until the statute of limitations ran out and they said, "Oh, well, never mind. We're not interested in you anymore."

Chuck Crismier: You keep calling it the Justice Department. It seems to me that it's more accurately called the Injustice Department these days.

Bob Livingston: Under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, it was very definitely the Injustice Department. It was the most corrupt administration in the history of this country. And they persecuted, they didn't prosecute, they persecuted hundreds and hundreds of people. And many people had their entire lives destroyed. In fact, an employee of mine in the course of the investigation actually went to sleep on New Year's Eve of 2023 and didn't wake up on New Year's Day of 2024 simply because he was so upset about this investigation.

Chuck Crismier: Well, I’ll tell you, you have cited so many different instances in your book of various individuals who have met the false end of the law. They were persecuted for righteousness' sake. And indeed, it seems to me that the driving force with this was the pursuit of the unlawful, unrestrained pursuit of power, perks, and position. What do you say?

Bob Livingston: Boy, I totally agree with you. And I could give you many examples, but I do want to mention Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia. Under Virginia law, he could only serve one term. It was a magnificent term. Everybody, Republicans and Democrats alike, liked Governor McDonnell. He was a great guy, easy to get along with, highly respected, but boy, did they not want him to be President of the United States. And that guy, Jack Smith, the same guy who persecuted President Trump in a bunch of different areas, went after and indicted Governor McDonnell two weeks after he was out of office. It cost him his marriage. They tried him, they convicted him. It went to the Court of Appeals, it went to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, handed down a verdict admonishing Jack Smith, the persecutor, for indicting Governor McDonnell with something that wasn’t even against the law in the first place, wasn’t against Virginia or federal law. And he ended up having to spend almost $30 million in attorney's fees to prove his innocence. But that was the point: he had to prove his innocence. And it was a total destruction of a political career and of his life.

Chuck Crismier: I thought, Bob, we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

Bob Livingston: And in every one of these cases, we have to either prove our innocence or else we can get tried, convicted, and sent to prison, like so many of those January 6th people were.

Chuck Crismier: You know, there’s a whole lot of resemblance to that in the area of civil law, particularly family law, where actually for about 30, 40 years now, there has been an effort by women to use lawfare to gain custody of their kids. And it was so severe in Pasadena, California, that the supervising judge wrote an open letter to the people in the newspaper saying, "Please stop this unbelievable false accusation pattern where women, you’re lining up and accusing your husbands of this, that, or the other. There’s never hardly ever any proof of it, and you’re using it to destroy them and to destroy your families. Please stop it."

So this pattern can take place in many different venues, and is taking place even, as I said, there was a pastor who just recently, a prominent pastor, had 60 federal agents come in and rip up his house at 6 a.m. in the morning. Why is it they choose 6 a.m. in the morning to cause total disruption, what?

Bob Livingston: The Biden-Garland Justice Department did exactly that. S.W.A.T. teams out to people who were totally innocent in front of their children with guns drawn and bashing down their front door and arresting them. Even though in so many cases the cases went nowhere, in other cases they were convicted for violations of what they call the FACE Act. Religious protesters were convicted under a law that was intended to protect the right to life protesters, that Bill Clinton himself put into law. Yeah, there just are too many ways that lawfare can interfere.

In fact, Joseph Stalin had a chief executioner named Lavrentiy Beria, and he often was quoted as saying, "Show me the man and I can show you the crime." In other words, he didn’t have to have a crime; he simply had to know who his target was and he would destroy him through lawfare and make up a charge and charge him and then imprison him and even kill him. And actually, the Biden administration has taken that attitude, that approach, and ruined many, many lives throughout this country. And it’s only now coming to light. The Justice Department, this Justice Department under President Trump, is uncovering a lot of that stuff. FBI Director Kash Patel has found lots and lots of records showing how these people have contravened the law and have prosecuted people unfairly, including President Trump himself.

