Headline: DOJ Is “Not a Personal Favor Bank for the President”: Fired Employee [Liz Oyer] Speaks Out Despite Intimidation by Amy Goodman DemocracyNow Apr 08, 2025
A fired Justice Department lawyer is accusing her former employer of intimidation tactics after the department planned to send armed U.S. marshals to deliver a letter warning her against testifying to Congress about what she’s called the “ongoing corruption” of the Trump administration. Liz Oyer told lawmakers Monday the marshals ultimately called off their plans to visit her home after she confirmed also receiving the warning letter via email. Oyer spent 10 years as a federal public defender before then-President Biden appointed her to serve as pardon attorney three years ago. She was testifying to a joint hearing convened by Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
Liz Oyer: “The letter was a warning to me about the risks of testifying here today. But I am here because I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing corruption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice. DOJ is entrusted with keeping us safe, upholding the rule of law and protecting our civil rights. It is not a personal favor bank for the president.”
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Armed agents almost sent to home of DoJ official ‘fired over Mel Gibson case’: US marshals sent to deliver letter warning Liz Oyer about testifying to Congress over actor’s gun case, lawyer says by Reuters Tue 8 Apr 2025 08.32 EDT https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... s-marshals
The Trump administration-led justice department planned to send armed US marshals to deliver a letter warning a career pardon attorney about testifying to Congress after she says she was fired over a case involving the actor Mel Gibson, her lawyer said in a letter seen by Reuters on Monday.
“This highly unusual step of directing armed law enforcement officers to the home of a former Department of Justice employee who has engaged in no misconduct, let alone criminal conduct, simply to deliver a letter, is both unprecedented and completely inappropriate,” Michael Bromwich, a lawyer representing the fired pardon attorney Liz Oyer, wrote to the justice department.
The marshals were called off on Friday only after Oyer acknowledged having received the letter by email, Bromwich wrote.
Oyer, who served as the pardon attorney during Joe Biden’s presidency, was one of several career officials fired by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, on 7 March.
Oyer has since told various media outlets that her firing came shortly after she declined to recommend restoring gun rights to Gibson, the star of Braveheart as well as a supporter of Donald Trump.
Gibson lost those rights after being sentenced to probation for domestic violence in 2011.
She was one of several justice department officials who testified on Monday afternoon before a hearing organized by Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate about the Trump administration’s treatment of the justice department and law firms who act in cases disliked by the Republican president.
“I was in the car with my husband and my parents … when I got the news that the officers were on their way to my house where my teenage child was home alone,” Oyer told lawmakers.
“Fortunately, due to the grace of a very decent person who understood how upsetting this would be to my family, I was able to confirm receipt of the letter to an email address, and the deputies were called off.”
The Democratic US senator Adam Schiff of California called the mobilization of the marshals to deliver a letter an effort to “intimidate and silence” Oyer. The US House member Jamie Raskin of Maryland, another Democrat, compared it to a move “ripped straight from the gangster playbook”.
A justice department spokesperson did not comment.
In the letter to Oyer, which was seen by Reuters, the associate deputy attorney general Kendra Wharton said that the department had “significant confidentiality interests”.
These were particularly strong in Oyer’s case because of the role that Oyer played in making clemency recommendations for the president, said the letter, which referred to the executive privilege doctrine that shields some presidential communications from disclosure to Congress.
“Should you choose to appear before Congress, the department expects that you will abide by your obligations under the law, department policy, and the applicable rules of professional responsibility,” Wharton wrote.
“Those matters include the deliberative processes that underlie pardons, clemency, the restoration of firearm rights, and related decisions.”
Bromwich, in his letter to Blanche, said the claim that Oyer’s testimony is barred by executive privilege was “baseless” and that she was entitled to certain legal protections for whistleblowers.
Oyer testified on Monday that the justice department’s letter did not deter her from speaking the truth, saying, “I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing corruption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice.”
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Democrats STUN GOP with Powerful SHADOW HEARINGS by Ben Meiselas MeidasTouch Apr 8, 2025
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the Democrats holding shadow hearings to expose the Trump regime and Republican corruption.
