Air Date: 6–20-2026

Today we explore how political revenge became official government policy. The Department of Justice has dropped fraud cases while opening vindictive investigations into Trump's critics. Judges who rule against him face death threats at home with no federal protection and thousands of DOJ lawyers have walked out the door, leaving the agency hollowed out by loyalty tests and bent toward retribution.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we explore how political revenge became official government policy. The Department of Justice has dropped fraud cases while opening vindictive investigations into Trump's critics. Judges who rule against him face death threats at home with no federal protection and thousands of DOJ lawyers have walked out the door, leaving the agency hollowed out by loyalty tests and bent toward retribution.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

The Beat with Ari Melber

60 Minutes

NBC News

Strict Scrutiny

Democracy Now!

MS NOW

and Stay Tuned with Preet

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, A Department of Revenge

Section B, Malicious Prosecutions

Section C, Weaponized Department

And Section D, Hollowed Out

And now, on to the show.

We begin with big news that runs through the crises that Donald Trump has been facing, including credibility problems at his Justice Department.

The president basically announcing that he plans to nominate the acting attorney general, who has been so controversial, just faced big pushback and losses on Capitol Hill, including from the Republican Senate over this criminal fund they want to do. Well, now he wants to turn him from acting AG to his actual attorney general, a Senate-confirmed position.

Now, Blanche has been auditioning for this since Bondi was ousted in April and pushing to go even farther than she would on cases that even if they ultimately lose or are overturned, reflect Trump's demands for a partisan political revenge-oriented DOJ

Obviously I'm honored and humbled, that the president indicated he was gonna nominate me today.

So I'm looking forward to working with the senators and, and getting them the information they, they need, they need through the, through the confirmation process.

That is Blanche referring to it, and you can hear the terms of art that we in the news are using, that he's using, because this is right now something Trump has said.

It hasn't been formalized, and sometimes Trump walks things back. But the move does follow on what Trump wanted and telegraphed. Many are concerned that this obvious legal conflict will only get worse if he goes from temporary to permanent. Remember, it is a scandal and a legal breach in and of itself for any president to take someone who was their personal defense attorney, someone who was loyal to them on a personal basis, and say they should also run the DOJ, run the law firm, if you will, for the country.

Because throughout the modern history of the DOJ, it was a huge dividing line that it is supposed to be independent, that of course any president is entitled to their own lawyers, but those lawyers have never been pushed forward as the lawyers for the people, and the obvious conflict that creates if a president is running the government more like their personal law firm agenda rather than for the public good.

This is a, a public interest job, recall. Now, if everything I'm saying sounds a little quaint these days, that is because Donald Trump has tried to get everyone, including the Senate that has the final word here, get everyone used to the idea that this is all just gonna be a personal, corrupt, kleptocratic system.

And yet the pushback we've seen on the issue that's related, which I mentioned, that Trump tried to use Blanche and the DOJ to settle his own case that he sued himself for, and then move or launder taxpayer money over potentially to criminals, that whole thing has blown up in their face. That's exactly the kind of stuff that is a bigger problem if you don't have independence of the DOJ.

And Blanche has been very clear where he stands.

I love working for President Trump. It's an honor to be part of this administration.

We have a man who's doing a great job, I'll tell you. I knew it because he kept me out of jail for years. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

I just operate every day on doing everything that I need to do to execute the president's agenda and priorities.

Article II says, "The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America." It does not say that the attorney general stands off to the side.

It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. There's a ton of evidence that the election was rigged.

If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, "Thank you very much.

I love you, sir

The former attorney general who was fired, Bondi, had pushed more baseless and reversed revenge cases than any time in history, and it wasn't enough. We've been following this. We even have an update on one of these cases tonight, but many of these originated during her tenure, and it wasn't enough because Trump wanted even more and apparently is getting more out of Blanche.

There is a new indictment, I should say, about Trump critic and former FBI Director James Comey, recent indictment, and you look at that issue over basically something that fizzled under Bondi and under Blanche's acting role. They've revived a version of it. You have cases against the former CIA director.

You have Blanche also securing what many people think is a losing case, a weak effort to say that because the Southern Poverty Law Center did surveillance, and had informants in targeted hate groups, what they call hate groups, that somehow they were pro-hate group. Well, even that center's critics don't really think they're for those hate groups or militias.

Again, I'm not trying to get into the terminology, but just to say the case doesn't really make sense. But Blanche rushed that out. It came out during his tenure, not Bondi's, which is a sign of how Trump's look, looks at this. Blanche handling of the Epstein files, of course, got a lot of backlash, meaning a lot of people who voted for Trump and a lot of the MAGA podas- podcasts, other groups, they were against this.

But Trump apparently liked it because of the mishandling may have redounded to his benefit. Moving on to other issues, you have what I mentioned, the criminal fund, the support and minimization of the terrible crimes of Jan six. They, of course, have gone beyond the pardons and tried to minimize sedition charges, establishing the, the criminal fund, a new agreement that claims that Trump would have law-- ongoing immunity and his family from any IRS probes.

Of course, that's only worth the paper that the acting attorney general signed it on. A new attorney general in a future administration in either party might revoke that just as obviously not valid, but that's on paper for now. I want to bring in Jason Johnson, politics professor at Morgan State University.

Jason, we could talk about, many aspects of this, and I have a senator coming up on, whether there's a, a confirmation route. But I think the Epstein contrast is telling. Republicans, Megan Kelly, Joe Rogan, very critical of the way Blanche, they say, mishandled the Epstein files. Cer-certainly wasn't transparent, blew up in their face.

Eventually, we all know the law was passed, forced more files out. And yet Trump took away from that he liked it. Not because it served transparency to public interest, but it served the one thing that he stays focused on, apparently, which is the DOJ should serve him and not the public

Yeah, I, I, I think what everyone needs to understand and the danger here and what the Senate is concerned about, Todd Blanche, he, he's not a new bestie, he's a true bestie, right?

He was Trump's lawyer. His, his entire reason for being in this job is to protect this president because he agrees with him ideologically, because he sees a, a kindred spirit with him morally, and because he sees his job as not serving the country, but serving Trump. So whether it's the Epstein files, whether it's the sit-down two-day meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, whether it's not releasing all the information that was asked for when the law was asked for, that is how Todd Blanche is going to operate.

And unfortunately, or I wish that would be enough to keep him from being confirmed, but it may not be. It, it may be his position on the slush fund and January 6th that keeps this man from being in a position of the most important attorney in the United States of America.

What do you think of the, the sort of one-sided politics here?

Republicans made hay, when Obama Attorney General Loretta

■ CLIP END — Blanche AG

Lynch, had what appeared to be a spontaneous run-in with Bill Clinton. Former- Right ... officials, s- let alone president, talk to people. And they made a lot of hay out of that, and they got the serious people of Washington worried about that, when it appeared to be a, a, a social interaction.

And here, of course, the levels of this, the personal lawyer being the attorney general, it, it, it melts it all down as a farce.

Right. Most of the attacks on Bill Clinton or Barack Obama all... they were always bad faith at the time, but they're even worse now. This was Trump's personal attorney.

He's doing podcasts with Sean Hannity. He's, he's trying to create a slush fund for the President of the United States. He's said, "Hey, we should send ICE agents to polls." He says that his job is to serve this president as opposed to the people. So there is no comparison. I think that's so important for people to understand.

The, not R- Loretta Lynch, not, not, anyone that Barack Obama had. We have never had an active attorney and possibly full attorney general who has made it so nakedly obvious that his goal was to be the personal consiglieri lawyer of the president as opposed to even serving the DOJ.

When the Supreme Court recently struck down President Trump's tariffs, he lashed out at two justices he had nominated, calling them fools and lapdogs. The president has frequently railed against judges when they rule against him. What often happens next is a barrage of violent threats from his followers against those judges.

We spoke with twenty-six federal judges, nine Democratic appointees, seventeen Republican, both sitting and retired. The sitting judges told us they feel under siege. Most would not appear on camera, fearful for their safety. Judge John Kühnauer, appointed by Ronald Reagan, is one of the few who would. He blocked President Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship.

He wasn't prepared for what happened next

My wife and I are at home, and, the doorbell rings, and I go to the door, and there's, I think, five, sheriff's deputies there with long rifles.

And they show up with guns drawn?

Oh, yeah. Yes, yes. Long guns, very intimidating guns. And they said to me, "Sir, could we see your wife?"

And I said, "Whatever for?" And they said, "Well, sir, we've had a report that you've murdered your wife."

It was a cruel hoax. The next day, a bomb threat. For John Coughenour, a federal district court judge in Washington State, it didn't end there.

There was a congressman that had a wanted poster. Just said, "Wanted" in big letters at the top, and then a picture of several of us.

It said everything except dead or alive.

His trouble started when President Trump signed an executive order to end the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for infants born on US soil to non-citizens. Judge Coughenour ruled it, quote, "blatantly unconstitutional." The threats poured in.

Some of it was very, very ugly, and very threatening.

Death threats?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes, dozens of them. Dozens, if not hundreds.

Judge Coughenour told us threats come with the turf. He has sentenced an Al-Qaeda bomber and Montana militia members, and needed round-the-clock protection. But he said he'd never had as many death threats as with the birthright citizenship case.

I've been at this for 44 years. I have never encountered the hostility toward the judiciary that has existed in this country in the, the last year. And I don't think it's because we're making bad decisions. I think it's because, there are people who think that they can make a lot of political hay out of criticizing the federal judiciary.

And also, we cannot allow a handful of communist radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the President of the United States.

When President Trump lost a battle in court to deport migrants, he called the judge a lunatic. When immigration crackdowns were ruled illegal, he called the judges monsters.

It's incendiary comments like that that have provoked a torrent of death threats. Our reporting found hundreds of threats were left on judges' voicemails. This one after a judge ruled the president had violated the First Amendment

I hope your whole family and everybody you love is raped in front of you and has their heads cut off.

And this one after a judge ruled the president couldn't cut certain government benefits

And I wish somebody would assassinate your ass.

It's a volcano of vitriol I double

dare you to try to put charges on Donald J. Trump, you son of a bitch

It falls to the U.S. Marshals to pinpoint the verbal threats that might lead to physical violence.

Judges told us the marshals are overwhelmed. Last year, 400 federal judges were targets of serious threats, a 78% jump in four years.

In, in very plain English, if we're not careful, we're gonna get a judge killed. It's just that stark.

It's that serious.

It's that serious.

Judge John Jones is a retired federal judge from Pennsylvania, a George W.

Bush appointee. He and 55 other retired judges were so concerned, they formed a bipartisan group to lobby the White House to stop demonizing judges.

This is such a toxic environment, where people are taking arms and can identify where a judge lives, can strike out against that judge or the judge's family members.

So when President Trump attacks judges as rogue, deranged, corrupt, what do you think he's doing, and, and why?

I think that he's attempting to, to de-legitimize, the, the federal courts.

Why would he do that? What's the benefit to him?

It's a presidency on steroids, and you have a very dormant, I think, United States Congress, and a president who means to really say what the law is.

Well, s- civics taught me that Congress makes the law, and the president, faithfully executes the laws of the country. We've turned that on its head right now.

Okay, we'll sign right here, right?

Judge Jones told us this White House is testing the bounds of presidential power. White power. White power.

Today, the Trump administration is facing 600 lawsuits contesting its agenda, from immigration to job cuts. Judges are caught squarely in the crossfire.

As a judge who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and defend the rule of law, I have a duty to call this out. Mm. That's why I'm talking to you.

Judge Esther Salas is a federal district court judge in New Jersey. A Barack Obama appointee, she has become a leading voice against the personal attacks on judges, which has made her the target of death threats. She knows the stakes. In 2020, a failed litigant came to her front door, shot her son Daniel dead, and wounded her husband Mark.

It was not driven by politics, but she fears today's inflammatory rhetoric makes such horrors more likely.

I'm more concerned right now than I was after my only child was murdered.

Why?

Because I think that the attacks against the judiciary are only, getting worse. What I'm seeing now is far different than what I've seen in the past.

This is coming from our national leader on down.

Judge Salas told us vilifying judges is eroding trust in the courts.

If you disagree with a ruling that, we make, appeal us. If you disagree with a sentence we render, appeal us. The answer is not to dehumanize us, and that has been, I think, the active agenda as of late.

I feel like sometimes our political leaders are playing Russian roulette with our lives.

Do you think the rhetoric emboldens people?

I do I think it's dangerous

How do those threats impact you and, and your fellow f- former judges now?

So my, my colleagues, my former colleagues wh- with whom I've, retained great relationships with, they feel like there's a target on their back. They just do. And, a- and, and so it, y- they're l- literally almost looking over their shoulder, at this point when they're outside the courthouses.

And one of the things that I, I, I think's so incredible, and I'm gonna say it, and I think I've said it before, but I wanna be very explicit today, I think this is intentional by those individuals from the top down who, who are rolling out this negative PR, campaign. I think it's very intentional. I, I don't think this is sort of them just speaking their passion.

This is a- this is an intentional act by-

What's the goal?

The... Well, I'll tell you, there are two from my perspective. The first goal is they want to erode the public's confidence in the justice system. When you say something, Gary, is broken over and over and over again, and it's not, we're here to tell you it's not.

We can look at a- at opinions. We can look at, jury verdicts that I've presided over. Juries get it right. We have, in my opinion, the best legal system in the world, and I'm biased, but I, I believe it, right? But when you say it's o- it's broken, when you say that we're corrupt, when you say that we're rogue, when you say that we're monsters, when you say that we're engaging in legal insurrectionists, that we're legal insurrectionists, when you say all that, you are doing that for one reason, and that is to erode the public's confidence.

But there's a more sinister reason, and I'm gonna say it. As Daniel's mom, I'm gonna say it. The more sinister reason is when you call us monsters and when you say we hate America, and you post that on a, on a large social platform, and when you say it in front of the cameras day in and day out, and when it's written and when people put up wanted posters, all of that, the secondary reason from my opinion as Daniel's mom, is that if something happens to one of my brothers or sisters on the bench- They had it coming You make us villains, you demonize us, and therefore we're not that worth, we're not worth fighting for.

It's interesting. I, I, I see this president and, and I, I have to get specific in this case, probably more, more than my, my colleague can. But, when he refers to judges as his judges- Mm ... as if he possesses those judges, judges are not his judges. Judges are emancipated once the Senate votes them in, and their right hand goes up, and they're, and they're sworn in.

There's no greater evidence than that sort of my judges than the president of the United States, astonishingly to me, although perhaps not, knowing this president, going to the Supreme Court of the United States and trying to stare down, the S- the Supreme Court. Gary, there's a reason that no president ever did that before, because it shouldn't happen.

It shouldn't be done. I thought it was one of the, one of the most, outrageous acts of, attempted int- I- intimidation. And then, of course, you see what happens when, when rulings or, or arguments go, a way that, that, uh, that he, that he doesn't respect. I, I, I, it is, he calls out his judges by name.

Loyalty. Yeah. So

hitting on that point, how did we get here to a point where the US Marshal Service says this year alone, there's been 300, more than 300, threats that they're tracking against judges, federal judges, and thousands, of course, thousands of nasty tweets online and posts online. How did we get here?

Because I think that, our president on down, have engaged in such irresponsible rhetoric that gives really the p- the public and, and in particular sometimes the mentally vulnerable a green light to go ahead and come after us.

And it's not just Joe Smith on the street saying this, right? It is the president of the United States, and that makes an impact, right?

It's not just the president. I- in, in my view, I think we have a completely dormant United States Congress. So you know, we, we, we've talked about Article II, Article I. Article II, the presidency, Article One, the United States Congress. W- where is the shame? Where, where are the voices?

And, and, and by the way, there are members of Congress that can be at risk too. This is flashback, on, on them, as well. And yet, and yet, I, I don't expect the pres- this president of the United States to, to say anything that's gonna b- dial down the rhetoric, but shame on the members of Congress.

Shame on the Speaker of the House.

And just on that note, I wanna be very clear. We have seen attacks o- on our president. We've seen attacks on members of Congress, both on the right and left. This is, this is an inability for us to, agree to disagree.

So where do we go from here?

We need a national dialogue, and I think it has to start, with thought leaders, uh, with, with people who have a voice, who have a platform Whether they're in elected office or not.

Because judges are only gonna be able to do so much. I think, if we don't do something, at this point, people are, are really at risk, physical risk. This isn't just a risk to the institution and the third branch, it's a risk to people's very lives if we don't fix this.

I think it starts with how we treat each other at home, and what, how we treat each other, and how we treat neighbors and strangers and everyone we come in contact.

