- Rhode Island was at fault.

There were things we did wrong that could have helped stop the decay of the bridge.

- We have to have accountability.

You have to put people under oath.

People should be fired.

People should have maybe their pensions revoked.

- This is law enforcement.

This is what Trump ran on.

These are illegal aliens.

- I hate the expression of aliens, okay?

They're human beings, so they shouldn't be treated like aliens from an invasion from Mars.

(inspiring music) - And welcome into this episode of "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

Thanks for joining us.

This week, we have former Rhode Island Attorney General Arlene Violet, Joe Larisa, attorney and former Chief of Staff to Governor Almond back in the day.

A proposal to keep Providence Police from cooperating with federal immigration officers is gaining steam as the Trump administration continues to look for those who are here in the country illegally.

Arlene, let me talk with you.

This is the news this week.

A Providence City Council subcommittee is talking about some codification of what was passed years ago.

Basically, the message is: ICE, stay away.

What are your thoughts on that?

- Yes, and also to hold Providence Police responsible if they do anything contrary to the ordinance that says they can't do anything to assist ICE.

Well, needless to say, I think the proposal just goes too far.

It's understandable.

I can understand why people are worried that look like a minority, for example, or look like they're an immigrant.

You know, certainly priests and ministers, school teachers, librarians all worried about children.

Prosecutors are worried because when crime happens, you won't have people come forward, whether they're citizens or not, if they look like there's somebody who might be picked up.

So it's understandable what the concern is, but no way should we be waiving the qualified immunity of police officers.

As you know, police can be sued.

If what they do is unconstitutional and it's reasonable for them to know it's unconstitutional, then you can in fact sue a police officer.

In this case, this entire area of law is in flux, and the council wants to do away with that.

That's unfair for the police officers that are involved.

It's a conflict of interest for the council.

They're supposed to be watching out for the taxpayers in Providence, not having to pay to defend these kinds of suits and/or a judgment, et cetera.

And last but not least, this is a problem.

We've got to keep police officers as the primary law enforcement unit taking care of law and violations of the law in the state.

And the military has to stay out of it.

ICE has a little bit of a role defending property, et cetera.

But we shouldn't be mixing local police, the military, et cetera, in a state.

- I wanna look at the bigger picture.

This is why we call us Rhode Island.

We're an island.

This is an overwhelming minority position on ICE and stopping illegal immigration.

I realize in Rhode Island, it's very popular to say, "Stop ICE."

Nationwide, it's not.

This is law enforcement.

This is what Trump ran on.

These are illegal aliens.

They're not supposed to be here.

They're subject to removal orders or they're not validly in the United States.

That's what ICE is doing.

They are removing them.

They're removing 'em throughout the country.

We're putting the National Guard in Portland.

We're putting the National Guard in Chicago.

Those are going to be upheld on the ground that sanctuary cities are not letting Trump enforce the laws regarding immigration.

This is going in the complete opposite direction.

It's saying, "Not only don't help, but we're gonna go after the police who do."

The administration will take notice.

And as they've done in Boston and as they're doing in Providence, there's going to be more ICE.

We should be more like Louisville.

They said, "Enough, we're gonna protect our immigrant communities by cooperating."

The ones who are illegal are going to go.

We're not gonna have ICE come in here and trigger the administration.

We're going to not become a sanctuary city anymore.

And then the ICE raids largely stopped.

This is going to trigger the administration to come in and be more aggressive in their ICE raids.

And again, you don't read it in the paper.

These communities they're talking about, there are people who are not lawfully in the United States of America.

Christi Noem, Pam Bondi went to a ceremony out west honoring those and celebrating real citizens who came in legally and did it the right way and are citizens of the United States.

These are illegal aliens, and ICE is just doing the job that the president was elected to do.

- Trump has actually caused this problem, in my view, and I understand what you're saying.

And certainly some people, obviously, who are illegal don't belong here.