Transcript
Democrats are fighting back by holding shadow hearings where they are calling uh whistleblowers before these hearings that the MAGA Republicans are too cowardly uh to hold and these Democrats from the Senate and the House of Representatives exposing the Trump regime corruption i think the MAGA Republicans want to still focus on Hunter Biden and former President Biden and the Democrats are saying "Can we talk about the hostile federal government takeover by Trump and Elon Musk if you don't want to hold hearings we're going to hold hearings." By the way we here at the Meidas Touch Network are broadcasting these shadow hearings uh they're getting huge viewership as we are streaming them here on the YouTube channel Midas Touch make sure you subscribe by the way so you stay up to date on all the uh shadow hearings and so yes the Midas Touch Network is the main destination for covering all of the protests and the shadow hearings it's an honor that we're able to build this platform to do that the shadow hearings yesterday were uh incredibly powerful uh you had Democrats in the Senate led by Senator Adam Schiff Democrats in the House led by Jaime Raskin uh holding this hearing based on uh the Trump regime's attack on the DOJ attack on law firms attack on colleges uh one of the key witnesses to show up was somebody by the name of Liz Oyer she worked in the Justice Department and about last month we learned her story that she was fired after the Trump regime demanded that she basically look into and issue a formal recommendation to kind of pardon Mel Gibson which would then restore Mel Gibson's right to kind of get back a firearm because of Mel Gibson's past as she analyzed it as Liz Oyer who was in the pardon division of the Justice Department said you know based on a pass of potential domestic abuse and other conduct we can't pardon this guy we can't give him a gun back i'm not going to uh be involved in doing any of that and she said "No I'm not going to do it." She shows up basically the next day to office at the DOJ she gets fired and then she gets threatened intimidated and and harassed she says by the Trump regime DOJ including Todd Blanch she says and she said she got this letter saying that she was breaching her ethical obligations and that she's you know that they could you know potentially do other stuff to her if she continues you know down a path of violating her ethics with a clear insinuation that like her bar license could be on the line and her ability to be a lawyer so uh clearly threatening and intimidating her so she was one of the star witnesses at this shadow hearing and get this before showing up at the hearing yesterday again which was broadcast live here on the Midas Touch Network she says at the end of last week when it became known that she was going to be testifying uh the Trump regime through the US marshalss were sending her correspondence and letters that they were prepared to send armed US marshals to her home to try to intimidate her into not testifying before the hearing that took place yesterday so that's right according to her the Trump regime sending armed US marshals to her home or threatening to do that they finally ultimately didn't do that but they threatened that they would send armed US marshals to serve her with a letter saying that if she testified that they would go after her for violations of executive privilege bogus bogus allegation that they would go after her for violations of the ethical obligations that she owes her client it should be noted I want to show you her testimony that we covered here on the Midas Touch Network where she talks about this but it should also be noted you know the story of uh of uh Abrago Garcia who was sent to the El Salvador uh concentration camp even though there was an order by the way from a Trump immigration judge back in 2019 that he was not to go to El Salvador he was here on protected status and ultimately the United States Supreme Court uh basically stayed or stopped the fourth circuit court of appeal order and the district court order which required Trump to bring Abrego back uh within 24 hours that uh order from the district court and the fourth circuit's been uh indefinitely permanently stayed for now pending the proceedings before the United States uh Supreme Court um but the Department of Justice lawyer who argued for the DOJ and admitted that there were mistakes and errors that were made that shouldn't have taken place that led to Brago going to El Salvador they ended up uh putting him on administrative leave and punishing him for telling the truth to a district court judge as was his duty of candor to the court and of course we've seen this repeated attack on DOJ lawyers um the DOJ lawyers who refused to dismiss the uh case initially against Mayor Eric Adams uh terminations of FBI officials anyway this was these issues were being discussed at this shadow hearing which the MAGA Republicans refused to cover so let me show you right here uh Liz Oyer's testimony first at the shadow hearing yesterday let's play this clip perhaps the most personally upsetting part of the story is the lengths to which the leadership of the department has gone to prevent me from testifying here today on Friday night around 9:15 I learned that the Deputy Attorney General's Office had directed the Department Security and Emergency Planning Service to send two armed special deputy US Marshals to my home to serve me with a letter the letter was to be served at my home between 9:00 and 10:00 on Friday night i was in the car with my husband and my parents who are sitting behind me today when I got the news that the officers were on their way to my house where my teenage child was home alone fortunately due to the grace of a very decent person who understood how upsetting this would be to my family I was able to confirm receipt of the letter to an email address and the deputies were called off the letter had been emailed to me just before 8:00 that night at no point did Mr blanche's staff pick up the phone and call me before they sent armed deputies to my home the letter was a warning to me about the risks of testifying here today but I am here because I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing corruption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice doj is entrusted with keeping us safe upholding the rule of law and protecting our civil rights it is not a