I, I, I think it's a return to love. I, I really do. And, and I, I think it's, I, I've, I've become a lot more of a spiritual individual since my son's murder. And it's the, it's the one thing that keeps me going, Gary. And I think it starts at home, and we start to demand more from ourselves and more from our leaders.

And so I think it starts with a national dialogue, but I also think it starts- Right ... right at the kitchen table.

as we noted, we will start with the legal news. And we have some news on tariffs, where the refund system is up and running after the administration's loss in the tariffs case at the Supreme Court.

And Donald Trump is, as always, just posting through it. He started off with a rant about the, quote, "Democrat justices who stick together like glue and never wander from the warped and perverse policies, ideas, and cases put before them." He must have missed Justice Kagan and Sotomayor's concurrence in Chiles v.

Salazar, the conversion therapy ban case, but-

I guess he's not reading the concurrences that closely, Leah.

No.

So, he launched this broadside against the Democrat justices en masse, but of course reserved special insult for the only Black woman justice on the court, insulting her, as you might expect from him at this point in time, as a, quote, "low IQ person" who has, just to state the obvious, managed to reason circles and laps around his nominees, his liquor cabinet, and everyone else, but whatever.

He then, that is Trump in his posting through it, shifted to bitching both about the, quote, "completely ridiculous tariff decision," which resulted, he says, in a $159 billion pile of cash refunds to people who've been ripping off our country for years. Note that the refunds go to American companies, and you would think Trump, if he really thought it through, would love something that steals from American consumers and gives back to companies and corporations, but I'm not sure he's actually tracking all of it.

No. He also has some ire reserved for the, quote, "Nasty one-sided questions on the country destroying subject of birthright citizenship," apparently hasn't gotten over that, and the post closed with how, quote, "The radical left Democrats don't need to pack the court since it's already packed." Which if you pause to think about it, is true that it's already packed, just not in the way he's suggesting.

There is, a kernel of an insight there, just-

Kernel of truth. So close. Yeah,

yeah. Okay, so that was last week, but now we need to turn to something that we previewed up top, which is that last week we learned that the administration is bringing charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center. So DOJ announced late in the week that it had secured an indictment against the SPLC, which is a nonprofit civil rights organization founded in the 1970s.

SPLC is based in Alabama and is probably best known for monitoring and tracking and litigating against white supremacist organizations. Indeed, their mission is focused on dismantling white supremacy and advancing human rights. So-

Obviously, that raises a red flag- Right ... or maybe a white flag- Yeah ... for the administration.

Right.

Right, so you think about it like this is of course the group that DOJ targets in exactly- Yes ... the way that it has. And we should say that this organization is far from perfect. Its founder resigned amidst allegations of misconduct. There have been reports about toxic workplace culture, but none of that is what DOJ is concerned with.

The indictment that they brought arises out of an old SPLC program known as Klanwatch, which, as the name suggests, was aimed at dismantling the Ku Klux Klan, including through a system of informants.

And it's that system, which is part of a program that no longer exists, that is the basis for the indictment.

The indictment accuses the organization of wire fraud because it says the organization's donors supposedly weren't aware of the program. It's totally unclear how that could be true. Even Klan groups issued public statements in Klan publications about Klanwatch, which they obviously hated and wanted to take down.

The indictment also accuses the center of making false statements to a federally insured bank when SPLC set up bank accounts with a dummy company to pay its informants. Apparently, DOJ might think it's illegal to protect the cover and identity of informants who were infiltrating and taking down the Klan.

That is the actual basis of one of the charges, conspiracy to commit money laundering, which arises out of their efforts to protect their sources in the field.

Even the supporters of the indictment actually seemed to recognize that there is no there there, so-

Which they love.

Of c- so fa- fascism philosopher in chief slash, bro Curtis Yarvin had this incredibly revealing post on X about the charges.

He says, quote, "What's cool is that I..." Sorry, I have to read this. I know. Losing it. He says, verbatim, "What's cool is that I don't really see a strong legal case that the SPLC shouldn't be able to run these kinds of wacky black ops. That means DOJ is prosecuting the SPLC just because it can. If-" This would be an unusual sign of finally getting it.

So the fact that there is no there there, that these are literally trumped up charges is, for some, a cause for celebration, which is just like how sick a lot of minds in this timeline are. Yeah. So Todd Blanche, acting attorney general in oppressor, suggested that SPLC was manufacturing extremism. I gather the suggestion is that the Klan wouldn't exist without the SPLC and this network of informants.

Jesus. But regardless of what was said at the podium, the indictment itself completely refutes this claim. It describes how informants stole Klan documents and things like that. And I guess maybe we should just end by saying, in an era of incredible lows for DOJ, this is among the lowest.

DOJ was created in part to help prosecute the Klan. Mm-hmm. DOJ is now prosecuting entities for acts they took to help take down the Klan.

Yeah. Klanwatch, as we've said, was started to identify and take down the Klan, which of course prompted virulent opposition from, you guessed it, the Klan, and that is the fight DOJ is taking up- Yeah

when DOJ, of course, was partially created and fleshed out to go after the Klan. And for more on this, we'd recommend Chris Geidner's post at Law Dork. It's titled The

■ CLIP END — Strict Scrutiny SPLC

SPLC Indictment, the Klan History Behind It, and the Ignominy of Todd Blanche.

Okay. We should also mention actually a pretty different piece of news out of DOJ, and that is that at the end of the week, we got news that this same DOJ had actually indicted a soldier for using classified information to make bets on the prediction market Polymarket.

This soldier was actually involved, according to the indictment, in the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and then used the information that he got by virtue of being part of that planning to make bets on Polymarket and enrich himself to the tune of $400,000. So scandalous, but not shocking.

We all had a very strong sense that lots of administration insiders have been trading on and enriching themselves on inside information of exactly this sort. But what was really striking was that the indictment was brought at all. And it was- Yeah ... interesting that it was brought in SDNY here in New York, where as our guest host Ian Bassin noted a few weeks back, there are some signs that prosecutors may be seeing the writing on the wall when it comes to main justice and may be showing a little spine and independence.

So I think it will be really revealing to see if or when, the White House and main justice get involved in, potentially even try to override or otherwise interfere with this prosecution. But for the moment at least, it suggests, there is a tiny bit of, real law enforcement still going on inside at least the Southern District of New York.

In a rare reversal for the Trump administration, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, told lawmakers Tuesday the Department of Justice would not be moving forward with the $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund, even after the temporary pause mandated by the court. Blanche had announced the fund just weeks ago as part of a settlement deal with President Trump and his family over their private lawsuit with the IRS over the leaking of Trump's tax returns years ago.

The fund has been widely criticized as a slush fund to provide payouts to January 6th insurrectionists and other Trump allies, even drawing rebuke from some Senate Republicans and dividing the caucus. This is Todd Blanche, formerly President Trump's personal attorney, responding to questioning from New York Congress member Grace Meng on Tuesday.

We are not moving forward with the fund, period. The reasons for the fund is something that President Trump talked about for a long time, which is the fact that there were a lot of people in this country who had their government weaponized against them. The reasons for the fund, I think, were, were, it remain as important as they were before, but, we are not moving forward with the fund.

Oh, not moving forward ever?

Correct.

You and Associate Attorney General Woodward signed earlier documents regarding the settlement and this fund. Would both of you now sign and release documents reversing the DOJ's position on the fund?

I'm not, we're not moving forward with the fund. I'm not sure what that means to sign documents reversing. There's nothing to reverse. We're not moving forward with the fund

But the story isn't over. On Friday, District Court Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami ordered the case reopened after 35 former federal judges filed a motion saying the settlement may have been a fraud on the court and a product of collusion.

The president's attorneys have until June 12th to respond. We're joined now by one of those 35 judges, retired Federal Judge Nancy Gertner. She served on the bench for 17 years in Massachusetts before retiring in 2011. She joins us from Boston. And we're joined by former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, who is serving as co-counsel for the former judges.

In his four years as state attorney general under Governor Phil Murphy from 2022 to January of this year, he led or joined at least 43 lawsuits against the Trump administration and brought several high-profile investigations into Republicans, Democrats, and state police. He's joining us today from Minneapolis.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Judge Gertner, let's go to you first. Explain why you're talking about this as possibly a fraud on the court, and even if Trump drops it, as the attorney general has said, you're calling for this case to be reopened, investigated

The, what happened in this case was essentially Trump was suing himself.

Th- there was no question that Trump was on both sides of the V, brought this case, in essentially as a fig leaf to justify paying the money. There is a fund that is called the settlement fund where individuals who sue the IRS, the case is settled, or if the case goes to judgment, they can collect against that fund.

And so the Trump administration believed that the way in which to perfect this fund, to get this money, was to file a lawsuit, uh, and that would dignify what they were doing. They would... It would legitimize what they were doing. The problem was that the lawsuit, we claim, the evidence suggests, was a sham, that the lawsuit was one part of the administration suing the other.

There was no effort to defend it in any meaningful way. In fact, as the judge found, there was a document from the IRS which made it clear what their defenses were in like cases, defenses that they were just not raising in this case 'cause they were just rolling over. After the case was filed, the judge had a sense that there, there might be a problem with it, might be collusion.

Collusion, meaning they're essentially the same person was on both sides of the V. She closed the case when they sought to dismiss. And then we h- moved, I'm represented by Matt Platkin, which a fabulous lawyer, we moved to reopen, the case, on the grounds that there's information that the judge didn't know about, namely that this was collusive.

The judge has, uh, opened the briefing on this issue, and in addition, she is inquiring about sanctions for lawyers that made misrepresentations in the case. So I and 34 others, believe that this is an administrati- a, a just administration of justice issue. You can't manipulate the courts to broom clean, an illegitimate settlement.

Now, that settlement, Trump's saying, or his former personal attorney, the now Attorney General Todd Blanche, is saying that they're not gonna give it to these insurrectionists and others, in their so-called anti-weaponization fund, as are others call it a slush fund. But does Trump still get the money?

It, he's, the, he's saying, or at least on the te- the rep- my sense of what, Todd Blanche was saying is that in fact the fund will not be created for these purposes. When they say the fund was created, they can't claim o- on the treasury, make a claim against the treasury for this amount of money. It sounds like they're not going forward with that.

But whether or not, whatever their intentions are, there are at least two cases that are challenging the fund, including the one that we filed, uh, in, which is, Judge Williams' case in Florida. And were she to declare that this was a collusive case and that the settle- settlement was illegitimate, they would have no rights to set up this fund.

So whatever, uh, Todd Blanche is saying, the fact of the matter is that the courts could vitiate this fund, by determining that it was the product of, collusion. I might add again that the judge has indicated that there's an, that she's going to inquire about sanctions against the lawyers, who may have misrepresented what this case was about to her.

Okay. Now we wanna go to what they say has not been taken away. The House Appropriations Committee top Democrat, Congress member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, had a tense exchange with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche Tuesday.

If I could just follow up on, on, on my, on what you're doing on this, is that you've taken one piece and you've said, "Okay, we have had a ton of backlash on this, uh, on this $1.8 billion slush fund.

However, so we'll, we not move on that. But as part of the settlement," which you've said, which is this, uh, immunity for the president and his family and his business, et cetera, that stands. Thank you for-

It's not, it's not immunity, ma'am. It's, it's, it's-

Thank you ...

it's a promise.

It's- Thank you. It's immunity

it's

not, it's not immunity. I, I- Y- it's, it's not immunity. Okay? Well- So it's not immunity. What it says is, like any time the IRS settles with an individual taxpayer or another company, as part of the settlement, it's standard, it's typical for, to, to get rid of past ongoing audits. It's not a forward-looking document.

It's nothing that gives any sort of immunity in the future to the president or his family or his organizations. And so by you saying that, it's just, it's not true.

By you saying what you've said, it is not true. So thank you, and I yield back.

We begin this hour with the stated mission of the Department of Justice. Posts on its website, on its website, that mission is listed to, as to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights. Simple, but complex mission. And yet, under this administration, we've seen that mission change, at least among the DOJ's leadership, to focus on upholding the whims and vendettas of the man who falsely claims to be the country's chief law enforcement officer.

But for the rank and file at the DOJ, the career prosecutors, the people who actually do the work, we've seen an adherence to the real mission and a willingness to push back against this administration, even at the risk of losing their jobs. Let's look at this past weekend. In the case of the arrest of independent journalist Don Lemon for covering an anti-ICE protest during a Minnesota church service, MS Now has learned that many career prosecutors in both Minnesota and Los Angeles refused to be involved in this case, claiming the evidence did not support the charges.

When the FBI raided the Fulton County Election Office in Georgia and seized the ballots from the 2020 election, it was done without the sp- special agent in charge of the FBI's Atlanta field office. He was forced out for questioning the renewed push into Trump's unsubstantiated allegations and lies about voter fraud, and refusing to carry out the very search and seizure we saw play out.

And the acting chief of the FBI field office in Minnesota was also removed by FBI headquarters, two sources tell MS Now. It came amid several FBI agents, they are having disputes with FBI superiors and Justice Department political leadership over their push to arrest people protesting immigration raids, as well as the department's decision not to pursue a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Rene Goode.

Joining us now to get into all of that and more, Norm Eisen, founder and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund and former special counsel and special assistant to President Obama, and Joyce Vance, MS Now legal analyst and former US attorney. Thank you both so much for joining us this morning. I want to head to, unfortunately, a social media post first.

Chad Meisel, he is the acting general counsel for DHS, and he... We saw this last night. Quote, "If you are a lawyer, are interested in being an AUSA, and support President Trump and anti-crime agenda, DM me. We need good prosecutors, and DOJ is hiring across the country. Now's your chance to join the mission and do good for your country."

Joyce, when you look at that, see that, hear that, one, what does it tell you about the kinds of people who have left, the amount of people who have left? And two, what does it tell you about the kinds of people that the DOJ wants in their ranks now?

Right. So it's clear that what's happening is the politicization of DOJ.

This is no longer- Yes ... the Justice Department that I worked at or the Justice Department that Norm interacted with. This is a Justice Department that's clearly the president's personal law firm, at least at the top, and I think that that distinction is important. You talked about the career prosecutors at DOJ.

Across the country, they're just trying to do their jobs and hold on. They are not political people. I was one of them for many, many years. What Mizelle is saying, and it's worth pointing out by the way, that he's not a DOJ employee. He has nothing to do with hiring federal prosecutors. Mm-hmm. And, and so the n- the notion that he would have the audacity to ignore rules and regulations that govern federal hiring and just say, "Hey, DM me if you're aligned with the president's political agenda," it's unbelievably disheartening to prosecutors across the country trying to do their jobs with integrity.

It is a warning sign that we should all heed. We cannot afford to let the power of prosecution become purely political, and it's time for Congress to get engaged and act

So listen, there's been some reporting, DOJ, obviously no longer the DOJ that, that we worked in, is having some manpower and some staffing problems, and that seems to be coming to a head in, in Minneapolis, in, in Minnesota. There's reporting that every office in the country has been asked to designate a jump team that could be available to support, I think they used some fancy language, but it's the deportation efforts, and that offices that were large were being asked to designate two people who could rotate in and out of those districts, smaller offices, one.

Would you be, just jumping at the opportunity to create a jump team if you were still the U.S. attorney in Manhattan?

Let me take a step back. As I think about the loss of professionals from U.S. attorneys' offices, and the numbers are astonishing in some places. In, in Minneapolis, and Minnesota has one district, right?

It's the District of Minnesota, main office in Minneapolis. They've gone from... It's not a huge office. They've gone from, I understand it, 50, right? Fifty-

Yeah ...

assistant U.S. attorneys to 20. I can't quickly do the math off the top of my head, but that's an en- enormous, a 60% decrease in the course of a year. We had a large office It used to be the case, at least when I was overseeing the SDNY, we had about two hundred and twenty assistant US attorneys, a hundred and seventy or so in the criminal division, fifty or so in the civil division, and we were very busy.

We had a large office, and we conceivably could deal with personnel issues or loss because we were so large. I didn't feel that way. We fought for every full-time, every FTE, every full-time employee- Yes ... every seat. If we were down three, I felt it. If we were down five or ten, I really felt it, right?

Because it's not a hundred and sixty people or a hundred and seventy people working on one case. There's all sorts of different things everyone is working on, and everyone had a huge docket, and everyone was overworked, and if you take away some percentage of folks, it's really not good for the office, but that's not, really the point.

When it's not good for the office, it's not good for public safety, it's not good for justice being served, it's not good for timeliness of proceedings, motions, trials, and everything else. Justice gets delayed, and sometimes justice is not delivered. And we plotted in every possible way we could to get every slot filled and to increase our slots, right?

Whether it was through forfeiture funds or, something called ACE funding. In every way possible, we tried to fill our ranks. I remember one of the worst times in office for me, and maybe you shared this, was during a hiring freeze, in twenty eleven, twenty twelve-

Yes ...

when attrition could not be countered by hiring more people.