But there is, it's a much more complex picture with asylum, et cetera.

And this is like a ham-fisted way of addressing the immigrant issue as far as I'm concerned.

But the other part of it, where I totally disagree with Joe, is this incursion of troops, et cetera, into usually what's considered a Democrat enclave.

For starters, there's a 1878 law that forbids the military, thank God, because every dictatorship, whether it was Hitler or Lenin or Pinochet or Salazar, started with a president or a leader getting the military pledged to him, et cetera.

And then going into cities and towns with the military, et cetera.

And I just hope this is not going to be a prelude to the military being outside voting places in 2026.

And that's the real agenda that's going on here.

- Joe, what about that?

The chilling effect.

Look, these mayors are saying, "We're fine.

We don't need the military coming in on our own people."

You seem to think it's gonna be held up in court, but the president has had some setbacks in court, specifically on National Guard coming into some places.

- Jim, that was for the next segment, but we'll make the point now.

There's only setbacks in the district court, maybe in court of appeals.

All the "Trump stop, Trump stop."

The people who know say, "Just wait.

They're wrong."

These courts are putting their own personal- - But he's having to invoke the Insurrection Act.

- [Joe] He hasn't done that yet.

- Yeah, I mean, but that's the next step.

- [Joe] No, that's support of the next step.

- In order to sustain it legally, right, Arlene?

- Before he gets there, the law, and I looked this up last night.

He's invoking the provision that he can send in National Guard if he's unable to execute the laws of the United States.

And he's using that to say, "I can't execute my immigration laws because these sanctuary cities are stopping me."

I don't think this is anything to do with anything more than we have illegal aliens, millions who came over.

The people overwhelmingly support removing them, especially the worst of the worst.

And we're protecting criminals and others by trying to stop the president from executing the laws.

Stop sanctuary cities and we'll be okay.

- First of all, I hate the expression of aliens, okay?

They're human beings who fled from countries sometimes under very adverse circumstances.

And if you have any religious belief at all, regardless of what it is, they're our brothers and sisters.

So they shouldn't be treated like aliens from an invasion from Mars.

So I mind that characterization to start with, okay?

That doesn't mean I agree they belong in the country.

If they are illegal, they have to follow the laws, et cetera.

But putting that aside a moment, there probably is a legal ground, and it will be upheld when he's using federal people like ICE, et cetera.

Maybe a bit of the military.

If it's a federal building that they're defending because that sort of is a federal jurisdiction.

But there is absolutely no question we ought to be concerned about the infiltration and the use of troops under pretext, particularly in areas that are Democrat because it's partisanship.

It's a way of, like, zinging Democrats, et cetera.

And it's illegal under that 1878 act.

So this isn't... And I hope, Joe, you're right.

It's only for a limited purpose.

But let's wait and see.

But I don't like the incursion of military troops into United States cities, particularly when they're Democrat-oriented places.

- Jim, illegal alien is the term used in the United States Code to refer to these individuals.

Congress did it, so they are properly called illegal aliens.

I understand Arlene's point.

He's not putting them into Democratic cities because they're Democratic cities.

He's putting them into sanctuary cities who refuse to hold criminals when they come out of jail.

And so what Trump, if you don't wanna hold them, we are gonna go in and get them ourselves.

If you cooperate and hold the criminals like you're supposed to do and not go with this left-wing-protect-them agenda, we don't need to do that.

So I think this is cause and effect.

It's these cities defying the laws of the United States, because, let's be clear here, they wanna protect, in their words, the immigrant communities.

That's all over the paper.

- Well, what about unintended consequences?

You've had some people who have been taken, deported, and they found out, "Oops, we made a mistake," and they're in another country and you can't get 'em back.

Is that just collateral damage?

That's the cost of doing business?

- And it shouldn't be collateral damage.

And by the way, let's focus on Providence, 'cause that's what we've been talking about.

I think it's unfair to say Smiley runs a sanctuary city.