personal favor bank for the president its career employees are not the president's personal debt collectors i see only Democratic members here today but this is not a partisan issue it should alarm all Americans that the leadership of the Department of Justice appears to value political loyalty above the fair and responsible administration of justice it should offend all Americans that our leaders are treating public servants with a lack of basic decency and humanity thank you powerful stuff right there and just to remind you too of again I described it at the beginning the whole situation with Mel Gibson and how Trump wanted her to issue this pardon for Mel Gibson here's Liz Oyer ex describing it in her own words when she went on CNN a few weeks back where she talked about her termination and how she was fired it's important that you hear the story it'll give that first first clip some context play this clip i was asked to uh write a memo to the attorney general recommending that these nine individuals get this relief that she was interested in granting to some deserving Americans and uh when the memo ca came back to me the comment was "Please add Mel Gibson to this recommendation." Who asked you to add Mel Gibson an official in the office of the Deputy Attorney General who is running this project on the day-to-day instructed me that Mel Gibson should be added to the memo do you know the name of that person could you share it with us it's a it's one of the associate deputy attorney generals there are several in the in the office and I don't want to call anyone out by by by name uh but there you know is email traffic between me and a number of individuals in the deputy attorney general's office about this issue and the request was made and I responded that I was unable to fulfill the request because I did not have enough information about Mr gibson to be able to recommend that given his history of domestic violence he should receive his gun rights back that's something that is a public safety question it's it's very dangerous to mix people with history of domestic abuse and firearms that substantially increases the likelihood of catastrophic outcomes in domestic violence situations and that was just not a recommendation that I could make lightly so how long between when you sent that response saying you could not in good faith recommend Mel Gibson and the time you were fired it all unfolded very quickly i was asked to add him to my recommendation on Thursday evening and I did not sleep at all Thursday night because I understood that the consequence of not fulfilling this request was likely that I would no longer even be in these conversations dissent within the Department of Justice is just being aggressively silenced people are afraid to speak up they're afraid to object i confided in a colleague who expressed the view that yes is really the only acceptable answer to requests that are being made by department leadership and so I understood that the consequences were potentially serious for my career at the Department of Justice and when I came into work on Friday morning I I said to a colleague I really think that Mel Gibson might be my downfall and within hours of of saying that I was being escorted out of my office and you got this letter from from Todd with Todd Blanche's signature on it saying that you were being terminated yeah I've never uh met Mr blanch but I received that letter with his signature saying I was being terminated so we have a statement that we got from Todd Blanch who is the deputy attorney general for people who don't know and in it they said quote "This former employees version of events is false her decision to voice this erroneous accusation about her dismissal is in direct violation of her ethical duties as an attorney and is a shameful distraction from our own critical mission to prosecute violent crime enforce our nation's immigration laws and make America safe again what is your response to to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch look Caitlyn I it's it's terrifying that the number two official in the Department of Justice believes that my ethical duty is to keep silent about what is going on inside the Department of Justice my ethical duty as a DOJ employee is to uphold the laws of this country to do justice and to serve the people who uh who I was appointed to serve it is not to hide the fact that career employees like myself are being punished for expressing dissenting views and for refusing to follow directions and again this was all being streamed the shadow hearing on the Midas Touch Network the official destination for shadow hearings we're going to make sure we're covering all of these uh hearings uh this is Democratic Senator Adam Schiff sort of his remarks from these shadow hearing are going to want to watch this whole thing this is very very powerful stuff uh as exclusively seen on the Midas Touch Network yesterday let's play it and we've come to realize much to our shock that there's nothing inevitable about this there's nothing inevitable about democracy or democratization that this experiment in this country this great experiment self-governance now two and a half centuries old is not inevitable it was improbable at its start and we've witnessed something we never would have imagined this country we have witnessed with with incredible rapidity the creation of a climate of fear by this administration we see universities afraid to speak out to defend their own students to defend their own academic freedom you see universities rushing to make deals with the administration you see universities cowed into silence uh not stepping up to defend other universities you see members of the press excluded from public events because they don't use the administration's favored parliament and you don't see other members of the press in solidarity with them you see law firms rushed to cut separate deals you see lawyers purged from the Department of Justice you see FBI agents purged from the bureau you see scientists purged from their agencies a wholesale effort to weed out and drive out anyone of independent thinking anyone who will stand up and defend the rule of law or science or the freedom of thought or expression right down to ordinary citizens who are now afraid if the government of the United States can pluck a man off the street and send him to a prison in El Salvador without any kind of due process