And we have natural attrition in the Southern District, more so than most offices 'cause we have a shorter average tenure for assistants. This is just a long-winded way of saying, and I'm sure you have the same experience, I know from personal experience how devastating it is to office morale, but more importantly to public safety and to public justice, when even a small percentage of folks depart.

And here in Minnesota, we're talking about if, again, if I'm doing the math correctly, a sixty percent downgrade. Including, I think, almost all of the high-level leadership of the office. I don't even understand how they're getting anything done. Not good for the district, not good for the state, not good for public safety, not good for justice, not good for the reputation of the department.

I can't imagine what they're going through. So against that backdrop, I was never keen, maybe jealously, to send my folks elsewhere because we had our own district to take care of. Is that selfish?

No, that's the job, right? A-and I think you're dead on when you point to the brain drain, the loss of institutional knowledge in Minnesota at a time, by the way, when they need it the most, when they need to have people in the office who will pump the brakes on activity that violates Justice Department norms.

I know that it's become popular to dis- be dismissive of norms, but that's still in large part how the U.S. attorneys offices across the country operate because that's how justice is delivered. And as you have said in other contexts, something that we do is we go slowly, that we make sure we don't get anywhere close to violating due process rights.

Well, when you don't have the institutional knowledge that can enforce those sorts of norms, that's how an office gets into trouble. So this loss of some of the senior people, including, by the way, the two guys who were doing this incredibly important major fraud case that President Trump has commented about in Minneapolis, gone as a result of this.

The idea of subtracting from other offices, and this goes back to the point of Maya's tweet again, the idea of subtracting personnel from other offices, and especially the smaller offices that can be hit hard by the loss of even one person for a couple of weeks, is that we're all less safe so that Trump can execute political aims.

That seems to be, I think, the theme of the moment.

Yeah, I don't know what the solution is. The other problem is there is not an influx of people coming in, and some of the saddest things that I've read recently are the laments of people who used to be in the department or who have observed or covered the department about how, and it kills me to say this, and maybe it's an extreme version of lament, but maybe not.

And there, a lot of AUSAs and former AUSAs listen to this program, so let me speak to them. It is horrifically sad to me Having spent so many years in the department and now following the department and now representing clients against the department sometimes, that a job that used to be considered perhaps the most prestigious, but certainly one of the most prestigious jobs you could get in the law in the United States of America was Assistant United States Attorney.

And I still remember the woman who hired me, Mary Jo White, who practices law still, saying over and over and over again that she had the second-best job in America, which was to be the United States Attorney, which is a pretty good job, which I had also later. But the best job was to be an assistant US attorney, and it is the career high for lots of people.

It's an incredibly difficult job to get in any district, and certainly in the large cities. It's a point of pride. It's the pinnacle of a lot of people's careers. And for that to have lost the luster and in some ways respect and prestige and honor that it used to have, if that is happening, breaks my heart.

Yeah. Mine too. The high point of my career was getting to stand up in court and say, "May it please the court, my name is Joyce Vance, and I represent the United States of America." And that meant something and we all understood what it meant. I just want to say to folks listening who are currently working at the Justice Department, we appreciate your service, and we see what you're trying to do.

I hope as many people as can do so in good conscience will try to stick it out. But I get that's becoming increasingly difficult, which is just another, I think, sad commentary on what we're living through.

Well, the saddest part of it is, not to belabor the point, but this is per- deeply personal to you and to me, let's call out what's different.

I gave an example of the hiring freeze because the government had a shutdown a number of years ago. You had to endure it. I had to endure it. That's a function of circumstance, and that happens. What's happening here is not all of them, but many of the departures are taking place because these people of honor who have taken on these prestigious posts feel that they are asked to be...

they're being asked to do things that are contrary to their conscience, their oath, and their ethics. And they have no choice but to leave the office. And that is not happening, here or there. It's not happening on the part of a couple of people, in some far-flung... It's happening in major offices in lots of different places, and it's happening in Washington also.

And it should tell you something, it should tell you a lot of things, that scores of people who managed to get this very difficult to obtain position, who are screened not only for ability and skill and craft, but also for character and honesty and integrity and ethics, are saying, "I'm gonna leave this beloved job that I worked so hard to get, that has been the pride of my professional career.

I'm gonna leave this job because I cannot do what I'm being asked to do." That's horrific.

We've just heard clips starting with

The Beat detailing Trump's push to make Todd Blanche the permanent Attorney General, a man who served as his personal lawyer and has explicitly said his role is executing the president's agenda.

60 Minutes revealed how Trump's attacks on judges calling them "lunatics" and "monsters" have triggered a 78 percent jump in serious threats, leaving U.S. Marshals overwhelmed and judges fearing for their lives.

NBC News highlighted a former judge's argument that Trump's relentless attacks on the judiciary are intentional, designed to erode public trust and implicitly justify violence against judges.

Strict Scrutiny laid out how the DOJ indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center over the now-defunct Klan Watch program, charging the organization for shielding informants who worked to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan.

Democracy Now! reported that despite the DOJ abandoning the $1.8 billion fund, a Miami judge reopened the case after 35 former federal judges filed a motion alleging collusion.

MS NOW covered the audacious move by DHS acting general counsel Chad Mizell to recruit Trump-aligned prosecutors on X as career DOJ staff refused politicized cases and were pushed out.

And Stay Tuned with Preet traced the staffing collapse at DOJ offices across the country, focusing on Minnesota's drop from 50 to 20 prosecutors and what that means for public safety and justice.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

But first, speaking of once-proud institutions now falling on hard times, I'm just repeating the sad news about our new show going through some financial troubles, we even had to put SOLVED! on indefinite hiatus due to sudden economic instability and ad dollars drying up, cutting our budget by about a third.

Right now, I'm taking some time to rethink everything about the show and reimagine what all we're capable of producing, using new tools that simply weren't available when I got started the first time. Progress has been steady and somewhat invigorating so I'll be excited when all of the new processes I've been building over the past month or more begin to bear fruit.

I'll be sure to let you know when that day comes.

And, to our members supporting the show, you're really getting us through right now and we appreciate your patience while we go through this process of renewal.

If you haven't signed up yet but are thinking about it, each episode of Best of the Left takes about 25 hours of human labor so it's not particularly cheap to produce and essentially every dollar we can spare right now beyond basic costs will be going toward finding new listeners.

So, if you get value out of the show - and think others would too! - and want to get it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.

*Speaking of bearing fruit, I began with the lowest hanging fruit which is the relaunch of our listener voice message segment which people would regularly say was their favorite part of the show.

I've been asking a discussion question in each episode to kick things off but you should also feel free to respond to anything you heard on the show, including other voice messages.*

So, here's today's question:

When you're an upstanding person working inside an organization that has gone bad, like the DOJ has now, I think it's a hard choice to know whether it's better to stay and fight from the inside or resign, knowing that your departure only ensures the organization will continue to get worse. Maybe you're not a DOJ lawyer, having to make that call right now, though maybe you are. In either case, if you have any experience making a decision like that in any organization you've ever been a part of, I would love to get more insight on how a decision like that gets made. Were you able to think high-mindedly about the future of the organization or did personal considerations take priority? Maybe you had to consider your future career prospects, maybe immediate economic realities trumped ethical considerations entirely. The human elements and structural realities always complicate things so if you have any insights, I'd love to hear them.

And here's a voice message we received recently in response to us making the argument on the show that getting involved in activism isn't just productive but also feels good personally:

 hey Jay, this is Stewart from California calling with a quick comment on being part of a movement. I've been working with my local rapid response network to monitor and oppose ICE. I've been involved for about a year now, and it's been amazing. There have been good days and bad, but mostly it's boring.

Um, even when we are not having much of an impact, I feel really good about being present for my neighbors who are being oppressed so horribly. One day I had a really amazing experience where I was the first one to show up when officers were trying to arrest someone. They were trying to convince this guy to leave his apartment, and they said that they had a judicial warrant but wouldn't show it because it was too private.

Yeah, whatever, dude. Um, I was a little intimidated being the first one there and standing up close to film armed, masked officers, but I did it. Um, and after just a few minutes, people started to gather on the lawn, some from our response network and some were really just his neighbors, and they were all popping their phones out.

Uh, somebody came around and offered us water. We all had each other's backs. This is one of those few moments where you really believe in humanity and, woo. Anyway, long story short, the guy got legal assistance and was not detained that day. So there's your dose of good news for the day. Sure made my day.

If you have a question or would like your comments included in the show you can record a voice message - re-recording until you're happy with it - by tapping the link in the show notes,

As for my thoughts today,

One of the primary lessons of the first Trump administration was that far too many of the guard rails on our government turned out to be based on gentlemanly agreements and trust that our elected officials would be honorable. In short, we depended so much on norms that we never got around to codifying most of them in laws.

There's a passage in the 2025 Atlantic piece called "I Run the Country and the World" that has always stuck with me. The writers, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, describe how Trump's first-term team steered him away from certain moves because everyone assumed he'd get burned. Then he reached out, touched one, and found out he wouldn't.

The passage concludes, "This may be the key insight of Trump’s second term. The first time around, aides were constantly warning him that the stove was too hot. This time, no one is even telling him not to touch the stove."

So, instead of clear and enforceable ethics rules for all office holders from top to bottom, our founders went with a different strategy based on trying to bank on politicians' ambition to keep each other in check, especially between branches of government.

Some of the Founders knew that the formation of political parties would ruin that strategy and tepidly urged people to not form them, but of course they did, and the results of partisanship were predictable. Now we live in an age of hyper-partisanship, compounded by the cult of personality Trump has built around himself, strong enough that any in his party who oppose him come to fear for their lives from his supporters.

But ethics is only part of it. There's also abuses of power, as well as the use of power that is entirely legal, that we should also be concerned about. Similar to the Founders' theory on pitting ambition against ambition being based on the phycological states of politicians, another truth about politicians is that once power is acquired, it is almost never voluntarily relinquished. Which means that each successive president inherits newfound powers from their predecessor and usually seeks to expand them. It's a one-way ratchet that only allows power to be increased and never decreased. The clearest proof of this was Obama campaigning on rolling back the Bush-era war powers, then getting into office and actually expanding them instead. Ultimately, the use of power already granted to you seems to simply be too enticing to ignore or voluntarily give up.

Obama turned out to be an outlier, but only by degrees and not by direction. He promised to reduce the power of the presidency but only managed to increase it less than the two Republican administrations that bookended his.

Dick Cheney, the most influential vice president in our country's history, was the strongest advocate of the extreme expansion of presidential powers as laid out in the unitary executive theory dating back to the 80s. He unapologetically advocated for the expansion of presidential power to the point that a president would be able to rule by near fiat.

Then came Trump, who promised to expand and abuse whatever power he could find to practically no end and for his own self-enrichment. Before he died, Dick Cheney referred to Trump as a threat to our republic. However, there's no clear record of him ever admitting that the expansion of executive power he advocated for over decades was exactly the tool that Trump needed to become a threat to the republic.

That's the whole problem with the country in a nutshell. We grant power on little more than trust that it'll be used appropriately. This is exactly the line of thinking that would lead Dick Cheney to believe that expanding presidential power was a good idea as long as someone like him, or someone he approved of, was in power. He somehow fails to realize that it just might be possible that someone without the country's best interest at heart may manage to get themselves elected.

*Of course, I'm speaking from his point of view. Cheney's record of torture, spying, war crimes, and profiteering speaks for itself, and you can judge for yourself if that was all in the best interests of the country.

What gives me some hope is that the abuses of power and ethical violations of the Trump kakistocracy, a government run by the worst and most corrupt among us, are so flagrant and so undeniable that it's very likely to give us a rare opportunity to make real progress in a future post-Trump era when we will be able to write new restrictions into law and impose real ethical standards in a way that doesn't depend on partisan politicians to take up the task of attempting to restrain one of their own.

But as someone who believes in the power of government to be a force for good, to provide for the general welfare, as our founders might have put it, we shouldn't be opposed to all forms of power and government. What we should guard against is the type of personal discretionary power that inevitably leads to abuse and an erosion of the idea of democracy itself.

For those of us staunchly on the pro-democracy side of the current political debate, we should embrace the robust use of power in defense of democratic institutions and for the reform of the structures of our government that currently bend away from democracy.

For instance, the Supreme Court is extremely undemocratic in its design and the mechanism by which justices are appointed and approved. They are not bound by any enforceable ethics laws, are guaranteed their seats for life, and are currently wildly out of step with the American public. It will take a great deal of political power to reform the court through court expansion, but wielding great power in the name of expanding democracy is not an abuse of power. We should never back down from that argument, particularly in the wake of the abuses of the Trump administration.

The closest parallel we can look to is the post-Watergate era, after the abuses of Richard Nixon and his resignation from the presidency. In the wake of that abuse, new reforms were genuinely implemented. They weren't strong enough and they weren't built to last, but they did try, and their efforts can guide us on what works and, more importantly, what doesn't, as we build the reforms needed to avoid a repeat of the types of abuses of power we're living through now.

I'm not an accelerationist myself, the idea that hastening toward destruction will help bring about a clean rebuilding that much sooner. It's an ideology that's too inherently destructive to ethically sign on to. However, there is a seed of truth in it, and it's going to be tested.

It wouldn't have been ethical for someone to have voted for Donald Trump in the hopes that he would hasten the destruction of the old political order for the sake of the greater good, but we're here now anyway. We have all been given the grim gift of Trump's naked abuses that perversely make it more likely that the kind of substantial and critically necessary reforms that may not have been possible otherwise will be implemented in the coming years. To protect our democracy, we have to keep the fires of our outrage in the face of anti-democratic abuses blazing so that the next time someone tries touching the stove, they get burned.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, A Department of Revenge

Followed by Section B, Malicious Prosecutions

Section C, Weaponized Department

And Section D, Hollowed Out

Next, Section B, Malicious Prosecutions

Now, Section C, Weaponized Department

And Finally, Section D, Hollowed Out

That's going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in.

You can record - and re-record - a voice message by tapping the link in the show notes,

You can reach us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01,

or simply email me to [email protected]

The additional sections of the show included clips from;

The PBS NewsHour

60 Minutes

The Beat

Opening Arguments

Law and Chaos

Strict Scrutiny

UnJustified

Democracy Now!

The Mary Trump Podcast

1A

All Things Considered

and MediasTouch

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, thanks to our editors and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

You'll find the link to support us in the show notes along with links to join our Patreon and Discord communities for free where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on all the social media platforms as I prepare to relaunch our social media strategy because I will need to recruit you to help boost our signal to as many new people as possible!

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

and now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, A Department of Revenge Followed by Section B, Malicious Prosecutions

Section C, Weaponized Department

And Section D, Hollowed Out

So one of the key points underpinning all your reporting in the book is how different President Trump's approach is to the Department of Justice in his second term as compared to his first. You write in the book, "His rage against the Justice Department was also deeply personal, a visceral, instinctive reaction to his own experience."

What did you mean by that?

I have covered federal law enforcement for a very long time, and one of the things you see happen over and over and over is when a person is charged by, by the government, when a person is investigated by the government, that person also comes out of that experience very angry and bitter about what happened to them.

And I, I think one of the things that is really important about understanding what Trump is doing to the Justice Department and why is that he is a former criminal defendant who is now in charge of these agencies, and he is still very angry and very suspicious of, of federal law enforcement.

He describes himself at one point as the hunter now, and within the DOJ, you report that officials there would refer to the President as the department's chief client.

What does that come to mean in terms of how they approach and do their work?

If you think about the department, the Department of Justice is different than all the other agencies in the government. It's not like the Department of Agriculture. It's not like the Department of Commerce because the Department of Justice is tasked with enforcing the criminal laws of the country, basic issues of right and wrong.

And when m- people join the Justice Department or join the FBI, they take an oath to defend the Constitution. What's so different about what is happening in the Trump Justice, in the Trump Justice Department right now- Mm-hmm ... is that all those lawyers and all those agents are being told very explicitly, "Your oath to the Constitution means you must always do what the president wants."

And that has never been how that oath has been interpreted before. And so that's why so many Justice Department people have left. Some, some have been fired, and that's why there's so much turmoil inside the department.

There's a new detail in the book I wanna ask you about, a never-before-released secret recording of a meeting in which Emil Bove, you said, suggested that people who signed off on a motion that would dismiss this action against then New York City Mayor Eric Adams, if anyone signed that motion, they could get a promotion.

Tell us about what happened there.