Chuck Crismier: Exactly. And tried to kill him, not to mention. So we’re talking about persecution under color of law. That’s kind of what we’re saying, isn’t it?

Bob Livingston: That's exactly what it is. It's using the law for political or personal purposes. And I am proposing, and I’ve said to the Congress, an idea that when a prosecutor or investigator goes after a person for political or personal reasons without any evidence or probable cause, then that prosecutor, that investigator should himself be prosecuted. Right, exactly.

Chuck Crismier: But why is it they’re not? It seems that they always seem to escape. Those who could do something, I think they just say, "Well, let’s let bygones be bygones. Let’s try to get back to some common sense here. Let’s not stir more in the pot."

Bob Livingston: Well, the guy Jack Smith that I mentioned earlier that went after Governor McDonnell and also went after President Trump was typical of the persecuting prosecutors who, even if they lost a case, they'd shrug their shoulders, they had a job, they'd move on to the next case. It didn’t matter how many lives they destroyed in the process. But that’s going to change. I think that you’re going to see in the next few months some cases come down that are going to expose all this stuff. And while the Democrats are quick to call it retribution, I would say no, no, it’s accountability.

Chuck Crismier: It’s called justice, Bob.

Bob Livingston: It’s called justice. If you’ve used the law to pursue your own political ends, you should stand accountable.

Chuck Crismier: All right, so how is it that they get by with using the law for political ends? Have we gone that far? Have we degenerated that far in the land of liberty that’s become only the home of the brave?

Bob Livingston: Well, it’s an old process that didn't begin in the last few years. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went at each other too.

Chuck Crismier: Oh, they sure did. We’ll talk more about that when we get back from this break. Friends, the book "The Rainbow Chaser". We’ll find out why Bob Livingston calls his book that. It’s $20 on our website, saveus.org. It is filled with fascinating information you’re going to want to get.

Thirty-two years ago, when we formed Save America Ministries there in Southern California to confront the deepest issues of America’s heart and home from God’s eternal perspective as a voice first to the church declaring vision for the nation, I opened in a large group of people in—I was a volunteer pastor in one of the fastest growing churches in Southern California at that time while I was practicing law. And so I was kind of renowned for being a businessman speaker of the Kingdom of God, teaching the scriptures and so on.

Well, when I announced that we were going to leave the practice of law at the height of my career to do what we’re talking about here, one of the leaders in the church came forward spontaneously and said, "Chuck, I have to tell you what you’re about to do is very dangerous." That’s how I began Save America Ministries. What you’re about to do is very dangerous. It’s dangerous to tell the truth these days, isn’t it?

Bob Livingston: Well, it certainly is. And you just highlighted a couple of instances of the lady from Finland and so forth. Europe has gone way beyond where we have gone. Britain is putting people in prison for simply uttering their own personal feelings on a regular occasion now. And if you use the internet to just express antagonism toward immigration or whatever, you’re going to end up in the jail. But in this country, we haven’t gone as far as they have, but we’re on the cusp. And I think that thank God for President Trump, we’ve actually waked up and we have a chance at turning things around.

But now the Democrats are starting to embrace total—they're not just socialists, they're communists who want to abolish the Supreme Court and the Senate and so forth. And if they get their way, any rights that an individual has to buck the collective wisdom of the society can be very dangerous, not only to their freedom but to their health and to their lives.

Chuck Crismier: Are you saying that to gain to run for Congress or the Senate or even in the states, the legislatures, is indeed—you better be very careful because you’re about to enter into very dangerous territory.

Bob Livingston: It’s already there. Look, just a couple of days ago, two Supreme Court justices, one Republican, one Democrat, Amy Coney Barrett and Gorsuch, I think I’ve forgotten her name, just testified before the United States Congress about how they had threats on their lives. And Justice Barrett actually said she had to have a bulletproof vest in her house and had to tell her children what it was for. In the halls of justice, she had to wear a bulletproof vest at the highest judicial level of the land.