The fact of the matter is the Providence police have in fact tried to enforce the perimeters, et cetera.

So they have, in effect, done exactly what they should in fact do.

The state of Rhode Island has a policy that if someone, in fact, is being discharged from the ACI, like they should, they should alert the federal enforcement agency, ICE, et cetera, if that person is in the country illegally, that they're being discharged from the ACI, et cetera.

So this broad brush that everybody, including Rhode Island, is a sanctuary city, I think is a total exaggeration as to what the reality is.

- Would you have just one example?

They went to help an ICE agent who apparently crashed his car.

Now we've got an investigation about this poor police officer and police department just for assisting an ICE agent because, "Oh no, he was helping arrest the illegal aliens."

No, he wasn't.

And one, he should, but he wasn't.

So any assistance, anything at all that is in support of ICE or the law, is met with disdain.

And what we are talking about today, a complete backlash by the city of Providence with overwhelming support in the council and the immigrant community.

- No, I think that, no, no, the mayor has taken a more moderate point and has said, "Look, if there's a crime going on or there's some type of disorderly contact, we'll be there.

But we're not gonna go in unless there is a judicial warrant to go in.

We're not gonna help them."

And I think Smiley's made clear on that.

Right?

- Exactly.

And there's no investigation.

Smiley backed up that cop right away.

Some members of the council, which is why they're wrong, are trying to sanction that police officer.

We should never let go of qualified immunity.

- [Jim] The council's going off the rails, don't you think?

- Yeah, they're off the rails, and we'll see what happens when it goes for a full vote.

They'll be totally wrong if they try to change that qualified immunity.

Let the police, they're very talented, conscientious people.

Let them figure out what they can or can't do under the existing rubric of law.

- Let's shift gears just a little bit, Joe.

We've had you on at various segments during the first nine months, sometimes it seems like nine years that Trump's been in office.

- Correct.

- You were here right after he got elected.

And then we did kind of a 90, 100 day.

We're nine months in now, scorecard?

- Jim, I said every time I'm here, and this is the third time ever since he's been elected, every day I wake up with a big smile on my face.

And I realize that in Rhode Island a lot of people wake up ready to vomit.

But he's done what he was elected to do, and he just keeps winning.

It's breathtaking for us conservatives.

What Trump has been able to do in less than 200 days, it appears like more than a president has done in a four or even eight-year term.

- Is there anything that's given you pause that he's done?

- Yeah, a little bit.

They go a little bit overboard with Pam Bondi trying to prosecute somebody who wouldn't make signs for Charlie Kirk.

- Do you think that the FBI director, James Comey's, indictment was just, valid?

- Here's the problem with that.

And I thought about this a lot.

Somebody lied here, they really lied to Congress.

It was Comey or the other guy.

The problem is, it might well be Comey, but I don't think you can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.

And I think that's probably what the prosecutor said.

"Yeah, he probably lied to Congress, but how are we gonna prove that beyond a reasonable doubt?"

- Let's zoom out to the larger Trump in the first nine months.

- Okay, yeah.

First of all, you don't indict people that you don't think you can prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt for, alright?

That's what the American system is.

- And that's why the original prosecutor backed off on it.

- No vengeance prosecutions and no politicization of the Department of Justice to go after your political enemy.

He's totally wrong doing that.

I wake up in the morning and I'm worried about him turning us into a military state.

That October meeting that he had with all the military sitting there, where he's castigating past presidents who are the commander in chief, et cetera, was totally inappropriate.

Having that commission when he started interviewing generals, telling them to resign if they weren't going to follow Trump's policies.

Totally wrong.

The military has to be independent.

Don't turn us into a police state.

And I'm afraid he's moving in that direction.

I beg to come here and eat humble pie and be wrong about that.

Please, may I be wrong.

But he deserves watching.

- Jim, everything Trump is doing, Biden did.

The difference is Trump does it right out loud.

He's not hiding anything.