Right. So there's a, there's a confrontational meeting early into the Trump administration when Emil Bove meets with the public integrity prosecutors- Mm-hmm ... a very important part of the Justice Department that handles corruption cases. And basically, he's, at that moment for, of that meeting, he's already forced out a number of federal prosecutors in New York because he's trying to end a cr- a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

And they were forced out because they refused-

They refused- ... to sign- ... to go along with that. They refused to put their names on a motion to dismiss their own case, saying that was wrong, and they wouldn't be a part of it. So then Emil Bove takes that same demand to the public integrity prosecutors. And in a meeting he says, "I'll give you an hour, but I want two people to sign this motion."

And he really wants career prosecutors to do it. It's important to him to have careers do it. And he says, "Whoever signs this will emerge as leaders of the public integrity section." And my reporting shows that everyone in that conversation understood that to mean If you sign this document for me in this, very contentious issue in this, in this case, I will promote you.

And is there evidence that happens?

Yes, because the person who ultimately agrees to sign the motion, who does it for I think some understandable, not dishonorable reasons, that person does become promoted. That person is running what's left of the Public Integrity Section today.

And the recording is important because Bove is asked about this in congressional hearings.

Right. What does he say?

First he says he doesn't understand the question, then he says he doesn't remember, but finally he says no, he didn't do that. And that's really important because the recording is clear, and, and I know people who were in the original meeting who watched Bove's testimony, and in that moment, those people certainly believed that Bove wasn't telling the truth to Congress.

Can you give us a sense of what's happening among the career attorneys around these kinds of instances? It's not the only one you document in which people are pressured to sign off on things or take steps that they say are unethical or there's no evidence for, right? Right. And yet, they always seem to find someone who will sign off on something or will move forward with the prosecution.

So what's happening with the attorneys at this

point? What you see time and again is career prosecutors saying, "You don't have the facts to support the charges you want to file here under the law." And the political leadership of the department pushing and saying, "File the charges. Find a way. Get it done."

And, and what you see time and again repeated is that the people running the Justice Department in, in a certain sense are on a kind of fishing expedition. That term historically means prosecutors who are just looking for dirt, and they don't have a good reason to investigate, they're just looking for dirt.

This, I would say, is a different kind of fishing expedition. This is a fishing expedition for prosecutors who are willing to lower standards and to charge cases that other career prosecutors will not charge.

You also report on how badly depleted the workforce has been within the department. Can, can you quantify?

What would you say is the current status of the Justice Department?

Parts of the Justice Department are functioning almost like ghost ships at this point. They are so understaffed, and a lot of the people in charge are, are fairly green, fairly inexperienced, and there has been a tremendous exodus of legal experience, legal talent.

So for example, more than half of the lawyers in the Civil Rights Division have left. If you look at the Criminal Division, one out of five of the lawyers there have left. If you look at s- individual sections like, for example, the National Security Division, they've lost a tremendous amount of the senior lawyers.

And in that division especially, you're talking about terrorism and espionage cases, it's hugely important to have people who have done a lot of terrorism and espionage cases before. And so there's a tremendous, lack of personnel now within the department. And the result of that really is you have, a great more uncertainty in the department, you have a great more con- a lot more confusion in the department as to who's doing what and why.

And you have, you have a, one person described their, th- themselves and their colleagues as mole people, just trying to stay out of, the eye of the s- of the leadership of the department. A- and I would like to make one thing clear, which is that there are still a lot of very smart, very ethical people doing very good work- Mm-hmm

in the Justice Department and the FBI. There are a lot of things that the Justice Department and FBI do that really don't deal with corruption or political issues or anything like that, and there's a lot of good work being done in those areas. Mm-hmm. But I think even in those areas, you talk time and time again to lawyers and agents who are terrified that any day they could get a call assigning them to some case that makes no sense and feels wrong, and, and they are told they have no choice but to obey.

In a statement, the White House said, "As a survivor of two assassination attempts, no one understands the dangers of political violence more than President Trump."

It went on to accuse the judiciary of brazen defiance with its unlawful rulings.

These activist judges

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called it

a war. We, we are routinely getting stays and getting reversals because of, of local judges, just not following the law full stop, and, and it's the same judges, or not the same judges, but it's, there's a group of judges that are repeat players, and that's obviously not by happenstance.

That's intentional, and it's a, it's a war, man,

and Todd Blanche declined our request for an interview. In a statement to us, he said some judges continue to issue overbroad and even unreasoned injunctions, but adding threats and intimidation of federal officials is unlawful. Judge John Cunaur told us the Constitution is a judge's North Star.

So to someone who says that you are a political agent in trying to thwart the goals of the president, you would say ...

I would say y- you don't understand what we do. We apply the Constitution. For the last 250 years in this country, it's been the judges that, that say this is either constitutional or it isn't.

If, if nobody's gonna make that decision, nobody's gonna enforce the Constitution, it becomes, like the Constitution of Russia.

The threats aren't just coming from the right. In 2020, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would, quote, "Pay the price for restricting abortion."

He later apologized. In 2022, a would-be assassin was arrested for trying to kill Justice Kavanaugh at his home. But Judge Jones, a Republican appointee, told us the violent language of the right has no match.

The national rhetoric from both sides has probably gotten worse over time. However, I would not concede that the Democratic Party or, or that Democratic office holders have conducted themselves in any way that's similar to what this administration is doing with respect to the federal judiciary.

There's simply no evidence of that.

And when you look at the database, it's names and addresses of hundreds of elected officials and judges.

What we look for- Ron Zais is the CEO of IronWall, a company that scrubs judges' personal data from the web.

So here's another threat that we have toward a judge.

Zais told us in 14 years, he has never seen as many violent threats as today.

If you broadcast that message to a million people, you just need one to act on it.

Hmm.

And that's the terrifying part that judges are having to deal with today.

Zais also combs through the dark web. Bringing up- Look at the gallows.

My God. This. A criminal haven on the internet where anonymous threat actors try to cause real-world harm. These days, Zais is worried about a new type of threat.

The threats used to be, "You ruled against me, and I want to kill you." Now the kind of threats we're seeing, there's a whole other sphere of saying, "I want to influence what you do."

It's mob mentality. They want to threaten you so that you make the right decision.

The Marshals are also investigating a striking new form of intimidation: hundreds of unsolicited pizzas sent to judges and their children across the country, an innocuous delivery with an ominous message.

We know where you live, we know where your children live, and do you want to end up like Judge Salas' son?

At least 20 were sent to homes in the name of Judge Salas' late son.

The order form had my murdered son's name on it. They're weaponizing my baby boy. They're weaponizing Daniel's name to inflict fear on judges.

I know that's shocking, but it must be so, so painful.

Ugh. That one took me. And you add to that, for flavor, that I have yet to see the attorney general or the deputy t- attorney general stand at a podium and denounce these forms of intimidation.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also declined our request for an interview. Judge Salas, among many others, told us the rule of law is at stake.

I sit here as Daniel's mom. I sit here as a woman who lost her only child. Mark and I have been to hell and back. And when I see that kind of irresponsible behavior coming from our political leaders and people in power, it makes me sad And it makes me very worried because I worry for our democracy.

I really do

We'll get to intel, but first, your view on this Blanche nomination.

Well, I don't see any chance of him getting my vote, but I do have to say a- at least he's a lawyer, unlike- Hmm ... the fact that the joker that, Trump put up to be director of national intelligence, and when that job was created after 9/11 said, like to be an attorney general, you got to be a lawyer, said, "If you want to be director of national intelligence, you got to have a national security background Mr.

Pulte, who he's put forward, I don't even think he's got a security clearance. The only thing we know about him, he's wealthy, he's a complete, Trump supporter, and he's taken his job where maybe he's got expertise around one of the mortgage, regulators, and he took the confidential information about mortgages and weaponized it to go against Sis James, to weaponize it against, Senator Schiff, weaponize it against Lisa Cook at the Fed.

So that kind of behavior of abusing confidential information, he's now gonna get a promotion by Trump to having the keys to the kingdom for all 18 intelligence agencies. It's outrageous. And I just had an amendment already. You would've thought, I said "I'm not gonna call out all this stuff. I'm just gonna say, you can't do both jobs."

That insult to injury, Trump thinks that Bill Pulte can be both director of the mortgage regulators and director of national intelligence. And I begged my Republicans that, "Just if half of you who have said this is outrageous would vote with me, we'll get this stopped." I think we got three or four.

And the reports are that you interceded with, Senator Thune w- asking him to push the White House to back off this. Trump, saying today, "Well, it's not permanent. He's not gonna be permanent. It's not a permanent position. We're interviewing people right now." By Trump's standards, that's him softening on this as he's feeling a lot of pressure.

D- can you tell us anything about what you've, tried to do through Thune?

Well, I've asked Thune. I've talked to other members of the administration that I've got, good connections with still. But remember, he dropped this load on us in the very week that we have to reauthorize what's called FISA 702.

Now, this is the most es- important tool in the intelligence community. 70% of all the information that goes in the presidential daily brief, is sourced by this information. It's about foreigners talking to foreigners abroad, not in America. And Democrats support it, Republicans support it. It was still gonna be tough to get enough Democrats with Trump, but the idea that w- we could now support this extension, with Pulte in charge, that's gonna be a big, big mountain to climb.

And I think m- the more rational Republicans who actually care about national security understand that. I wonder whether Trump threw this, whatever into the punch bowl, 10 days before the bill, the law expires. Maybe he didn't want it to pass. I don't know. It is not rational

You mentioned that Republicans aren't living up to their criticism.

W- we see that a lot. They say something, but they don't actually want to take the hard votes. But do you also see a shift? I t- I did rattle off several things where we've seen pushback. I understand some of those folks are retiring, but we showed the sound of Tillis, saying, "Hey, if Blanche is anti-police, that's the end of it.

He doesn't get his vote." I- it- so, A, do you see any ti- small shift, and B, do you think that knock on Blanche could hurt, his confirmation vote?

Well, again, remember my understanding of Mr. Blanche was his skill was being Donald Trump's personal lawyer. In any prior administration, I'm not sure that would put you as attorney general material.

Maybe Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy, but, with the relationship there. But it just, it's mind-blowing, and I do, I have seen a slight shift. But I got to tell you, the first year and a half of this administration, I thought on national security issues, where we sit in the classified room and, we don't talk about his D's and R's, I've been constantly astonished that more of my friends, and I do have friends on the other side, haven't been willing to s- to stand up.

We're seeing a little break now. Of course, it took putting Trump into the n- into the 30s in terms of his approval rating. But you always got to hope for more, or y- this job can get pretty, pretty daunting.

And does everyone have the same view of the midterms? Your Republican colleagues privately feel like if it were held today, they'd lose?

I believe so. There are clearly... You know, at the beginning of this year, it was a bit of a pipe dream to think we could take the Senate. Now, I think that people are thinking it's 50/50. We got totally taken advantage of in Virginia after we had spent, after millions of Virginia voters had gone to the poll where our polls, where our state overturned our redistricting plan.

So we lost some pickup opportunities there, but we still have three very valid seats that we could win in. So, we're just gonna double down, win the House, I believe as well win the Senate, and that'll bring finally some responsibility back and, we'll still have to get 60 votes as in the majority on a lot of bills, but I think there'll be many more Republicans willing to help us.

Next, Section B, Malicious Prosecutions

All right, we gotta talk about Don Lemon. So this goes back to January 18th, 2026, when... This is the time between, unfortunately, when Rene Goode and Alex Pertti were shot. Mm. And there was a lot of energy, obviously, around getting ICE out of Minneapolis.

There was City's Church in St. Paul, where the pastor, David Easterwood, was the acting field office director of the local ICE office. So that's something that local activists wanted to bring attention to, for good reason. This group here that, that ended up being arrested, that went into this, Well, we'll show you a little clip here, but it was a very respectable group of people.

These are civic leaders. These are people that are already known in their communities. We've got Nekima Levy Armstrong, the civil rights lawyer, former N- NAACP chapter president. We've got former St. Paul City Council candidate, Chantel Allen. We've got a state senate candidate, Jamel Lundy.

Green Party organizer, Teran Cruz. Army veteran, Will Kelly. Another Army veteran in Davis Austin, and a college student local activist, Jerome Richardson. Don Lemon and Georgia Ford were there as journalists, and Don Lemon, of course, formerly of CNN, now independent.

Mm.

They were very intentionally acting as journalists, doing journalist stuff, and this group was going there to protest and to disrupt the church services, and to let everybody at that church know what their pastor was getting up to.

So we can play a clip here, and this is, you're gonna hear the voice of Nekima Levy Armstrong. And you might know this name or this face because, she was the one that when DHS tweeted about the arrest on X-

Oh, right ...

they changed her face.

Digitally altered it. She was, like, cry- made it- Yeah ... so she's crying?

Yeah. She walked out tall and proud and looking, just totally in charge when she was being arrested, but they turned her into a crying mess in the picture, which is awful.

Sure is weird that it's always Black women and Black people that they do these things to. Yeah. So bizarre.

Most of the people arrested here were Black, including both of these journalists, for what it's worth.

But, but the, particularly the distorting the image stuff is a very m- Yeah. They don't do that with white people. It's just not. No. It tends to be Muslim people, Black people. It's just, a common racist... I don't know what it is about their racism. Yeah. They're really, once they get the chance to get Photoshop going, or AI now, it's just, they, they crack their fingers and go to it.

Yeah. Well, the government's making this sound like it was, like, a January 6th kind of, takeover of the church, right? And, but this was, Well, you can see for yourself.

That's like saying if I kicked a building, it was like a 9/11, but the building. Right. It's that doesn't- Right. You can't have a January 6th of a church, 'cause there's not an official...

you can't, you can't end our democracy there, you can't... It's like- No, no ... kind of a weird overstatement, but okay.

It can annoy people, but this is a protest. So let's play a clip here.

David Easterwood is a pastor here. He is also the director of the field office for ICE in St. Paul. So someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents.

Think about what we've experienced. The murder of Rene Good at the hands of ICE. A Venezuelan national shot by ICE. A six-month-old baby who almost died as a result of ICE unleashing military-grade weapons on our community. How dare you claim to be a pastor of God, and you are involved in evil in our community.

I think Jesus would be understanding

and- We're, we're, we're about worship- ... and love these

folks ...

we're about spreading the love of

Jesus in these cities. But did you try to talk to them as

a, as a Christian? No. Church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday, and we were interrupted by this group of protesters.

Yeah. We asked them to leave, and they, obviously have not left

All right. You get the idea? Just wanted to give you a taste. That's what the parishioners heard when they were there, and the protesters did sit through most of the service. It was getting, I think, after communion that they started this commotion.

I think that was a very pointed statement. I don't see anything wrong with saying that. Mm-hmm. That's what people in that church need to know about what their pastor's getting up to, and the community needs to know. You could hear the yelling, and you could see that they were standing in the aisles and, they're disrupting services, no doubt, but that was the purpose.

They were supposed to make people uncomfortable. That's what protests are for. They were all charged or attempted to be charged with federal crimes. This is another example of just total DOJ overreach, and I want to explain how this went down 'cause the procedural history was as twisted as these things have been, because DOJ's trying to get its way and trying to force everything through that it possibly can.

And the charges they're trying to bring are under the FACE Act that we'll talk about in a minute. But they went to the magistrate, to try to get arrest warrants for eight people, and the magistrate denied all but three of those arrest warrants, finding there wasn't probable cause for a federal crime from what he could see.

Hmm.

They took the extraordinary step of filing a motion to reconsider and a mandamus request immediately with the district court, trying to get the rest of the district court to force these arrest warrants out. The chief judge of the district court in Minnesota, Joseph Schlitz, wrote a letter to the Fourth Circuit letting them know that he was at home.

He wasn't aware of any of this. He just found out about this mandamus while he's sitting at home. He doesn't have access because it's sealed. And there's an extraordinary thing here I wanted to read because I've never seen anything like this. He's writing to the Eighth Circuit, letting them know that he hasn't seen the mandamus.

He doesn't know what's in it. He assumes, based on the history, that it has to do with these arrest warrants, but he's gonna try to respond to it the best he can anyway.

We didn't get a chance to cover this. Yeah. This was extraordinary. He was... It was like the weekend- Yeah. Same ... and the judge was, like, doing everything he could to- Yeah

deal with this in a way that made sense.

Yeah. He has a son with disabilities at home taken care of and, the record was sealed, and he didn't know what was going on. Yeah, this is from his, sternly worded letter. "I'm unable to access any documents in this case. Because at the request of the United States, the case is sealed, apparently even from me."

Right. "

So I've been given about two and a half hours to respond to a mandamus petition that I cannot... have not read and cannot read. Apparently, I'm supposed to guess what the petition is about and guess what the mandamus petition says and then respond. I will do so."

Wow.

He's making the point that he actually asked around.

He asked every judge in the jurisdiction and every judge in the Eighth Circuit that he could find, and nobody had ever heard of anything like this, the government ever doing anything like this.