We’re talking about something that the country is careening off of its axis and I’ve called this the execution of liberty. It’s not the liberty and justice that we heretofore agreed to, but it’s something completely different. Whatever happened? Can you distill this? What happened? Is this a legal matter? I think it’s a spiritual matter ground zero.

Bob Livingston: Oh, clearly it is. I can’t applaud you enough for the changes that you’ve made in your life. But yes, we’ve stopped putting—allowing God to come into the schools for our kids. And education is everything. And when kids are raised without any mention of religion or God, regardless of what sect or religion they might be, then we get a secular society that we are now reaping the destruction from. And frankly, it doesn’t offer a great hope for us unless we have an evangelical turnaround such as from people such as you.

Chuck Crismier: Well, we’re certainly working on it. You know, it’s interesting, shortly after I’d formed Save America Ministries and was still practicing law, I went to a gathering right across from my law office in a large congregation, a large church there in Pasadena, California. And a guy who was a former professor of mine saw me and he asked me, "Well, what are you doing now, Chuck? What are you doing?" I said, "Well, we just formed a nonprofit called Save America Ministries." And in his normal acerbic way, he said, "Well, at least you didn’t bite off more than you could chew."

Do you feel kind of like you’ve bitten off more than you could chew?

Bob Livingston: No. My integrity that I’ve built up over the last 83 years of my life was threatened three years ago by charges that were both malicious and wrong. And I just wasn’t going to kneel to it. I stood up to it, I fought it, and I won. But not everybody is so fortunate. And I wrote the book because I was so darn angry that they dared to come at me when I knew I was innocent in the first place, that I had to list all these other people who were less fortunate and who were virtually crucified in public and had their reputations and fortunes destroyed. It is a form of political execution or crucifixion, isn’t it?

Well, it is. I mean, people like Governor McDonnell or my friend Tom DeLay, who was a very prominent leader in the United States Congress, who was prosecuted over a matter that wasn’t, again, a violation of the law in the first place. But you had an ambitious DA that on the last day of the statute of limitations took him—went to three—two other grand juries, couldn’t get an indictment, got a third one to indict him and dragged him over the coals for 10 years and ruined his life. His wife ultimately died of distress and the poor guy had his entire life ruined.

And they don't care. That's what’s so fascinating. There isn’t even an ounce of wincing in their own minds and hearts about what they’re doing.

Bob Livingston: No, they really don't. In fact, they thrive on it. When then-FBI Director James Comey went after General Flynn, who was going to be the National Intelligence Director for the first Trump administration, they went and investigated him for nothing and then charged him with lying to the FBI agents. Cost him his job. It didn’t only cost him his job, but his brother was going to be Chief of the Army, and because of all the controversy with General Flynn, the security advisor, the brother didn’t get the job that he was supposed to get. Well, he was able to reverse the outcome, that is General Flynn, but the unfortunate thing is they stripped him of all of his wealth, everything that he had, and was left virtually destitute.

Absolutely. And in the process, they convinced him initially to plead guilty to a crime for which he knew he was not guilty. The judge accused him of treason, and the whole thing was just a sham and was thrown out by subsequent Attorney General Bill Barr when he looked it over and realized that the guy had never done anything wrong in the first place.

Chuck Crismier: We’re living in some very, very trying times, Bob. And I was so delighted that I got a copy of your book and that you were willing to join us here on the program today. We don’t normally do biographies, but your book is more than a biography. It’s talking about your life, which is a—you have a very prominent life in the more recent history of our country, and we’re deeply, deeply respected. But you have experienced the long arm of the law wielded unjustly to take away liberty, and then you have been on the inside to see what has happened to person after person after person using the law unjustly, and we use the modern term "lawfare". Where did that term ever come from?

Bob Livingston: Well, as I started to say, it began very early in the history of this country, when the early founders of the country started fighting with one another after George Washington was president, and Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton were going at each other tooth and thong, and they really were lying about each other and trying to cause great problems for one another. Actually, Hamilton ended up getting killed in a duel by Aaron Burr. So it’s just part of the innate history of this country and unfortunately has been too frequent going back to kings and monarchs and dictators all throughout the world.