The censorship with the government, the shutting down political opponents, for crying out loud, they didn't even want Donald Trump on the ballot.

They were starting this before he even was elected, trying to keep the president of the United States, the candidate, from running.

He was off YouTube, he was off X, they censored entities all over the place, and the government, Biden went after his political enemies.

The whole witch hunt, the Russia probe.

They all did the same thing.

The difference is Trump does it right out there, right in your face, and he's winning.

- Was the election stolen?

You believe the election was stolen?

- I believe the election was influenced by mass mail ballot, what do they call it?

The ballot collecting, the harvesting, ballot harvesting, which is illegal in some states.

Is that illegal stolen?

No.

But is it wrong?

Yes.

And it's been stopped in many states now.

- But not enough to overturn the election.

- I don't think that.

- That harvesting wasn't even proven.

Ken Block here in Rhode Island has a seminal work on investigation.

He was hired by the Republican committee to find exactly that harvesting, and he didn't find it.

- Oh, no.

It was proven, but it was legal harvesting.

The states allowed harvesting, hundreds and hundreds of.

In my election, you had harvesting for mayor.

You'd have somebody go out, collect 150, 200 ballots from the nursing homes and turn them in.

People didn't know how they voted.

In any event, the bottom line is what?

Was that enough to tip the election?

No.

And that's what Ken Block and the others found.

- Oh, sure, and I lost the election.

I would've liked to think and complain that it was Hobbes, but you know what?

You didn't vote for me, so be it.

Okay, end of story.

But you know, certainly.

- Lost by 21 votes.

- [Jim] Both of you have been in the arena.

- I didn't lose by that many votes either.

But putting that away, you know, the fact of the matter is you've got to follow the law.

You are not the law.

There are three equal branches of government.

You should not be usurping the Congress, which is so weak, it's unbelievable.

The judiciary body, stay in your lane.

And that's something Trump hasn't learned yet.

- All right, we're gonna have both of you back on the year anniversary.

We'll talk about it then.

(Arlene laughs) - [Joe] Alright.

- Rhode Island's legislative leaders are pledging to hold more hearings on the failure of the Washington Bridge after a leaked report places some of the blame on the state's DOT.

Joe, let me begin with you.

All three of us came in from the East Bay today and you were delayed getting here.

So I know you are in a lather to talk about the Washington Bridge.

- Jim, as we talked about and broke on this show, the last time I was here, the reason all this is happening and the lawsuit is Rhode Island has true comparative negligence.

So that report shows- - Explain that.

- That report shows that Rhode Island was at fault.

There were things we did wrong that could have helped stop the decay of the bridge.

But even if we are 60, 70, 80% at fault, we can still recover the balance.

So this is a $200 million suit, and a jury finds Rhode Island is 90% at fault.

We still recover 20 million.

So it's worth going forward.

So in some states, if you're more at fault than the other guy, you don't win any money.

So in this state you do.

So that report shows we're at fault.

But that gets to the big point.

Let's get everything out there.

It doesn't matter.

It's not going to kill us.

We've already got one report out.

Let's put all the discovery online and let's have the hearing.

And Jim, this is an important point.

I don't know if everybody forgets institutional history, but Rhode Island has had a major scandal, much bigger than this one.

Hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, huge litigation for years.

And there were incredible legislative oversight hearings.

Remember Depco?

Hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now what's the difference, and why was there an oversight hearing after hearing after hearing after hearing there to get to the bottom of it?

Because it wasn't just the taxpayer's money, it was the money in the people's pocket that was taken out.

And there were protests.

- [Jim] That was during the banking crisis in the early nineties.

- Banking, nineties.

You didn't take my taxpayer money.

You took a hundred thousand of my money.

And we want to know why it happened, how it happened, and how it won't happen again.

So those are huge oversight hearings.

- Joe's assessment of the law is 100% accurate.

We're a comparative negligent state, okay?

Number one.