or any process whatsoever then no one is safe and if the government's response to that is to discipline a lawyer who dares to speak the truth to a court then no one is safe and the answer to this climate of fear there really is only one answer and you're seeing it today and that is courage we must demonstrate courage in the face of this fear uh in in this very committee room or one like it Joseph McCarthy and his allies made the country afraid and caused people to inform on each other and betray each other allowed people and and to be driven out of the government and to be persecuted uh and we wondered how that could be we wondered how could so many people be complicit well now we know now we know now we have witnessed it in our own time but I will say this of the brave witnesses uh who have come and testified today all of the rest of us have to ask ourselves looking back at the McCarthy era what would we have done what would we have done if we were faced with the loss of our jobs if we were faced with the loss of our livelihood if we were faced with the loss of our position what would we have done well you don't have to ask that question your being here is all the answer uh anyone could demand and we are deeply deeply grateful to you now before the hearing as Senator Schiff noted as I noted at the beginning of this video the Trump administration is trying to intimidate and silence Liz Oyer a Justice Department attorney who was fired for doing her job today we'll be hearing her story so this is from her law firm the Braum Witch Group here's what they say went down they said to Todd Blanch who by the way was Donald Trump's personal attorney who Trump appointed to one of the top positions at the Department of Justice dear Mr blanch we represent Elizabeth Oyer the former pardon attorney for the Justice Department who was wrongfully fired on March 7 2025 i am writing specifically with reference to the April 4th 2025 letter she received from Miss Kendra Wharton of your office miss Oyer became aware late Friday evening that your office had directed the department's security and emergency planning staff to have two armed special deputy US marshals personally serve her with a letter at her home that night armed US marshals the deputy marshals were directed to serve the letter between 900 p.m and 10 p.m when Miss Oyer's teenage child was home alone fortunately while the armed officers were in route to Miss Oyer's home she was able to confirm receipt of the letter which had been sent to a secondary personal email address at 7:58 p.m and forestall the hand delivery by the deputy march home had your office simply contacted Miss Oyer by telephone or via the email address that Miss Oyer had used to repeatedly communicate with the Department Justice Management Division this deplorable incident could have been avoided entirely not to mention the waste of government resources involved in using deputy US marshals by the way and armed ones at that to accomplish the delivery of the letter at a time when the administration is ostensibly committed to faring out waste fraud and abuse the highly unusual step of directing law enforcement officers to the home of a former Department of Justice employee who has engaged in no misconduct let alone criminal conduct simply to deliver a letter is both unprecedented and completely inappropriate you appear to be using the department's security resources to intimidate a former employee who is engaged in statutoily protected whistleblower conduct an act uh an act that implicates criminal and civil statutes as well as department policy and your ethical obligations as a member of the state bar as to the April 4th letter it addresses Miss Oyer's scheduled appearance at a hearing on April 7th 2025 miss Oyer was invited by members of Congress to testify about the circumstances of her unlawful termination from the DOJ when she served as a pardon attorney a non-political position in the career senior executive service miss Oyer has appealed her termination based on the lack of statutoily required process afforded to her and DOJ's disregard of whistleblower protections among other issues the April 4th letter from one of your subordinates warns Miss Oyer about the purported risks of testifying at a congressional hearing at no point does the letter advise Miss Oyer of the legal protections in place for whistleblowers which protect current and former federal employees reporting violations of laws rules or regulations gross mismanagement or waste of funds abuse of authority or substantial danger to health or safety nor does your letter contain the limiting language that is statutoily required when the department purports to prohibit disclosures by a whistleblower such as Miss Oyer on the contrary your letter and an attempted manner of delivery appear calculated to deter Miss Oyer from providing truthful testimony as a whistleblower and further violation of these legal protections your tactics also appear to violate the Lloyd Laflet Act which provides that the right of employees to petition Congress or a member of Congress or to furnish information to either House of Congress or to a committee or member thereof may not be interfered with or denied executive branch employees are in fact required by federal regulations to disclose waste fraud and abuse to the corrupt and corruption to federal authorities which is precisely what Miss Oyer seeks to do as to the alleged legal basis for the attempt to intimidate Miss Oyer from testifying that her testimony is barred by executive privilege the argument is completely without merit the president has not asserted executive privilege over any matter at issue here nor have you identified specific information potentially subject to such privilege moreover the executive privilege cannot be asserted to protect misconduct as expressly noted in the OLC opinion cited in your letter mic drop right there there you have it folks that's what's going on more shadow hearings will take place of course we'll keep covering them here on the Midas Touch Network it's why I want you to subscribe we're showing you content here that corporate news and others are not showing you here we're gathering in huge groups to watch these things together to spread the knowledge then of course to help organize the protest stay stay updated everything here on the Meidas touch network by subscribing thank you for watching and hit subscribe.