Chuck Crismier: Well, it happened to Julius Caesar, didn’t it? I mean, Shakespeare records, "Et tu, Brute?" His best buddy in the Senate in Rome decided to choreograph his demise right there in the Senate.

Bob Livingston: Precisely. So it’s part of world history. When one person gets authority over another and decides to take advantage of them without due process or actual course of law, then they can destroy a person.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that’s exactly what happened with Jesus, Yeshua, there in the days of Pontius Pilate, that crusty Roman governor. Jesus was brought before him by the Sanhedrin, supposedly charged with a crime, and they could not punish him, so they went to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. And he says to them, "Why do you want me to crucify him? What evil has he done?" Now, here’s a guy who was one of the hardest Roman rulers of the day. He saw no compunction in having people killed. But Pontius Pilate says, "Why? What evil has he done?" And they said, "Crucify him anyway." And Pontius Pilate said—he knew that it was but for envy that they brought him. It seems that envy is a driving force here politically in our country, and it’s undoing the very foundations of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it seems to me.

Bob Livingston: Well, there it is. There you are. It goes back to the very beginning of history, to Cain and Abel.

Chuck Crismier: Exactly, my friend. Well, we’ll be right back after this, friends. Get a copy of this great book, "The Rainbow Chaser", Bob Livingston, our guest, and the book is a very fascinating book. I think you’re going to enjoy reading it. It’s a $30 hardbound book, by the way, yours for $20 on our website, saveus.org. Saveus.org, call us, 1-800-SAVE-USA. That’s 1-800-SAVE-USA, or write to us at Save America Ministries, P.O. Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255, writing a check and $6 for postage and handling.

Again, I welcome you back to Viewpoint, where we’re confronting the deepest issues of America’s heart and home. Yes, even from God’s eternal perspective. And so we’re daring to call evil evil, good good, and the Bible says woe unto those who call good evil and evil good. That’s what lawfare is. Lawfare is a device to call good evil and evil good, and then to justify it in the name of law. It’s very deceitful and extremely destructive, and our liberties are at risk.

And so our special guest today, who is a consummate former politician, a guy who has been there, done that, and some of the leaders of our land like Bill Barr, former Attorney General, and Devin Nunes, Chairman and CEO of the Trump Media and Technology Group, Mollie Hemingway, Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist, these are all saying, "You know, what a great book this is and much needed to be written." Now, here’s my question for you, Bob. You’ve written the book. You have revealed these things. Now what? Where do we go from here? What do you do, what do I do, what do we do, what do our listeners do from here?

Bob Livingston: I would hope that people would start contacting their representatives to consider that lawfare can be contained if we could make a law that says a prosecutor and investigator should be held accountable if he goes after innocent victims without probable cause or without sufficient evidence that he should be held accountable. I realize that if you make a law that’s too broad, then it’s just going to tie up law enforcement, and I don’t want to do that. But I think for egregious cases, we shouldn’t let these guys get away with this. They shouldn’t be able to shrug their shoulders and move on to the next case.

Chuck Crismier: Like the Jack Smiths of the world. How about Letitia James up there in New York?

Bob Livingston: Oh, Letitia James, Fani Willis of Atlanta went after President Trump. President Trump has suffered more than perhaps any human being in America, but he had the resources to beat it. I had the resources to beat the case against me, but so many people don’t. And they’re forced to plead guilty just to stop the attorney's fees. Exactly. The former Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan, Jim Watt, he was charged with 26 felony counts six years after he left his office as Secretary of the Interior. And they brought these felony charges against him. He fought it for a year and he was just broke, he was devastated, and he ended up pleading guilty to a non-consequential misdemeanor just to get them off his back. And it’s because he couldn’t afford to fight it anymore.

Chuck Crismier: In other words, if you don’t have mega bucks, you’re in deep, deep trouble when they decide to persecute you.