But that puts the lie to all the claims that we should never have shown this, et cetera.

First of all, in law it's discoverable.

You have to exchange in discovery the good and the bad about what's going on.

- And we should say what it is.

Draft report done a year ago before they filed the lawsuit that pointed a lot of the finger at the state.

Now, this was leaked or it was sent or however it got out, they held it for a year.

Now, Peter Neronha is saying, "Oh, well it should be out there and whatever."

He never would've posted it on his website had it not been.

- Right, and the fact of the matter is the defense has that.

They would've gotten that through discovery anyway.

- [Jim] Eventually, anyway.

- And I understand they already had it, which is probably one of the reasons why it got out the way it did.

So that's farcical to say this is hurting the case, et cetera, okay?

You have a duty and obligation to turn over discovery.

That's the good, the bad, or the indifferent relative to the nature of your case, number one.

The second aspect of this, I think, besides the disingenuousness of not turning that over, is we have to have accountability.

You have to put people under oath.

People should be fired.

People should have maybe their pensions revoked if they were, you know, playing cards, you know, in the so-called furnace room, et cetera.

Rather than out there doing their duties, we ought to be looking at where the kickbacks to people who allowed and approved and let this thing continue without the repairs, et cetera.

So, yes, there has to be a plausible, a plausible over hearing.

And they didn't do it plausibly before.

They've got one chance now to redeem themselves, 'cause the first one was a legislative joke.

- Joe, you talked about comparative negligence.

We should go forward, even if we get $20 million.

I am in the camp, I would rather ditch the lawsuit and get accountability.

Nobody's been fired, nobody's lost a paycheck.

Nobody's been suspended from the state.

Because, you know, the legal theory is then if we start admitting that there's, you know, the state's involved, that's gonna hurt our case.

I'm hearing from people in a $14 billion budget, 20 million, 50 million, 100 million, who cares?

I want to know how this happened.

- Well, you can do both.

You can do both.

- Yeah, we're not going to get them both until after the lawsuit's settled in 2027.

- No, you can.

Depco, you didn't do it that way.

You got them both right up front.

People said, "You're taking my money!"

Marches on the State House.

Insanity.

We are going to find out why.

And they did it.

And there were lawsuits and there were criminal charges.

Joe Mollicone, you've been that criminal in that case.

But you can do it all.

And the only difference is, and the only way they're going to do it all is public protests.

And I don't think you're going to get that here.

- Plus it's part of the civil suit.

The defendants are going to do what's called a request for admissions.

And they're going to put these things forward relative to the culpability of the state on this.

So using that lawsuit as a cover is dead wrong.

It's a dodge.

Now let's see if the General Assembly finally does what it didn't do the first time and that has a full hearing.

Point the fingers, challenge pensions of people who didn't do their job, fire who ought to be fired, and basically, potentially go after some of the people financially who are responsible for this fiasco.

- My colleague, Ian Donnis, did an interview with House Speaker Joseph Shekarchi.

It's a wide-ranging interview, but he talked about holding legislative hearings next month.

He and the Senate President Val Lawson have said they're gonna try to get to the bottom of this.

Here's a little bit about what the speaker told Ian.

- The Attorney General has said quite clearly that there would be no harm in having oversight to explain the results of that forensic audit, how it happened, why it happened.

And I believe that will be the focus of next month's oversight hearing as well.

And that will be done under oath.

- But do you think Governor McKee is right to place the emphasis on the lawsuit, which is not going to go to court until late in 2027, after the next race for governor?

Or should the emphasis be more on providing more answers to Rhode Islanders in the present?

- Well, I don't think it's an either-or.

I think you can do both.

I think you can have a vigorous oversight hearing, ask the questions, get the answers, and then continue with the lawsuit.

But this is a document that has been posted and is posted online right now.

And we need to have answers of the document.

I'd like to find out a little bit more.

There's a lot of that document actually raised questions.

I think those questions need to be answered.