Hmm.

And Department of Justice was claiming that it had to rush this, it had to get this emergency thing filed because of national security.

Sure. They said that they believed that people were gonna start storming churches If we didn't get this order, if we didn't get these arrests.

Mm-hmm.

They're just willfully missing the point of this protest. These are not people that want to go disrupt a church service for no reason. They're going to this church for this reason, for this protest.

Yeah. Soon every church that has a guy that's in charge of ICE there-

Right ...

would, that- Yeah ... I actually as having said that, who knows? There could be a lot of us.

Who knows? There could be. It could be. Yeah. But that was just one extraordinary kind of thing out of all this. The... And of course, not being able to get the magistrate to issue arrest warrants, they went to the grand jury, and that becomes very important because Lemon and Ford are seeking something really extraordinary, something that has actually become more possible because of the way the DOJ is just messing everything up all of the time.

They're trying to get the grand jury transcript, which of course is not usually something that anybody can get. That's the point. A grand jury is supposed to be a secret show. And they're making the point that the government at this point has been so outrageous about the way it's conducted this prosecution and many other prosecutions that it has actually lost what they call the presumption of regularity, which is where we assume that things basically work the way they're supposed to work.

We tend to assume, well, basically the law is required to assume, that when the government goes to the grand jury that it follows the law and it instructs the grand jury on what the law is and asks for an indictment based on the controlling law. Under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 6E, generally you're not gonna be able to get grand jury materials.

We talked about this when the Trump administration was doing that red herring effort to get the Epstein grand jury materials, right? Just to try to pretend that was what it was all about. Eventually some of those did come out, but the Epstein act sealed the rest of it But there is an exception in this Rule 60 for defendants who can show that a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment because of a matter that occurred before the grand jury.

So there's some kind of irregularity or some kind of misconduct. What they're arguing here would be pretty extraordinary if it weren't this DOJ and if we didn't already know what, the DOJ has said about these people in public.

Hmm.

One very important point here is very much like with the Eric Adams prosecution, there are no local prosecutors.

There are no local U.S. attorneys on this case. They brought in Harmeet Dhillon, the head of Office of Civil Rights from DC to sign and present the indictment, which is extraordinary.

Wow.

That means nobody in the local office wanted to do it. And remember, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office has had massive attrition.

They've lost a lot of people because of the Renee Good and Alex Perez shootings, including, this is amazing, Joe Thompson, who was actually the acting U.S. attorney in Minnesota for a few months last year. He was the head of the fraud division. He brought all those fraud cases, the famous Somali fraud cases.

And he resigned out of protest over the way that they handled the Renee Good shooting when he was asked to investigate the widow of Renee Good. He said that was it. That was the end for him. He also objected to the way they weren't participating, with the state and they weren't cooperating.

He is now Don Lemon's defense attorney.

Wow.

He's turned right around and come back in the courtroom on the other side. I know. I

did not know that.

Yeah, that says something, right?

Wow. Yeah.

He's on the team.

Huh.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, a magistrate judge unsealed a bunch of warrant applications which were rejected in the city's church's case, and these applications are nuts.

Yeah. Remember, this is the case of the protesters who disrupted a church service because the pastor of said church is a regional supervisor for ICE.

Right, and the p- the protesters took Don Lemon along and also another local journalist named Georgia Fort.

Yeah. The unsealed documents really highlight just how badly lawyered this entire operation has been from the jump. Like for instance, the Department of Justice demanded subscriber information for Don Lemon's YouTube channel, and the magistrate said there was absolutely no reason to think that was evidence of a crime being committed in sub- in the subscriber.

Come on.

Yeah. Here's my favorite kind of encapsulation of the problem here. Uh-huh. The ruling says, "Each search warrant application includes, as part of the affidavit, a request for sealing. A request for sealing is a motion and must be made by an attorney. The motion must also include a proposed order for the court's consideration."

That's a perfect snapshot of the utterly lawless and unprofessional way these political prosecutions are being handled by the DOJ, which was, like, the best law firm in the country. Yeah. Okay, I will admit that if I had to do it, I too would screw that up. I would not know how to request a warrant in a procedurally correct manner because that is not my job.

But it is their job, right? Whoever filed this, it is their job to know how to do this, how to request sealing, and it's a job they're clearly incapable of doing, right? This is the most rote paperwork. How do you screw this up? I- Y- You wouldn't trust these guys if they said, "The men's room is down the hall.

Take a right after the elevator." You would just wander around the building for hours and wet yourself. You'll never find it if you rely on them.

I think you're selling yourself a little short. Yeah. You might not know the right paperwork, but you know that a motion doesn't belong as a me too in an affidavit- Yes

to a magistrate judge. Fair. So, okay. And we have also, continuing with this theme, talked about the implosion of the case against the Broadview Six in Chicago. That included former congressional candidate Cat Abgasali. That was because the prosecutor made multiple massive errors before the grand jury.

We're gonna come back after the break to talk about that case and continuing developments in that office- Yeah ... in, in more detail. But I think that feeds into your larger point about criminal prosecutions by Trump's Department of Justice are being led across the country by idiots who do not know what they are do- these warrants were embarrassing

Right, and now Don Lemon is citing this chaos, both in the City's Church case and nationally in all of those other places, as a reason that the court i- in Minnesota should unseal the grand jury transcripts.

Mm-hmm. He filed a motion on Wednesday pointing to, as you said, the Broadview Six case and the fact that in the Minnesota, the City's Churches case, multiple judges said there was no probable cause for an arrest warrant. That was before they had gone to a grand jury, and they filed a criminal complaint, the state, and tried to get multiple judges to pick up the defendants, and the court said there's no probable cause.

What are you talking about? And then some sort of way, prosecutors got themselves a grand jury indictment on the same case which multiple judges had said there's no probable cause here.

Yeah, and this is foreshadowing we're gonna see the Southern Poverty Law Center make the exact same argument in segment three.

But in this particular case, there was a grand jury indictment that charged at least one person who was not even there when the protest happened. That, that is, I think, pretty good prima facie evidence that prosecutors said something to those grand jurors that wasn't true.

Right. Lemon says, "Many things in this case suggest that there were irregularities in the grand jury process.

Multiple judges found there was no probable cause to sign a criminal complaint in this case, a judge found there was no probable cause to issue several search warrants requested by the government, the affidavits in support of those rejected search warrants indicate that the government erroneously stated that a female congregant had broken her arm while exiting the church, and the grand jury indicted at least one person who the government has since conceded is innocent and was not even present during the protest during which these charges arose.

Despite these irregularities in the charging process, or perhaps because of it, the government has yet to produce any grand jury transcripts in this matter, even ones that plainly contain Brady material. In light of the checkered history of this case and the numerous examples of grand jury misconduct by DOJ around the country, defense counsel in this case are similarly entitled to scrutinize the grand jury proceedings."

Yeah, and all of that is followed by a recitation of the numerous times that courts have said there is no presumption of regularity anymore for the Department of Justice in the past six months, which is many times.

Yeah. I suspect we're gonna see this in a lot of cases now- Mm-hmm ... because, okay, grand jury materials are presumptively sealed.

The judge doesn't even look at them, and there is a high barrier to invading the secrecy of the grand jury, but now we're seeing so many cases where there's been impropriety in front of the grand jury, and I think you are going to see judges respond by granting these motions to unseal.

Yeah. The New York Times had a wild story out of Wyoming that mostly flew under the radar.

It involves Darren Smith, who was recently confirmed as US attorney, despite the fact that he has never practiced criminal law and very clearly does not know what the hell he's doing.

Yeah. Just to contextualize this story, remember the Broadview Six indictment just imploded because the prosecutor improperly vouched for the credibility of the witness, and then also had ex parte communications with grand jurors.

Here is how the Times describes what happened in Wyoming. "Mr. Smith, who was in his first prosecutorial post after serving as a state senator and executive at the Christian Broadcasting Network, had addressed a panel of grand jurors at the federal courthouse in Casper on March 16th. In remarks that broke with prosecutors' typical nuance and restraint," com.

"He told the grand jurors that they were about to hear evidence concerning bad guys and murderers who did what you are going to hear about. He added for good measure that the last grand jury to have sat in the courthouse returned an indictment in only three minutes. Things got even stranger, the judges found, after the grand jurors had started hearing evidence.

During a break in the presentation, Mr. Smith returned to the grand jury room, handed out his business cards to members of the panel, and invited them to reach out to him."

I- this is why you do not put partisan idiots in charge of the Justice Department, because being a prosecutor is a real job that requires experience and judgment.

You can't just get in there and wing it. No. So the district court, needless to say, dismissed all the indictments that grand jury charged, and then the prosecutors had to impanel a second grand jury and re-present the cases.

Yeah, not great.

On our last episode, we talked about Kilmar Abrego winning his motion to dismiss the criminal charges against him in Tennessee on the basis of prosecutorial vindictiveness. The very next day, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed its own motion to dismiss on the same grounds. So, just for background, on April 21, the government indicted the SPLC, charging it with 11 criminal counts, six wire fraud, four bank fraud, and one conspiracy.

The charges stem from the Southern Poverty Law Center making payments to confidential informants inside extremist organizations so that they could exfiltrate data about these targets.

Yeah. We broke that indictment down in episode 223, but it is truly Orwellian, right? What the Southern Poverty Law Center has done since 1983 is to use paid informants to infiltrate groups like the KKK, and when in the course of doing so they discover plans for impending violence, the SPLC has shared that information with state and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, regardless of whether it is a Democratic or Republican administration, right?

This technique of infiltration and gathering data, sharing it with law enforcement is approved by... that's a law enforcement technique. So it was absolutely mind-boggling when, on April 21st, the Department of Justice indicted the SPLC and alleged that it Did the thing that the FBI had been cooperating with it- Right

since the Reagan administration, right? Here's, here is paragraph 19. This is what they put in writing. "To carry out this scheme and artifice, the SPLC explicitly sought donations under the auspices that donor money would be used to help dismantle violent extremist groups." That was in italics. "Donors were not told that some of the funds were used by the SPLC to pay high-level leaders of violent extremist groups, nor were donors ever told that some of the donated funds were used for the benefit of those groups, or that some of the donated funds would be used in the commission of state and federal crimes."

And no, of course the SPLC's donors and the FBI knew that it was using funds to infiltrate groups like the KKK, had been doing that for four decades. Of course this is not fraud. Liz, make this make sense to me.

Well, I can't make it make sense- ... but I can talk to you about right-wing extremists and kind of the way that they tend to reframe things, right?

The most appalling example is, of course, Alex Jones retconning the Sandy Hook shooting into, a false flag operation by the Obama administration as an excuse to confiscate guns- Mm-hmm ... to confiscate, good patriots' weapons. But we see it all the time, right? The- when conservatives get caught doing something violent, they say, "This person wasn't a real conservative," or, "There were instigators in the crowd.

It was an FBI operation." We talked on this show about Ray Epps, who was a former- ... Oath Keeper who, got carried away i- on the, on January 5th and said, "We're gonna storm the Capitol," and everybody was like, "You're a fed, you're a fed." And then Tucker Carlson kind of talked about him being Fed Epps for years on the theory that it was Antifa or if it was FBI plants in the crowd egging on these poor innocent patriots.

And this indictment of the SPLC fits squarely into that right-wing playbook, right? These people are saying, "Well, the Charlottesville riot wouldn't have happened if you weren't paying informants- ... to go there. You're basically ginning up racism," because, without paying for it. If the SPLC weren't paying a few thousand dollars to informants, racism wouldn't exist, is the basis of this theory.

But that the SPLC is trying to create racism to, justify its own existence, and thus defrauding its donors because its job is to fight racism.

Yeah. I thought this hit its low point when FBI Director Kash Patel announced on social media that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been used to defame mainstream Americans and has even funded violence.

But le- that was still a wink and a nod, right? Mm-hmm. He wasn't saying they're responsible for the Unite the Right rally. But you know who doesn't do a wink and a nod?

In fact, I do.

Yeah. Let's listen to...

You saw all that, Southern Law is financing the KKK and lots of other radical Terrible groups. And then they go out and they say, "Oh, we've got to stop the KKK," and yet they give them hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.

They were

right to- Look, it's a total scam run by the Democrats. It shows you that, like Charlottesville, Charlottesville was all funded by the Southern Law. That was a Southern Law deal, too, and it was done to make me look bad, and it turned out to be a total fake. It basically was, a rigged election.

This was a part of the rigging of the election.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what you really should be doing. I hope one of your 60 Minute episodes, which really hasn't changed very much from the last few years, I'm surprised, but one of those episodes should be on Southern Law and the fact that they spent millions and millions of dollars on absolute far right and just bad groups.

Mm-hmm. And then they'd use those groups and they'd say, "These are Republican groups, and we're coming to your rescue." And they're the ones that have funded it, and they're the ones that kept them, keep them going. Mm-hmm. I want to talk- Pretty, pretty sad. Do you think it's pretty sad, Norah?

The allegations and the indictment

laid out by- They're not just allegations

was an indictment laid out by them. These are facts, okay? These are facts. They have checks to the Ku Klux Klan and many others, and then they're saying how bad they are- Mm-hmm ... and blaming the Republican Party and Republicans. These are not just allegations, but go ahead.

Yeah, that's the President of the United States claiming that it wasn't Nazis who organized the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, but the SPLC, which, he calls Southern Law, 'cause he's demented, and it was part of a conspiracy to rig the 2020 election, and I...

Yeah, my head hurts.

Right, and here's why that matters for the SPLC's motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution, right? Ordinarily, prosecutors have broad discretion to pick and choose at every stage of the criminal process. They can decide who they want to indict and who to prosecute and when to take a plea bargain and when to, l- let it go, nolle pros, whatever, and they can decide who they want to take to trial.

Only if you can prove what's known as but-for causation can you get your case thrown out. That is, you must demonstrate that if you had not exercised your legal right, you would not have been charged.

Yeah. Last episode, we talked about John Kerry. That was a guy who burned the flag in a D.C. park to protest Trump's executive order vowing to prosecute flag burners, and he immediately found himself slapped with, yeah, some bullshit charges for setting a fire in a park outside a designated receptacle, right?

Mm-hmm. And Judge James Boasberg said- Yeah. This sets out a prima facie case of vindictiveness. We don't think you would be, have been prosecuted but for the fact that you were protesting against an illegal policy.

The day after Trump, put out- Announced it ... an executive order saying, "We're gonna prosecute flag burners."

Right, and the way that these cases work is that establishes a prima facie case. The judge sets an evidentiary hearing, the government gets to come in and try and rebut it. It's not hard to rebut it, but in the Kerry case, rather than try and do so, the government just dropped the case against him with prejudice in its entirety instead.

Right, because as we said, Jeanine Pirro has given up trying to pretend that she's doing real law.

Yeah, she's doing it by press release, and losing would've been a much worse press release than handing down the indictment in the first place. Right. Yeah, I agree. And look, one of the other reasons that we keep mentioning Kerry is that it got cited in Abrego's case, and the Southern Poverty Law Center cites it here, right?

A- and, and it all stands for the proposition that if the government retaliates against you for exercising your First Amendment rights, that's vindictive prosecution. And that's, that is a new wrinkle to the law, right? Typically, these vindictive prosecution cases don't get brought because the administration is targeting people for their political beliefs.

It is because local prosecutors get pissed off when criminal defendants appeal and win on appeal. So the paradigmatic case is exercising your right to appeal. But there is now solid precedent in multiple cases for i- it's also targeting you for any use of your constitutional rights.

Right, in the Abrego case, he filed and won his habeas corpus case, and that's why the government charged him.

Here, the SPLC says it was targeted because it engaged in constitutionally protected free speech criticizing the Trump administration, and the SPLC has the record, not just of the clip you played, but of everyone throughout this administration saying defamatory shit about the SPLC. Here's Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the DOJ Civil Rights Division, God help us, telling this dipshit on Newsmax that she feels vindicated by this indictment 'cause you can't be an effective cultural warrior if the SPLC hasn't targeted you.

Well, the SPLC, indictment, by our criminal lawyers here at the Department of Justice is truly earth-shattering because it unveil... rips away the veil from the facade of the Southern Poverty Law Center being this venerable organization that fights discrimination based in the deep South. What we have found is that kind of discrimination in America today is actually in very short supply.

So for SPLC to continue to fundraise off of that premise, they had to manufacture it themselves, and this 11-count indictment shows a paper trail of numerous payments to, uh, some of the most hateful groups in America, which have almost no presence really. Uh, the Ku Klux Klan and, you know, Patriot Front and these other groups that a lot of us suspected, 'cause, you know, I'm a longtime conservative.

