Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2023
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a bomb built by Timothy McVeigh exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. One hundred sixty-eight people died and hundreds more were injured in what remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
Jeffrey Toobin has a new book about the bombing and trial called, “Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism.” Toobin joined Jack Goldsmith to discuss the new and revealing information his book draws on concerning McVeigh’s motivations and trial strategy, Attorney General Merrick Garland's consequential role in the McVeigh trial, and the long-tail impact of the trial on right-wing domestic terrorism in the United States, including the Jan. 6 attacks on Congress.
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Transcript
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| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | Tim McVey had memorized large portions of the Declaration of Independence. |
| 0:39.0 | Not just the famous part, the first few lines, |
| 0:43.0 | but the parts where Thomas Jefferson is justifying violent rebellion against the British. |
| 0:51.0 | Those lines from the Declaration of Independence, |
| 0:55.0 | not familiar to most of us, certainly not to me, were also invoked by people on January 6th |
| 1:03.0 | as part of their justification to attack the Capitol. |
| 1:09.0 | As you say, I don't know exactly what to make of it. |
| 1:13.0 | Certainly, it doesn't discredit the framers of our country, |
| 1:17.0 | the founding fathers, the framers, because their words have been misused. |
| 1:23.0 | Their words have been misused in this particular way for a long time, |
| 1:27.0 | and I think that's worthy of no. |
| 1:31.0 | I'm Jack Goldsmith, and this is the LawFair podcast, May 25th, 2023. |
| 1:37.0 | At 9.02 a.m. on April 19th, 1995, |
| 1:41.0 | a bomb built by Tim McVey exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. |
| 1:47.0 | 168 people died, and hundreds more were injured, |
| 1:51.0 | and what remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in US history. |
... |
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