- And if you want to see that entire interview, it's "one-on-one with Ian Donnis."

You can go to Ocean State Media's YouTube channel and watch the entire interview with Speaker Shekarchi.

So this is the nub of it.

Investigative hearings, legislative hearings a year ago, we got nothing out of it.

What I'm hearing from the McKee administration is, "We can't talk about the audit.

We can't, you know, we're going to have to invoke some type of..." So what's going to happen in these?

Are we really going to get something out of these legislative hearings?

- And that remains to be seen.

I hope Joseph Shekarchi means exactly what he told Ian Donnis, that this will be honest.

Otherwise, the legislature is going to look like the coverup machine it was the first time.

- Jim, I want to defend the state here for a minute.

It's clear that others, non-state entities are culpable here.

There are problems.

20 million, 40 million.

It might even be half, I don't know.

I haven't seen the evidence.

It's not just the state, the outside contractors screwed up.

And in Depco, it was the auditors who paid a huge amount of money.

And of course, there were huge state problems there, too.

So it is both.

So these hearings, we don't just need to focus on what the state did wrong.

They can come back and talk about what the contractors did wrong too.

It should be balanced.

- You need to really upset the incestuous relationship for many, many years, going back to when I was attorney general, that these companies have had with the State Department of DOT.

So-called the lowest bid, which really wasn't the lowest bid, 'cause it was "your turn, then your turn, and then my turn," and then I would do a change order to get what I wanted, et cetera.

That department sorely needs incredible reform, and hopefully this legislature will do it.

But the legislature is primarily Democrat and they're afraid, I think, of embarrassing the administration, et cetera.

So let's see.

- And there's labor interests involved, too.

- And labor interests.

- But Arlene, so what happens?

You put Peter Alviti, you put top people in and you sit down.

You know, they swear to tell the truth, and then they say, "Well, I really can't talk about this because of the lawsuit."

Then what card does the legislature play?

- The legislature can, putting them under oath, insist that in fact they do speak.

I don't know whether they have the criminal- - [Jim] Does that work, Joe?

- You know, like in Congress, right?

- We're just looking at that.

- People in contempt.

So I think we need to look at whether we can.

- Never been done.

- Never been done in the state.

- Right.

Because of the incestuous relationship.

- You know, it's interesting, last time we had you on and you didn't know, Max Wistow and John Savage, two heavy-hitting lawyers here, were brought in to work with Peter Neronha, AG, on this.

And then Max Wistow mysteriously went away.

We don't know why.

Any thoughts?

Maybe that this audit report, maybe he... And that was right before... I don't know if he saw it or not, but they had this report before they filed the suit.

I don't think he looked at it.

I don't think he had it.

- Even if he did, that would... My understanding is it's completely irrelevant.

It was a different issue.

- You don't think that had anything?

- No, and again, we're assuming the audit report was, "Oh my God, we don't have a case.

It's terrible."

We have a case.

We have a good case.

Do we have a case where they're going to pay 100%?

I'm sure we do not.

But we have a case for many, many millions of dollars.

And Jim, I want to emphasize this.

The reason we need these hearings is because this is going to settle.

We're never gonna have under oath in court expert witnesses on what happened here.

It's not going to happen.

They all settle all the time and then you get nothing.

And that happens, as we point out, two, three, four, five years down the line.

- But that's what's happened with the Station nightclub fire.

- Yes, exactly.

- It settled.

And we never really got the full story.

Don't you think there's... And don't you think there's residual frustration on that?

- Criminal prosecution as you- - No, no, I get that.

But we didn't get the full story about what was going on because they settled or they reached plea deals in that case.

- I think Joe's analysis of how this is gonna turn out, I think is right on target.

- Alright, Arlene and Joe, we really appreciate you coming in.

We'll have both of you back at some point.

Good to see you.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for joining us.

Be sure to check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel, and of course at oceanstatemedia.org.

We'll see you next time on "Lively."

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