You look around, and I don't know any people like this or encounter them or see them, and yet suddenly they're popping up all over the place and SPLC fundraises off of them. Beyond that, Biden campaigned off of defeating, Republicans- Yeah ... because of this false narrative. And so I think you're just seeing the beginning of this, and I think that- Yeah

we're seeing the DOJ, start to pull on a thread that's going to go way deeper and end up ensnaring a lot more people than the ones just, than- Yeah ... than what we've seen in this indictment. And I,

Joe Biden used this as an exc- it was a fake excuse. It was BS, but he said this was the reason that he ran for president was because of Charlottesville, which was heavily funded by the SPLC.

And again, yeah, like you said, this is in short supply. This kind, this brand of racism, this white supremacy of, of, of a darker history of this country doesn't really exist in any great form anymore, but it is paramount to the mission of the SPLC and to the NAACP to make sure that people think that it is because that's the survival, I think, of the Democratic Party.

If they don't have a villain, if they don't, if they can't claim there's a victimhood in this country, what do they have? What do they have to run on without it? I wanna talk a little bit more about the Southern Poverty Law Center. They actually expressed concern over your nomination, for your position, saying your record raises serious questions, about your commitment to protecting the civil rights of Black and brown communities as well as the LGBTQ+ community, adding, "Throughout Harmeet's career, she's been involved in more than a dozen lawsuits across the country that tried to restrict people's voting rights and defended discriminatory redistricting."

What's your reaction to that?

Well, I look, I think I'm vindicated by this, frankly. And frankly, if you're a conservative today that the SPLC hasn't gone after, I'd have some questions about you because how effective are you as a culture warrior if, they think you're benign? So I've never done any lawsuits involving restricting anybody's voting rights, but the left definitely thinks that if you want one person, one vote, and all those votes to be American citizens- that's some kind of discrimination. What does that say about them? And the other attacks, a- apparently I'm the wrong kind of Brown or Black person, uh, and so that's racist in and of itself. But look, at the end of the day, I've had a lot of journalist friends, Andy Ngo clients, and groups that I've represented who've been targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I think, for to me, this is very personal. They've taken square aim at the First Amendment in this country, a value that I cherish and have dedicated my entire 33-year career to fighting for, and it's about time that we see some accountability. But look- Yeah ... I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

we were also treated to the release of the transcripts from the grand jury proceedings in the Broadview Six case. This, of course, is the indictment of the protesters who were demonstrating outside of the Broadview Immigration Detention Center during Operation Midway Blitz. All of the charges were dismissed after the court indicated she would review the grand jury transcripts even after the government reduced the charges to misdemeanors rather than felonies.

And the judge at the hearing dismissing the charges indicated that what she saw in those transcripts was shocking. And listeners, she did not exaggerate. There are three transcripts because as we now know, even though DOJ tried to conceal this fact from the judge, DOJ had to present this case to multiple grand juries before it could obtain an indictment.

Okay, so now we've actually seen the text, and the very first transcript starts off with one prosecutor saying the other prosecutor will vouch for her. As we mentioned when this story first started to come out, vouching is one of the things that prosecutors categorically cannot do in front of the grand jury.

There is a literal rule against vouching. So what does this prosecutor start off with? By saying, quote, "Matt," that's the other prosecutor, "will vouch for me." "I said I wanna go in front of the grand jury because I know you, and I trust you, and you know me, and you trust me, and I would never ask you to charge somebody if I didn't think there was probable cause."

Textbook, "Trust me, I'm a prosecutor. I've got the evidence, so just indict." I'm honestly impressed that the vouching was done in such an explicit, stringer bell prohibited way. No, you don't take notes or say, "I'm vouching," in the face of clear- While vouching- While ... before the grand jury. You could literally find this if you're like, "Was there vouching?"

And you Ctrl+F'd the word vouch. You hear- Nice ... her saying it. So, it's like on law school exams where the person is named P, plaintiff, or D, defendant. Here it is V for voucher.

So there were many highs and lows in these transcripts. For me, I think the best thing was the grand jurors making the Fifth Amendment great again.

And Kate, I know Melissa isn't here. I really want to do a reenactment. It's not going to be the same without her- No ... but we will soldier on. So do you wanna be grand juror or prosecutor?

I will be prosecutor. How about you be grand juror? Okay. But yes, once again, Melissa, we will do our best to do you proud, but we just- we- there's no way we can do it as well as you would have.

But all right, onward. You begin as grand juror.

Okay. Grand juror, "Girl, are you actually presenting any new actual facts or just a different viewpoint on your side?" There wasn't the word girl in there- But the rest of it- ... editorial license ... was verbatim.

Every other word but girl was in fact in the transcript.

Prosecutor responds, "Okay, I'm feeling the skepticism already. Are you going to be able to listen with an open mind? Tell me the truth."

No.

Okay, then you have to go.

I heard this case, last week, and I thought it was a crock of shit then, and I still think it is.

Okay. Thank you for your opinion, everybody.

Do you have unlimited tries?

Do we have... What did you ask?

Unlimited tries. You keep coming back as many times as you want.

Oh, I don't think we have to worry about that. Okay, another- now we have a second prosecutor. We have to, d- I'll, I'll do second prosecutor. I think the saying is, the second time is the charm.

Just like reading the grand jury, telling the prosecutor your case is a crock of shit, and why are you still at it was just glorious. And

why do you get to keep coming back again and again? Right? Where- A very legitimate question. In, you're shooting free throws. You don't get unlimited tries until you make one.

You're, g- giving a presentation at work. You're taking a law school exam. Typically, you put up, and then you shut up, and that's kind of it. And I think it was a fair question, which is, like, why in this of all spaces- ... does one side just get to keep going again and again? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so there is that. Then, of course, we have the prosecutors identifying the grand jurors who wouldn't vote to indict the protesters and dismissing them one by one until the prosecutors arrived at a grand jury with the minimum required number of grand jurors who would return an indictment, and the prosecutor also talking about how he spoke with grand jurors outside of the grand jury room.

As I think we said in an earlier episode, I think we all have a reasonable basis to think we need to see grand jury transcripts in the many other political prosecutions this administration is pursuing, and there are a lot.

And other prosecutions as well. So just related to this, two kind of pieces of news that are definitely tied up with the latest exposure of the Department of Justice's misdeeds.

So there are now allegations of grand jury misconduct in other Chicago cases involving the same prosecutors. So in one, a judge has ordered an evidentiary hearing, where the defense alleges that the prosecutor again engaged in vouching, disclosing off-the-record negotiations with the defendant, and more.

And in what seemed like a bid to prevent said hearing into prosecutorial misconduct, the US attorney moved to dismiss the charges. Note that this is what happened in the Broadview Six case where the prosecutor also tried to ward that off. Yeah. And yet those grand jury transcripts were still released, and it looks like there is still going to be an inquiry into this case, so the judge has ordered the hearing, right, to continue, or a hearing to continue even after the prosecution filed a notice of moving to dismiss the case.

And this case involves allegations of fraud related to federal COVID funding. And then there's an entirely separate case where a different judge agreed to review the grand jury transcripts in a case where the defendant pled guilty because the judge said, quote, "The front office has created, as a credibility crisis, and that is a real problem."

End quote. The party of law and order, ladies and gentlemen. In-

indeed.

Yeah. Genuinely wondering, is this a good time or the best time or, d- not a good time to be engaging in crimes? It seems like they have tied up DOJ with people who are not engaged in crimes, and that the crime spree might be at the DOJ.

The call is coming from inside the house.

So this reminds me of that period where Trump... This happened, I think, in both Virginia and Jersey, but Alina Habba in Jersey, Halligan in Virginia, but trying to install these pretty unqualified people as US attorneys. This was particularly true in Jersey. And it seemed like actual federal law enforcement ground to a halt in the- Yeah

state of New Jersey. Which is a state where sometimes, people like to do crimes. Illinois too. And I do wonder, what- And

you literally have judges- Yeah ... begging the prosecutor, "Come before me and please tell me you have sorted out who's leading this office- Yeah

because if you're wrong, this is going to invalidate all of the cases- All...

Absolutely. So- ...

that proceed under this invalid structure.

Right. So it is a different and more under-the-radar set of prob- at least until now, set of problems- Yeah ... it seems in the Northern District of Illinois. So it's not, this high-profile person at the top, but it does seem as though, in the recesses of the grand jury room and who knows where else, justice is not functioning as it normally does in that office.

Now, Section C, Weaponized Department

a federal judge in Miami has reopened President Trump's $10 billion case against the IRS in a striking turnabout saying she wants to investigate grievous allegations that the hasty deal to resolve it was premised on deception.

The ruling is by Judge Kathleen Williams, that was on Friday, as a week ago Friday, to revive the case shortly after closing it. It was a significant blow to Trump, both Trump, who had voluntarily dismissed the suit himself last week, and the Justice Department. Now, after the president withdrew the suit, senior department officials released a pair of extraordinary agreements that settled the case by establishing the $1.8 billion slush fund to compensate people who claim they were victims of weaponization by Democrats.

But the deal also conferred lucrative tax benefits on Trump, his family, and his businesses.

Judge Williams' decision came in response to court papers filed on Wednesday by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges who urged her to bring the case back to life and to dig into the details of the agreement to settle it.

The former judges said that Mr. Trump's settlement agreement raised serious questions about his candor towards the court and manipulation of the judicial system. In her brief but stern order on Friday, Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump's efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies.

If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders who signed the agreements to settle the suit, chief among them Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley Woodward, the number three official in the department.

In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was, quote, "empowered to investigate serious misconduct" in any case before her and ordered Mr. Trump's lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because, quote, "The court was the victim of fraud." Yikes.

Man, empowered to investigate serious misconduct seems like a bit of foreshadowing there,

doesn't it?

Yeah. Go get 'em.

She also wanted Trump's lawyers to respond to the question of whether he had colluded with his own government to settle the case to avoid judicial scrutiny. Judge Williams pointed to reporting by The Times that described how the IRS had prepared a 25-page memorandum outlying defenses against Trump's lawsuit that the Justice Department r- did not take up in court.

Now, in a footnote, Judge Williams questioned the provision granting Mr. Trump, his family, and their businesses immunity from IRS scrutiny of tax returns they had already filed. She wrote that the audit protection may run afoul of Justice Department rules requiring legal settlements to directly relate to the issues in the suit.

She also noted that only Mr. Blanche signed the audit provision. There you go, buddy. The separate nine-page agreement laying out the $1.8 billion The fund was signed by Mr. Woodward and Frank Bisignano. Am I saying that correctly?

I think so.

Okay. Who is serving as the chief executive officer of the IRS.

The sixth- Yeah

By the way.

Right. Newly created and newly filled role that is not subject to Senate confirmation.

Oh, that's right. He's had six IRS commissioners- Yeah ... so he was like, "Well, I'm just gonna make the IRS czar go Frank Bisignano."

Yeah. Yeah. So that was on Friday. Then on Tuesday, Todd Blanche testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee that he was abandoning the $1.8 billion slush fund.

Not so for the sweeping protections from the IRS audits that Mr. Blanche also ordered up for Mr. Trump and his family. On that front, Republican reaction has been much more muted. Mr. Blanche said the audit shield would stay in place. A Democratic effort to cancel the audit protection failed on a voice vote

And you just know that, Thune and the Republicans are gonna be like, "Well, he dropped the fund, so we're satisfied-

Oh,

yeah

even though he's leaving the even more corrupt." If maybe this whole thing was just a Trojan horse to get tax immunity, maybe that was the end goal in the first place, and the fact that he canceled the fund but kept his tax immunity seems even more corrupt to me. But- I

mean, first of, first of all, I'd have so much more respect for Todd Blanche if he simply said, "I'm sorry.

I can't take that away from him. He'll kill me."

Yeah.

It'd be like trying to take a, take a raw steak out of a rabid dog's mouth. There's no way he's l- letting go of that.

Yeah, but I would, I would appreciate it if Todd Blanche said, "Well, that was the whole reason we did this in the first place- Yeah

so I can't get rid of that."

I c- I'm sorry. I just can't do it. I can't do it. The other thing is-

January Sixers, by the way, are really, really mad. They're having, these live Twitter events- Oh, geez ... and they are, they are like, "I can't believe he abandoned us and got rid of our fund, but he's keeping his tax immunity."

They're not

pleased. You can't, you can't believe it? You can't believe this, this guy didn't follow through on something that he said he was gonna do for someone else? Oh my gosh. I

know. I

can't believe it.

Now, the result is that an apparently unprecedented and enormously valuable public benefit for the president has so far flown under the radar in Congress and passed into Trump's hands without much protest from members of his own party.

Blanche did not want to directly pay Mr. Trump money out of the Treasury, the Times reported. Instead, DOJ created the $1.8 billion fund, now seemingly dead, and offered Trump his, and his family members and their businesses the sweeping protections from audits of tax returns they have already filed. In return, Trump dropped his suit, an arrangement that the judge who was originally assigned to the case, like we said, is now investigating.

The audit that was potentially worth more than $100 million stemmed from how Mr. Trump claimed losses on his Chicago tower, but there are several other known audits of Mr. Trump that the IRS started in recent years. It's unclear whether any of those are still pending, just as it is uncertain whether the IRS has enacted Mr.

Blanche's order. The IRS and the Treasury have not responded to questions about whether they are doing so. So I've got a question for you, Allison. And I'm thinking of this because as we talked about earlier in the show, he denied that it was an actual grant of immunity, which of course it is if you read the order.

He can't be investigated for anything related to his taxes, nor can his family or any of his businesses. So I, I... My question is, doesn't this basically grant him and his family and all of his businesses immunity from ever paying taxes ever again? It's not just getting off the hook of this audit. They could just say, "Not doing it.

I'm not filling out a return," and no one can investigate them for that, and DOJ can never charge them with a crime for that. So this group of, political royals has been granted immunity from the tax code entirely for the rest of their lives.

Yep. Yeah, that's basically how, how it goes.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Well, I, that's why I couldn't believe people weren't making a bigger deal.

I was sitting there screaming at my television and putting it out on the, on social media, making videos. I was like, "They're letting him go forward with the, with the tax thing." The day before Todd Blanche testified, Dana and I recorded a show, and I was like, "Man, what if they get rid of the fund but keep the tax immunity?"

What... They're like, "That would be even more corrupt." No, it'll never happen. That... And we were laughing. We were joking.

Next up from Reuters, Kurt Olsen, our good friend, Kurt Olsen. Hmm. Hmm. White House official who aided Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election has joined the Justice Department as a senior attorney, reporting to a prosecutor seeking to build a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy case against the president's enemies.

Olsen joined the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida on Monday, according to a Justice Department spokesperson. Among the matters being overseen by the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Redding Quiñones, a group of prosecutors is examining whether past investigations of Trump amounted to a criminal conspiracy against him.

The effort is being supervised by Joe diGenova, another Trump co-conspirator now serving as a counselor to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the leader of a new civil rights unit under the Miami office. Olsen has been leading the Trump administration's election integrity effort... Oh, interesting.

Including re-examining Trump's 2020 defeat and investigating disproven vote rigging theories, as a special government employee at the White House. Olsen's work has included probing potential foreign intervention in US elections and seizing voting machines and materials in Puerto Rico, Georgia, Arizona, et cetera, to aid his investigation.

He's focused primarily on the disproven theory that the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was able to penetrate Dominion voting machines and flip votes to Biden by exploiting Venezuelan origin code. So that guy- Right ... is now working on that case in Miami, which you have, some idea about.

I do. I do. This is my case that I very intentionally don't talk about, but, yeah, so that's, that's basically all I can say. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. And then you got cracker jacks like Kurt Olsen.

Yeah. I don't... Doesn't seem like the talent level is going up in, in that side of the, that side of the conflict.

But I don't know. We'll see. Who knows? We'll, we'll have to, have to just keep following the news on that one.

Right. For everybody, that's the case against former CIA chief John Brennan- Yes ... and about 40 other people, wrapping in the investigation into classified documents at Mar-a-Lago so that they could overcome the fact that the statute of limitations on Crossfire Hurricane has been expired for a really long time.

Yep. Yep. Not that there were any crimes committed in Crossfire Hurricane- Yeah, and

that- ...

which was intensely scrutinized in Trump 1.0, and by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and by... Anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that. All that is actually correct. And of course, that's the one where I have received, two subpoenas now, and so that's why I don't talk about that case because of, my potential, inclusion in it.

It's not a good idea for me to talk about it, but something we'll continue tracking here.

Mm-hmm.

In addition to a story we just got from NBC, who states, "A rookie federal prosecutor who brought a case accusing former FBI Director James Comey of threatening President Donald Trump's life by posting a photo of seashells on Instagram," yep, just read that.

