Judge Rules Josh Hawley BROKE THE LAW But Won't Actually Punish Him

A judge in Missouri has ruled that Josh Hawley broke the law in the state while he was Attorney General by failing to abide by the state's open records laws. At issue are communications that Hawley's campaign had with staffers at his office while he was running for Senate, and Democrats had filed requests to get the materials released under the law. Hawley refused, and now he faces NO CONSEQUENCES for breaking the law, as Farron Cousins explains.

Don't forget to like, comment, and share! And subscribe to stay connected!

Connect with Farron on Twitter

*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

According to a judge in the state of Missouri, Josh Holly, Republican Senator Josh Holly broke the law while he was serving as the State's Attorney General. Here's what happened. Josh Holly, of course, before he ran actually while he was running for Senate, was the Missouri Attorney General. And Missouri has like many other states, an open records law, which means if you've got government communications and a group files a request, we, we would like to have these communications in these documents. They're legally required to turn them over. Well, that's exactly what happened when Josh Holly was running for senate, while serving as Missouri's Attorney General. The, uh, democratic, uh, senatorial campaign committee said, we have reason to believe that your campaign is working with your staffers, your state government staffers, which is illegal, and we would like to see the communications that your staffers have had with your campaign. Holly said, hell no, I'm not not gonna give you that. Why would I give you that? Even though he's legally required to do it.

And the communications, of course, may have proven that Josh Holly had directed his staff at the Attor, uh, uh, state Attorney General's office to work on his campaign. Again, highly illegal for that to happen if it happened. But Holly never turned over those records. A couple of them did in fact get turned over. Most of them did not. And the, uh, democratic Senatorial campaign committee had to sue to bring all of this to light. And finally, after four years, four years, a judge finally came out this past week and said, yep, gosh darn it. Josh Holly as Attorney General, you broke the law.

So Holly's in for it, right? I mean, this, this is the end of his career guys going to jail? No, no. Josh Holly is not being punished at all. Like, not even a little bit. Will Josh Holly be punished for breaking the state law instead because he was Attorney General. The attorney general's office in Missouri has to pay a $12,000 fine and the attorney's fees for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign committee, not Holly, Holly doesn't have to pay those things, even though he's the guy that was in charge when it happened. The office that he has not had for four years has to pay it. So Holly just gets to sit up in DC and be like, wow. Sucks for you guys. Hope you got the money. I screwed you all over big. All right, what's next?

Once again, I find myself just flabbergasted. How, how, how is this, how our justice system in the United States works? This guy can hold an office knowingly and willfully, according to the judge, break the law are, and then because he's not in that office anymore, the office gets punished and he gets away. Scott free, no punishment for Josh Holly. Un frigging believable. You know, there's a saying, I don't know where it came from, but the saying is, if the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class. And I think this is a pretty good example of that, except this one goes even further. Not only does the office only have to pay a fine after knowingly breaking the law, but the guy that actually did it isn't even the one that has to pay the fine. The state is paying the fine. So where does the state get the money? Oh, from the taxpayers in Missouri. So Missouri taxpayers have to pay a fine because Josh Holly broke the law as their attorney general. I hope next year in Holly's reelection, the Democrats run that in an ad because that seems like a pretty big deal that maybe the people of Missouri need to be paying attention to. You lost money because you put a guy in charge that broke the law.