Bob Livingston: Absolutely, absolutely. And Chuck, you mentioned my poem which is at the end of the book by Martin Niemoller. And I just want to make the point that you read the poem, but they came after the communists, the socialists, the unionists, and the Jews. Well, today you could write that poem—that was done in the 30s, 1930s. Today, you could use exactly the same poem, but you could substitute—first of all, the Jews are still very much in the forefront because they are being persecuted in this country and all over the world. That never stops. But the Catholics, the pro-lifers, the religious protesters, independent teachers who don’t think like the National Education Association, the union, non-conforming artists, cartoonists, comedians, western Europeans, all these people, the religious protesters, they could all be added in there and made part of that poem.

Chuck Crismier: How about the teacher that was just recently released after 700 days in incarceration because he refused to call a transgender guy by his preferred name? 700 days.

Bob Livingston: I mean, that's insanity. That's absolutely insanity, and yet that’s the kind of thing that is going on far too frequently now. In Western Europe, it’s going on all over the place. And here, it’s gaining strength. And we’ve just got to beat it. We’ve got to fight back. Anybody with a sense of decency and justice has to stop and reflect that the only way we can do it is to start calling these people to account and prosecuting them and putting them in prison so they won’t do this sort of thing.

Chuck Crismier: And then they call it, as you said, they call it retribution.

Bob Livingston: In my opinion, it may be retribution, but it’s still accountability and it is justice. It is absolute justice.

Chuck Crismier: All right, so how is it that they—you’re the founding partner of what is called The Livingston Group. What is that about?

Bob Livingston: Well, we’re a lobbying group. After I left Congress, I just took my top three guys and we formed—I had been Chairman of the Appropriations Committee and briefly considered as Speaker of the House, and so I had a lot of contacts all around the country or the world.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that would have been the third-highest position in the country. You were third in line for the presidency.

Bob Livingston: Could have been. Yeah. But anyway, as luck turned out, we started this business. We did very, very well. We represented some 28 clients under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In other words, they were foreign clients, but we never represented anybody, any person or country or entity, that was adverse to American interests. We were always very conscious not doing the China or Cuba or Soviet Union or anything like that. And we did it successfully, we reported it, we adhered to the law, and we were absolutely concerned about doing it according to the way the law demanded. Other people were less religious about it, and they didn’t care. But we didn’t bend the law at all, and yet here at almost age 80, I get the knock on the door and they accuse me of stuff that I didn’t do. Fortunately, I fought it and I won.

Chuck Crismier: Well, there was a song, what was it, "I Fought the Law and the Law Won" or something like that. Hey listen, why did you call your book "The Rainbow Chaser"?

Bob Livingston: Oh, well, I actually it's my second book, and the first one was "The Windmill Chaser". I just—because I started with nothing and I ended up doing pretty well and having a pretty good career. As I was a good prosecutor, I was a good Congressman, and that’s what I wrote the first book about. And then I figured it was a good follow-on to go "The Rainbow Chaser", but I was always chasing rainbows. There was never any guarantee that I was going to succeed, and I’ve done pretty well.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that’s wonderful. I can relate a lot to what you’ve done, and there are many instances in which we’ve already discovered that our trajectories were somewhat congruent right there before we went into the law school and so on, tried to sell Fuller Brush. I don’t think Fuller Brush is even on the market these days. I don’t know. Hey listen, I have a question for you. Your family, your wife, how have they responded to what you’ve had to go through?

Bob Livingston: Well, as soon as we found out that we were under investigation, I had to tell my wife of 60 years all about it. In fact, she was in the next room when they were here. She was listening to the whole thing. And then I had to tell my kids, three children and eight grandchildren, and I had to tell my children. And they were all very, very concerned and, you know, they shared my sweating it out for that period of time. But after about a year and an 88-page brief, I was convinced that we could demonstrate that we were innocent. And when we didn’t hear anything for a few months after that until the statute of limitations ran out, I realized that the Justice Department realized they couldn’t refute what I had said and they knew I was innocent and they knew that they shouldn’t have brought the charges in the first place.