It's, that's what the story says. This prosecutor has stepped off the case. "Matthew Petracca, who had recently been hired as an assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina, is no longer on the Comey case, according to a court filing. Petracca also dropped off other criminal cases in the Eastern District of North Carolina in recent days, according to court filings.

Petracca is a former Republican county committeeman in New Jersey, whom W. Ellis Boyle, the US attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, hired months ago, NBC News has reported. Boyle oversaw the highly criticized case, which will go to trial in October if it manages to survive many legal challenges.

Petracca had contemplated leaving the Justice Department altogether, according to two people familiar with the matter, but instead remained a Justice Department employee after taking a week off." I say, well, vacation time, he thought better about his leaving and figured he could just stop working on any cases and continue collecting the salary.

"Petracca had not responded to a previous request for comment on his status at the Justice Department and did not respond to an additional request for comment on Friday." The US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Assistant US Attorney Timothy Severo is now heading the Comey case.

Congratulations, Mr. Severo.

Congratulations.

You are the winner, sir, of maybe the worst case, in the Justice Department, right now. It's always possible we get a worse one next week, so-

Of course. Of course. cBS reports a federal judge in Rhode Island, she has now referred Justice Department lawyers for possible discipline on Friday over their handling of an investigation into transgender youth care at a hospital in the state after previously finding that the lawyers misled the court and withheld information.

So a previous, in a previous episode of Hit Me in the Head with a Bat, we talked about that, l- misleading the court, withholding information, and acting, totally outside the bounds of any kind of presumption of regularity that would normally be afforded. And now what we're reporting today is she's actually filed a referral for discipline.

It came after Judge McElroy quashed an administrative subpoena that the Justice Department issued to the hospital seeking years of sensitive medical information for every minor transgender patient who received medical care at a Rhode Island hospital as part of a sprawling investigation into gender transition treatments.

McElroy, who was appointed by President Trump in 2019-

Womp

womp Sorry. Wrote in a decision last month that the subpoena lacked, a congressionally authorized purpose and was issued, quote, "For an improper purpose in bad faith." Wow. She also lambasted the Justice Department in her ruling, calling the difference between the honorable conduct expected of prosecutors and the department's tactics in the case unsettling.

"The Justice Department," she wrote in her May 14 opinion, quote, "possesses immense prosecutorial authority and discretion. As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary.

DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case." Oof. Mm-hmm.

That's what we had, discussed last month here.

Yeah.

Now, McElroy went on to accuse Justice Department lawyers of misrepresenting facts, as we call that lying-

Mm-hmm ...

where I live, under oath, and withholding information from her court and a federal court in the Northern District of Texas.

She accused government lawyers of doing so in an obvious effort to shield its recent investigative tactics, previously rejected by every other court to review them, from this court's review in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions. That's why they file in Texas.

The judge was referring to the Justice Department's decision to seek an order from a judge in Fort Worth that would compel Rhode Island, a hospital in Rhode Island, to turn over the documents sought by the administrative subpoena last year.

In its effort to obtain the order from the Texas court, a Justice Department lawyer named Lisa help me with this one, Allison.

Is it S-Siall? Hissow. Hissow? Okay. Mm-hmm. Justice Department lawyer named Lisa Hissow said in a declaration that Rhode Island Hospital failed to comply with the subpoena and stopped communicating with the department in February. But McElroy, the Rhode Island judge, said that claim was, quote, "Clearly misleading, if not utterly false" Because representatives from Rhode Island Hospital had responded to an email from Justice Department lawyers about search terms for compliance with the subpoena.

Quote Hmm ... "This reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is appalling," McElroy wrote. Ouch. Ouchie.

It's ... She had some harsh lang- this Trump appointee had some really harsh language for these Department of Justice lawyers, and rightfully so. So now she's referred the DOJ lawyers to the disciplinary committee.

We'll keep an eye on this referral. We know, we know Pam Bondi, before she was fired, tried to file a memo saying that, state bar associations have no jurisdiction here. The DOJ will investigate itself, thank you very much. So- Last

time I checked, DOJ doesn't run their own bar.

Mm-hmm. Well, Jeanine Pirro does.

Oh, okay. Hey-o. Wait a moment. Right. Thanks. Couldn't resist. Oh. That was a little low-hanging fruit there. It was. But,

I'm sorry to the audience for setting that up in such an obvious way.

I, I, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But yeah, I bet we're gonna see some sort of response to say, "No, we have a new memo here at the DOJ signed by the Office of Legal Counsel," who's a 19-year-old Doge bro or whatever-

Yeah

that says, "You can't, you can't do it. You can't touch us. We're, we do our own investigation." It'll, it'll come up- Mm-hmm ... in this, in this referral, and we'll keep an eye on it for you.

So I wanna put this question to former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, co-counsel for the 35 former judges like Judge Gertner, who challenged the IRS settlement that created the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund.

If you can explain what DeLauro was getting at and what Todd Blanche was denying?

Well, first of all, let me say how much of an honor it is to represent Judge Gertner and the 34 other judges in this matter. And what the acting attorney general was saying is just simply not true. You have to take a step back and remember how we got here.

The president filed this sham lawsuit. They then purported to settle it in a collusive matter. They wrap the whole thing up. They announce this fund. The, that night, the general counsel of the United States Treasury quits. The next morning, after the settlement had already been announced, they announce another settlement that does much more than what the acting attorney general was saying.

It actually gives the president and his family broad release from any government enforcement action prior to the date of the settlement. It's broader than just the IRS. So there... When he says it's typical, there is nothing typical about any of this. And as the congresswoman was noting, the p- the acting attorney general claims he can walk away from the fund, and it's not even clear what he means by that because if this was a real settlement, one party can't just walk away from it.

But put that aside for a moment. There still remains the second piece of this about broad releases for the president, a enormously valuable benefit to him and his family that is absolutely inappropriate to give to them. It is illegal. It is illegal for the president to ask for any IRS audit to be opened or closed.

That is a federal crime. So the fact that the acting attorney general is standing up there saying this is typical, and frankly misrepresenting what the settlement does, is extraordinary.

And how significant is it? 'Cause he bristles every time a senator or congressman says you're the former personal defense attorney for Trump.

How significant is this, the current acting attorney general, Todd Blanche?

Look, I think it's, it, when you're the attorney general, and I served as attorney general of a state for nine and a half million people, any time you have an actual or an appearance of a conflict, you wanna be extraordinarily careful to make sure that the public doesn't think the process by which you're ap- approaching a particular case is tainted.

So there are many times where you step aside simply because there's an appearance, and I think at a minimum there's an appearance issue here. But look, the acting attorney general here has done extraordinarily, unprecedented things by settling... He, just a week ago, was defending this and signing documents in support of the settlement, which had no legal basis.

Now he's just saying, "Oh, sorry, we're gonna walk away from that," because he got backlash from Republicans on the Hill. Nothing about this is typical. Nothing about this is grounded in law, and that's why the motion that these judges filed before Judge Williams in Florida is so critical so that there could potentially be some accountability.

And Matt Platkin, you're also representing 93 House Democrats and two federal prosecutors challenging the fund. Can you walk us through the different legal challenges and where they stand now?

Yeah, I think it's notable, and I'm extremely proud to represent individuals who have served in all three branches of our federal government.

And I think th- a- and by the way, you're seeing bipartisan opposition to this. So you've seen the judges file, before Judge Williams alleging that this entire proceeding, starting from the filing of the lawsuit through the settlement of it, was a sham and a illegitimate collusive lawsuit that used the court to access the United States Treasury to pay money that the, simply the president cannot spend.

You've separ- separately seen a number of challenges from individuals and organizations, like the two brave and courageous heroes, the prosecutors who worked on the January 6th cases, whose reputations have been unfairly maligned and targeted, by this administration, including by this fund, which purports to apologize to, quote-unquote, "victims of weaponization."

We know that the weaponization language has been used specifically for January 6th prosecutors and investigators dating back to the first day in office, where the president pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists, people who contributed to the death of a police officer, Officer Brian Sicknick, who's from New Jersey.

So you've seen a number of cases, and in a case in Virginia, the judge there separately stopped any a- the government from taking any action to establish the fund. So I think it's important to note that while Todd Blanche gets up and says things, all the federal government has actually said to date is that they are going to abide by the restraining order that has been put in place in the Virginia case.

So this is an administration who does not have a lot of credibility of following through with its statements. So we are gonna be monitoring it very closely. I- And as you noted, we're proud to represent many individuals

here. In your brief, House Democrats argued the lawsuit and settlement is blatantly unlawful and raises the specter of corruption unparalleled in American history.

Could what has taken place here, whether or not they take it off the table, lead to criminal charges right up to Trump?

Oh look, I'll leave any enforcement actions to, those in power to, to make their decisions. But I wi- I will say as Judge Gertner noted, the court here is very clearly looking at whether a misconduct occurred.

And it, there are rules about how attorneys conduct themselves, and we, when we filed the motion before the court, the fact that you had 35 former federal judges, telling a n- a fellow colleague, or former colleague that there may have been a fraud perpetrated on the court and that this lawsuit was intended to unlawfully access the United States Treasury, not some small pot of cash, the United States Treasury, the biggest pot of cash in the world, I think that's an extraordinary statement.

On the other side of this, and I'll get to my ultimate conclusions about all this in a moment, but on the other case that involves this right now.

It's called, Andrew Floyd v. DOJ, and it's a collection of plaintiffs. We haven't talked about this yet. Andrew Floyd was a prosecutor who was one of the ones who was fired because he was investigating January 6th and trying to prosecute it.

Hmm.

He was out front on, part of that prosecution, and he's matched up with the city of New Haven, which says it was discriminated against for its protected speech, and the National Abortion Federation for, obvious reasons.

So these are basically First Amendment plaintiffs who are trying to raise claims that they were victims of government weaponization. So they're just bringing this up now preemptively, and they're saying, "We want a piece of this fund." They're saying it's an equal protection problem because- Mm-hmm ... even though this judgment fund has not put out a single dollar, it's been pretty clear who's gonna get the money.

Yeah.

They're saying as long as you keep making these statements and talking about the Biden administration and Democrats, it's pretty clear that we're not gonna get a shot at the judgment fund. So I think that's the strongest part of it, is equal protection claim. But it's not particularly a strong case.

Yeah, I don't know if this matters, but it still is yes, but nobody should get it. But I guess if that's the one way you can, like-

Right ...

complain about it.

And really shut it down, I think.

Yeah.

Potentially. But, and again, as I'm gonna say, I think this is all a formality looking into this a little more anyway.

But I, it's a good argument, and the good news out of that was there was an injunction as of the 29th of May that kept the defendants, the entire government basically, from taking any action about the creation or operation of the fund. That includes even putting money into the fund. They can't do anything with it at all.

They can't look at claims, they can't do anything. And remember, this fund requires that the attorney general appoint-

Yeah ...

a total of five people, one of them in collaboration with, leaders of the Senate.

Yeah, collaborators, that's a good,

That's right. It's a good word ... good

word for it.

One of the people who's applied for this already is a pretty well-known insane MAGA guy.

I'm sure the others would be, too. We cannot trust anything about the way this is gonna work, but I don't think it's ever gonna happen. The thing that's addressed, though, in, in Williams' order also is what is going on with the singles page Todd Blanche immunity order.

Yeah. '

Cause that was not really addressed in the settlement.

It's a separate thing. The fund was set up under a separate DOJ order that also included IRS, but this was only issued by Todd Blanche under the Department of Justice. And again, DOJ are the government's lawyers, so they're signing off on behalf of the IRS, but the IRS really should've been involved in that, as Williams points out.

Right.

Does this void that? Now again, this immunity thing is pretty easy to challenge. If a future administration were to prosecute Trump or any of his organizations or his family, they would file a motion to dismiss based on this immunity thing, and then it would have to be hashed out then. I don't think it can really be challenged before then.

I could be wrong. But that is a separate issue, and I have to wonder if maybe that was most of the point of sitting down and doing this settlement. They have to have known that the thing they were proposing, the anti-weaponization fund, in its current form at least, in this moment, in twenty twenty-six, and honestly, it's very heartening to see it wasn't gonna work.

This was just... Even the Republicans, like all Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, were pretty disgusted by this, apparently, reportedly. So we're still there. There still are some lines.

Yeah, I don't think I can get heartening in my vocabulary, but I hear you.

No, I know. I know.

So what would happen- I tried

I, I'm curious, do you think it would be successful to challenge the immunity deal, and then on what grounds? What ki- I guess I don't know how often immunity deals are challenged or what,

I could see some type of taxpayer suit saying, "Based on what we know just from the public record, T- Trump should have been audited, should be audited now, and never, he never will be, so you're somehow trampling on my rights."

I think the most likely way that it would be tried would be if Trump is prosecuted or audited in the future by a future administration or any of his organizations.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's, pretend that happens. He's audited-

Right ...

and then they try to do the immunity deal. I'm just curious, what would the grounds be for saying that's not valid?

It's pretty extraneous to the suit, and I'm not sure that And without IRS fully agreeing to that, it's Todd Blanche by himself signing off on this as the AG.

Yeah.

It's pretty untested stuff. All of this is, but I could see it being pretty shaky, especially if you're already saying that the settlement itself was a fraud on the court, then the court will have to vacate the other part of it.

Or even if it somehow stands, any future court can see that, that this whole thing was a collusion.

Donald just took another significant step toward eroding the rule of law in the United States of America. Uh, let's go back to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In case you don't remember, I'm gonna play you a bit of Donald's January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

This is Donald trying to coerce an elected official into falsifying election results. Check it out.

So look, all I wanna do is this. I just wanna find, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.

That's an oddly specific number, 11,780. It must just be a coincidence that Donald would randomly say such a specific number.

Hmm.

Oh, wait, no, not a coincidence at all, because it turns out that 11,780 votes was the margin of his loss in the state of Georgia, and he wanted Brad Raffensperger to find just enough votes to push Donald over the edge. To recap, in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Donald lost decisively to Joe Biden, he and his conspirac- conspirators tried to overturn the results of that free and fair election by creating fake slates of electors who would be in Donald's pocket in states Biden actually won.

Instead of certifying the legitimate el- electors chosen by voters, allies in multiple swing states met secretly, signed documents falsely claiming that they were, quote-unquote, "duly elected electors." These fraudulent certificates were then sent to Congress and the National Archives. 19 people were indicted in that election scheme, including Donald.

NBC News created a compilation of all of those co-conspirators' mugshots. Let's take a look at these. That's a fun bunch. Well, turns out as Politico reports Over the weekend, Donald issued sweeping, unconditional pardons to several of the people pictured in that last slide: Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and dozens of others who helped him attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The pardons cover a broad range of actions related to his fake elector scheme. It also applies to these people's efforts to pressure state officials and attempt to block election certification on, yes, January 6th, 2021, the day that will live in infamy, the day that the President of the United States incited an insurrection against his own government because he is such a sore loser Although many of the recipients of this pardon were never federally charged, the pardons shield them from any future federal prosecution.

This order also extends to GOP activists who signed false elector certificates in battleground states. Although Donald, thankfully, cannot pardon state crimes, sever- several of these cases are still being prosecuted on the state level. Donald stopped short of pardoning himself in the most re- recent raft of pardons, despite previously suggesting that he believes he's allowed to do so.

I promise you, he will someday test that theory, and we will have to white-knuckle it while we wait to find out what the corrupt, illegitimate super majority of the Supreme Court has to say. To drive home just how revolting these pardons are, here's additional audio from Donald's phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad

Raffensperger.

It's just not possible to have lost Georgia. It's not possible. When I heard it was close, I said there's no way. But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night. You know that, Brad. And that's what we are working on very, very stringently. But regardless of those votes, with all of it being said, we lost by, 11, essentially 11,000 votes, and we have many more votes already calculated and certified too.

So I just don't know, Mark, I don't know what's the pur- purpose. I, I won't give Dominion a pass because we found too many bad things. But we don't need Dominion or anything else. We have all, we have won this election in Georgia based on all of this. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, Brad.

Having the c- having a correct... Y- the people of Georgia are angry, and these numbers are gonna be repeated on Monday night, along with others that we're gonna have by that time, which are much more substantial even. And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, that you've recalculated.

Because, the 2,236 in absentee ballots, they're all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms, et cetera. And even if you cut them in half, cut them in half, and cut them in half again, it's more votes than we need.

So based on Donald's feeling that he couldn't possibly have lost Georgia, and based on the fact that for some reason he believes people in Georgia and the whole country are angry He wants the Secretary of State to steal the election on his behalf.

Well, I would a- agree that the people of Georgia and the United States were indeed angry, which is why they voted for Joe Biden. Because they were angry at Donald's horrific mishandling of the COVID pandemic and the United States economy. Oh, yeah, and his attempt to destroy American democracy. These things made people very angry.

What I also find interesting is what Donald does not talk about in these conversations. He doesn't talk about the two Democratic senators who were elected. He doesn't complain that they won. So I don't think you could have it both ways.

So the list names 77 of Trump's allies and aides who played a key role in the president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. We've named a few, but among those pardons, whose names stood out to you the most?

Well, y- you did hit the highlights. Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff, Rudy Giuliani, those are the boldface names. Boris Epshteyn, a longtime advisor. A lot of people who participated in this sort of false elector aspect of that scheme, which was where they sent, fraudulently signed d- documents claiming to be legitimate presidential electors.

That, that made up dozens of the names on there. So it really was people who covered the gamut and who faced their own p- legal headwinds, sometimes at the state level, sometimes in federal investigations that are no longer active

None of the people named in the document were charged with federal crimes, and state charges, with ma- which many of these people are facing, they aren't covered by presidential pardons.

So that makes this at least partially a symbolic act. But beyond the symbolism, what does a preemptive pardon actually do?

Well, it would, theoretically, shield them if there were some, in some distant time in a future administration effort to revive some of these investigations, although that seems doubtful.

However, they can use these, the act of this pardon in those state cases not to say we've been pardoned from, exposure in the states, but to at least lean on the justice system in those states to say, "Look, the president said that this is a non-crime. We should be protected, so maybe we should drop these charges.

That would, maybe that would be the right thing to do." I expect to see a lot of those motions pop up in state court in the near future.

Justice Department Pardon Attorney Ed Martin shared the names of those pardoned on Axis. It was just before 11:00 PM Eastern on Sunday, and it was a reply to a post from May that said, quote, "No MAGA left behind."

How did these pardons fit with President Trump's broader use of the Justice Department this term?

Well, it's pretty clear. He's been using the pardon power to essentially shield people, protect people who are firmly on his side of the political, spectrum. He I think in the same, act, the same, wave of pardons had pardoned a f- former Tennessee House Speaker, and other, Republican a- affiliated, people who had faced criminal charges, federal charges.

So it just has been one aft- he rel- recently released George Santos, the former Republican congressman from prison on a commutation. And that's just been the hallmark of the president's use of the pardon power. The January 6th defendants who attacked the Capitol in his name all received pardons.

So it's pretty, pretty firmly, political in terms of how he's exercised it.

Now, Cal, for years, Trump has claimed he has the power to pardon himself for federal crimes. This list, however, explicitly excludes Trump, arguably the most important person in the matter. Has that power ever been tested by a sitting president?

It hasn't, and if, if you read this pardon, one, one of the striking things about it is, yes, there are 77 names, but it also covers, it says any... it's, it's not limited to these names. It's anyone who had some sort of role advocating for overturning the election results, for pushing these, elector, these alternate elector slates, and so that could theoretically include Trump himself, who was, as, or- orchestrated the, that entire effort.

And so by excluding him explicitly from the pardon, they're saying, "We don't want that fight now. We don't think we need to necessarily pardon the president, preemptively or for anything r- related to this e- effort, but even if we did, this is not the moment for us to test that theory, because it could get challenged.

It could... That's the kind of thing that has never been resolved before." A-

and again, just for clarity, what, if any legal basis is the president drawing from to assert the power to, to pardon himself?

Th- there isn't really one except that the pres- the presidential pardon power is ex- is extremely broad and has very few limits and checks.

One of those limits could be the ability to pardon yourself because, in theory, that would give you, give a president license to do virtually anything. And, even beyond the Supreme Court's immunity, ruling, what that en- envisioned, a pr- a, a self-pardon would essentially insulate a president from any consequences for any actions taken.

And, so there's a lot of belief that that couldn't be used that way, but it's never been done before.

So let's go back to a previous pardon. In October, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. In 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering charges, but by November, the president seemed fuzzy on the details.

Why did you pardon him?

Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.

In 2025, his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial's stablecoin, and then you pardoned CZ.

How do you address the appearance of pay for play?

Well, here's the thing. I know nothing about it 'cause I'm too busy doing the other. But

he got a pardon. I can

only tell you that- But he got a pardon No, I can only tell you this. My sons are into it, and I'm glad they are because it's probably a great industry, crypto.

I think it's good. You know, they're running a business. They're not in government

That was President Trump speaking with CBS's Norah, uh, Norah O'Donnell on "60 Minutes" last week. Kyle, uh, what do you see as the through line between Trump's pardons, whether we're talking about a billionaire crypto executive he says he, he doesn't really know, or some of his closest allies who've acted on his behalf to try to overturn election results?

Look, the, there, there's, it's politics is the through line. It's, business interests. It's things that are personal to him, and I think that, that has been true, ac- across the board, with who he's decided to exercise clemency for. It- it's... here he says, "Well, I didn't know the guy.

My sons are in that industry," so there's still a personal connection there. And, I think it's striking to hear him say, "I don't really know the guy." People pointed out, that was... He criticized, Joe Biden for signing pardons, that he claimed that Biden didn't have so any awareness of the details about.

Well, here he is saying essentially the same thing, and the pardon power is such an extraordinary, act of, presidential authority, almost unchallengeable, to use that for someone and you say, "Oh, I didn't really know anything about that case," especially when there's a business connection there, and, the president's clearly interested in crypto and spreading his own personal empire in that direction, that it was a really remarkable thing to say.

We got this question from Nicholas, who asks, "Is there a limit on who can be pardoned by the president?"

No. The answer essentially is no. It- it's one of the few un- virtually unchallengeable powers of the president. Now, the Supreme Court's immunity ruling may make this difficult, but if a president were to theoretically pardon someone as part of a bribe situation or something that, that pointed to another sort of federal crime, it's con- potentially that could be investigated.

I think Bill Clinton's pardons were investigated for something similar, although it would be very difficult to bring a case against, particularly against a president or a former president because of how insulated the pardon power is from any sort of challenge.

Well, we mentioned state charges and, and the presidential power, pardoning, pardon power does not extend to charges at the state level.

How likely is it, do you think, that states might step back from prosecuting some of the people on this list?

We've already heard from the Arizona attorney general who said, "This is not gonna have any influence on my decision of whether to maintain the case against these actors in 2020."

Now her fa- her case is facing other headwinds that are nothing to do with the pardons, but I g- I think it's more of a pressure tactic is to say, "Look, we here in the White House view th- these cases as illegitimate, and so we think those state courts should adopt our view," but they really can't force anything.

And so, unless a state actor or prosecutor says, " we'll change our minds because of the president's decision," which I don't see happening, I don't think it will have any bearing.

And Finally, Section D, Hollowed Out

Turmoil continues at the US Attorney's office in Minneapolis. Eight more staff members are quitting. That's on top of the half dozen who resigned in January. The exodus started after an immigration officer killed Rene Macklin Good. Now, government lawyers are facing a deluge of petitions from migrants alleging they've been illegally detained.

Reporter Matt Sepic of Minnesota Public Radio is here to explain. Hi there.

Hi.

Matt, this US Attorney's office had around five dozen civil and criminal lawyers in early 2025. Why have so many quit?

Many began trickling out at the start of the second Trump administration, but the latest wave of resignations stems from the Justice Department's response to the January 7th killing of Rene Macklin Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross here in Minneapolis.

Administration officials have claimed the agent fired in self-defense. Witness video contradicts that. DOJ not only refused to let state police help investigate, they also pressured federal prosecutors here to investigate Good's widow. That's according to a Justice Department source I spoke with last month who requested anonymity because they're not authorized to speak to the media.

Six assistant US attorneys resigned, including one who retired. Now, eight more staffers are leaving, including civil division lawyers. Those are the attorneys who are dealing with hundreds of lawsuits from migrants who allege that ICE illegally jailed them.

And one of those lawyers, I understand, had strong words about the difficulties of her job in court.

Tell us what that was about.

Judge Jerry Blackwell ordered then Special Assistant US Attorney Julie Lee and one of her colleagues to explain why the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are repeatedly missing deadlines to release people from detention. Lee said she's been working around the clock to get DHS and ICE officials to comply.

Then she told Blackwell, quote, "The system sucks. This job sucks. I wish you would hold me in contempt so I would have a full 24 hours sleep." University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler says it's remarkable to hear that type of comment from a government lawyer.

This attorney was dealing with something that sometimes lawyers do, which is a bad client, a client who doesn't communicate well, and then you're the one in the well of the court getting yelled at.

Matt, is the judge holding the attorneys personally responsible for the federal government's inaction?

No. Judge Blackwell said he simply wants the agencies to uphold the rights of people who've been, quote, "put in shackles for days, if not a week plus, after they've been ordered released." NPR confirmed that Lee is no longer on special assignment with the US Attorney's office here in Minnesota.

Anna Voss, the other lawyer who appeared in court alongside her, is among the latest to resign. In a statement, DHS says the administration is, quote, "more than prepared to handle the legal caseload to deliver President Trump's deportation agenda."

Given this exodus, what's happening with the fraud cases in Minnesota that the administration has said are a priority?

Well, those became public in 2022, and prosecutors would eventually charge 78 people with stealing $300 million from taxpayer funded child nutrition programs. This happened during the pandemic in the infamous Feeding Our Future case. Most of the defendants have been convicted, and this investigation expanded into Medicaid fraud and led to charges against even more people.

Now, all of the prosecutors in those fraud cases are gone. The Justice Department brought in reinforcements from other states and even the military, but Mark Osler, the law professor here, says even if they have experience, the new lawyers do not have intimate knowledge of the cases. Osler says the fraud team was juggling a lot of balls, and all of those are now on the ground.

2,900 attorneys have quit the Department of Justice or were fired during the first 10 months of this year. I believe a majority of that number were DOJ lawyers who quit. Think about that number as well. How many FBI agents quit or were fired as well? A massive number there. We're seeing overall about triple or quadruple the number of people leaving the DOJ and FBI, either quitting or firing in any specific, year, let alone a term at this point.

Reuters was doing an analysis of those records, a-and it's having a devastating impact on cases as well. A federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C. analyzed the dismissals of felony cases that have been brought by the DOJ in Washington, D.C., for example, over the past, I think 60 or 90 days or so as well.

And it was like, basically like 20% of the cases resulted in dismissals versus if you looked at a historical perspective, it was less than like 0.5% of cases that are filed, ultimately get dismissed by, b-by the DOJ dismissing their own cases. And this one magistrate judge, and we've been seeing other magistrate judges And federal judges just going through the history of these cases.

I'm giving you DC. I'll talk about a case in, in, in LA, for example, as well, where a case will be filed, dismissed without prejudice, refiled, dismissed without prejudice, refiled, dismissed with prejudice. Because the moment that the DOJ meets resistance, it doesn't have the staffing, number one. It often is, bringing cases the same way, obviously the Comey case and the Letitia James case are high-profile examples of the malfeasance and missteps.

By the way, we haven't talked about those in a while, right? With this DOJ, unable to secure an indictment of James after trying two more times, one in Norfolk and one in, Norfolk and one in, Alexandria, and we haven't even heard, anything about Comey. But there... It's not just, those high-profile cases, right?

This is happening writ large in DC, in Virginia, in California, in a case recently in LA, where, a protester was charged with, very serious crimes, on tape. And the jury's "Nah, we just don't trust you, DOJ." A- in addition to the people leaving, the DOJ and quitting, in addition to the fact that these, the leaders of the specific offices, the United States attorneys who lead the offices in different districts, that they're incompetent.

The to- the people who know what they're doing have left the office. Also, people in this country perceive the DOJ as being a kind of an illegitimate entity at this point, and it's a sad thing for a once proud entity. People don't trust anything. People are obviously following, for example The Epstein files and the cover-up there.

So just imagine you're a criminal defense lawyer, where in your closing, you don't even have to invoke, say, Epstein, because you'll probably get an objection that it may not have anything to do with your case unless it's a sex trafficking case. But imagine you're giving a closing argument to the jury that's so familiar with the Epstein cover-up and all of these missteps and every cover-up that this DOJ and FBI is engaged in right now, right?

And you just go to the... maybe in your voir dire when you're picking a jury, you'll find out that, the jury doesn't really-- you could plant a seed that they don't really trust this DOJ. Then in your closing, you can say, "Look, this is a weaponized DOJ that's going after my client. They obviously have a political agenda in everything they do.

They don't like my client because fill in the blank, X, Y, and Z. My client's in this industry, that industry." And Donald Trump's out there basically saying he hates everybody unless you bribe him, unless you give him money, unless you give him a quid pro quo. People get that, and there's a way to message that also in cases that resonate with juries, where even if it's a good case, the people are not going to...

Are not-- They're not getting their conviction rate. Let's bring in Harry Litman from the Talking Feds Substack, Talking Feds podcast, and Talking Feds YouTube. And Harry, it's also the underlying prosecutions themself as the Trump regime has turned all of its resources to, go after people who have been in this country for, decades and, and pulling people off of roofs like the roofers and farmers and, I don't know.

They're spending their resources. They are not pursuing drug trafficking, sex trafficking, child trafficking, espionage, public integrity. They don't even know what public integrity means anymore, over there. Uh, c- financial fraud cases. And then when they do one, like they did a, they, they did an antitrust criminal case against a concert ticketing company, and then the guy gets-- he's friends with Kushner, and then right after they charge and build up the file, Trump pardons the guy, and we're seeing that over and over again. So you were a former United States attorney in Pennsylvania. You were a former top Justice Department official. They're

cooked, huh? This just-- Th- this DOJ is cooked. What do you make of it? It's, as you're saying, starting with three to four times as many departures, but that really understates the overall impact for many of the reasons you're saying, and then more, Ben.

So let me tell you, you're right, and thanks for, mentioning my experience both at Main Justice and in US attorneys' offices. And the way it works, the way it always has worked, is there's a really s- thin... cadre of, two or three or six or whatever, real go-to people in the individual offices and at Main Justice.

The real sort of, repository of institutional information who knows what's going on. And they have been disproportionately forced out. So, typically the one-third that it would be people who've done their five or six years and go into private practice, say. But some people stay and become the real, and wanna be, institutional knowledge of the place and are huge and are hugely relied on.

So p- problem one, that for the... that means this is all understated, is those people are disproportionately, left among the depart- the par- the, people who have departed the DOJ. Problem two is a lot of similar people have just been warehoused, purposely by this administration to, really useless kind of outposts.

For instance, maybe they are dealing with the, the n- the new, initiative in the Civil Rights Division about, b- universities pursuing diversity, whatever. They are out of the action and purposely out of the action. The third point, the people who remain, you have, whispers that come out again and again- They're not doing anything, either 'cause they're not being given anything to do 'cause no one trusts them, or some of the cases are completely, y- antithetical to why they came to the department that they're just pushing paper.

And then fourth, the, the numbers that have been lost come disproportionately from places that were previously so vital and the crown jewels of the department and its work. Civil Rights Division is a big one. You mentioned public integrity. It went from 30 or so, where at the point where that now Judge Emil Bovay shut the door on them and said, "Somebody here is going to sign the dismissal in the Mayor Adams case, and/or everyone's losing their job," and went from 30 then to two, and two that don't even get to do their work.

So all this is by way of saying that the numbers, which are themselves astonishing, don't begin to tell the story of the actual loss of competence, efficiency, institutional knowledge. And then your point is yet another, that what's, what remains behind from this now sort of skeletal crew is to do at least a big chunk of cases that are garbage.

Be- besides that they're politically driven, they're garbage cases, they're dog cases. The Letitia James case is not only politically driven, but not coincidentally, it's a ridiculous case involving hardly any loss. The guy who throws the subway at the, ICE agent, it's a ridiculous case. And that, that also resulted in a loss, and this is happening now more and more around the country.

And then finally, and Heartbreakingly, I... When we talk about this stuff, but my fuddy-duddy side comes out, but it was such a honor that people felt and took to heart, and juries listened to and judges listened to, the, Harry Litman for the United States, anyone for the United States, that meant something.

And now, after so much erosion, and we're talking in what, 10 short months or so, you have court after court saying, "We don't trust you anymore." Somebody- it just happened, yesterday, a, a, that Judge Zinni totally excoriated the department in the Abrego Garcia case, and you have juries at re- record paces.

You ne- you never used to see no true bills, now they're coming weekly. So all of this takes what is that big n- number for starters and multiplies it in many ways for a much less happy, much less, efficient, much less knowledgeable, and much less serving of the public, Department of Justice.

That's going to be it for today.

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

The PBS NewsHour

60 Minutes

The Beat

Opening Arguments

Law and Chaos

Strict Scrutiny

UnJustified

Democracy Now!

The Mary Trump Podcast

1A

All Things Considered

and MediasTouch

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