Chuck Crismier: So how does your wife feel about liberty and justice for all today?

Bob Livingston: Oh, she’s with me 100%. I mean, we’ve been through a lot. We’ve had a wonderful life together. We’ve had our ups and our downs. But this was one that was totally unexpected and out of the blue, but she was right there with me and I couldn’t have done it without her.

Chuck Crismier: Bob, it’s interesting that there’s one more area in which our lives have the same trajectory. My wife and I are getting ready to celebrate our 60th in two weeks.

Bob Livingston: Congratulations.

Chuck Crismier: So you’ve got what, 60 or 61 or something like that?

Bob Livingston: We are just about to hit our 61st.

Chuck Crismier: Aha, see? It’s amazing, the trajectory here. You got your start two years before I did in 1943. I was a 1945 guy. Do you know that we were still part of the Great Generation? Do you know that?

Bob Livingston: Yeah, I’m very happy about the time we grew up in. I can’t claim credit for anything those good folks did.

Chuck Crismier: I know, I know the feeling. We escaped the Baby Boomer generation by a year or two there.

Bob Livingston: I’ve kind of considered myself a boomer, but they consider me as being geriatric.

Chuck Crismier: Well, I’m looking at your picture on the front of the book, unless it’s of 20 years ago, you don’t look particularly geriatric to me. And you’re still pressing forward. What are you doing with yourself? You still have The Livingston Group going?

Bob Livingston: Yeah, just one of my partners—actually, I lost about half my business and two of my partners in the process because they didn’t like paying the attorney's fees. But my managing partner and I have been working together for 48 years. And he’s still plugging in D.C. I’m in New Orleans. We operate by Zoom and computer unless they really need me up in D.C.

Chuck Crismier: You know, one of the things that concerns me, Bob, I’m concerned for you down there. When I drove through New Orleans when I was leaving for college, my parents stopped over there to let us out to a service station for a potty break. And I thought we were attacked by kamikazes. They called them mosquitoes, but they were like drones. I don’t know how you people survive down there.

Bob Livingston: Well, we’ve got a great mosquito service now. They spray and so far it hasn’t led a lot of deaths by cancer—not that we know of yet. I might be a little goofy, but some people would say that’s just natural. Anyway, the mosquitoes have become less of a problem in the city than they used to be. I can’t stand gnats, and I have a son who lives in Savannah, and they’ve got tons of gnats, and the gnats drive me crazy.

Chuck Crismier: Well, there are a lot of gnats in Washington too, and they’ll drive you crazy. Human gnats. Hey listen, thanks so much for joining us here. I’ve enjoyed the conversation with you, Bob. Looking at your face here, I feel like you—they say don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. I’ve been looking at the whites of your eyes here right on the front of your book. So we’ve had a straight conversation here fighting abuses of power, weaponized lawfare, and the tyranny of the deep state. You gambled for success and broke even. That’s very interesting, Bob. Hey, thank you so very much. Keep pressing on, brother. Appreciate it.

Bob Livingston: Thank you very much, Chuck. God bless you, and I really appreciate your having me on.

Chuck Crismier: All right, thank you. Friends, the book "The Rainbow Chaser", Bob Livingston, our guest, and the book is a very fascinating book. I think you’re going to enjoy reading it. It’s a $30 hardbound book, by the way, yours for $20 on our website, saveus.org. Saveus.org, call us, 1-800-SAVE-USA. That’s 1-800-SAVE-USA, or write to us at Save America Ministries, P.O. Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255, writing a check and $6 for postage and handling.

By the way, the book, my 12th book now, "The Power to Overcome", has just been delivered. I hope you’re going to join us with the Overcomers Project. $250 donation to Save America Ministries will put 10 copies of those books so that you become a minister of our God to get the message out and prepare the way of the Lord for history’s final hour. God bless and be a blessing.