SCOTUS makes STARTLING RULING on Trump DECREE by Michael Popok MeidasTouch Apr 8, 2025
In startling news, a 5-4 MAGA majority of the US Supreme Court has rewarded Trump for declaring a phony war to use the Alien Enemies Act to violate the due process rights of 250 people kidnapped and sent to rot in an El Salvordan jail. in their cowardly unsigned ruling, the MAGA majority ruled that only those people still left in the US would be given individual rights to challenge their detention and order of removal one by one in the Texas federal district where they were incarcerated, if they were lucky enough not to have been shipped to El Salvador. Michael Popok explains what just happened, the strong dissents by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, and what is likely to happen next in several other related cases.
Transcript
in a startling and disappointing ruling by the United States Supreme Court 5 to4 led apparently by Chief Justice Roberts the Supreme Court has just patted the Trump administration on the back effectively and has rewarded them for violating the due process rights of individuals by giving them no notice kidnapping them and sending them to rot in the jails of El Salvador because in the new ruling while they're they've made the the the new law that in the future anybody else that's arrested and picked up has to be given notice and some limited due process rights through what we call a rid of habius corpus in the United States federal court where they currently reside or are confined for those that are already sent to El Salvador in the middle of the night they have no due process and no habius corpus because the last time I looked there's no f US federal court in El Salvador i'll break it down to for you including the descents the strong descents by Justice Sotayor and Justice Katanji Brown Jackson that puts this thing in sharp relief and the reality of this case is it's going to have a ricochet effect on two or three other pending matters including those of Armando Abrego Garcia who was deported over an an asylum order that made him have to stay in the United States and not go to El Salvador which is currently up at the United States Supreme Court as well i'm going to cover it the only way I know how by telling the truth here on the Mightest Touch Network let's break into it let me start you with what Katanji Brown Jackson said about the ruling of her five and the five are as I predicted and we've talked at length Alo Thomas Kavanaaugh Gorsuch joined by Roberts Chief Justice Roberts Amy Coney Barrett once again broke away from the pack and joined the liberal moderates in the in the losing side of the five to four you're going to see that happen in order for freethinking moderate people to win at the United States Supreme Court we got to run the table and we got to get Roberts Am and Amy Coney Barrett if you're on the right wing and the MAGA side all you need is one of the two you need 50 you need to bat 500 we need to bat a thousand okay here's what Katanji Brown Jackson said the government's conduct in this litigation the failure to properly publish the proclamation keeping it in Donald Trump's back pocket loading the planes with the 250 people in the middle of the night speeding things up when they knew that the lawsuit had been filed to try to avoid the court's jurisdiction sending off planes before the hearing at 5:00 sending off planes after the court had already grounded the planes all of that conduct of Katanji Brown Jackson poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law this is on page 17 of of the uh of the order of the opinion today that a majority of this court now rewards the government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible we as a nation and a court of law should be better than this i respectfully dissent similarly um she also said continuing cuz Katanji Brown Jackson is like one of the moral centers and voices quickly becoming that of the United States Supreme Court even though she's only been on for about three or four years here's what else she said um she talked about the procedure here a scant record no oral argument no time to really deliberatively consider these issues why are we moving so quickly on these major issues and she refers in fact to the past where the Supreme Court had made re uh made horrible horrible mistakes that history looked back on and the court had eventually fix like when they when they uh the court allowed the concentration camp interment and confinement of Italian German and Japanese Americans during World War II that was a bad thing but here's what uh the court this is what she says about why are we moving so quickly on page uh two of her descent i lament that the court appears to have embarked on a new era of procedural variability and that it has done so in such a casual inequitable in my view inappropriate manner at least when the court went off base in the past it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong and she cites the Karamasu case in 1944 which allowed the interment and uh confinement of Japanese Americans because we were under a war hysteria with more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket today's court leaves less and less of a trace make no mistake we are just as wrong now as we have been in the past with similarly devastating consequences it just seems we are now less willing to face it that's Katanji Brown Jackson here's what the majority they didn't even sign their name to it this is under procurium that's not a justice that's just what they do when they nobody wants to take uh responsibility for the writing here my gut is this was written by by Roberts but that's uh that's my guess what the fundamental result is they completely ignore all of the bad acts in the record they completely ignore the record of all the bad acts of the government leading into this particular hearing and they also ignore the fact that just judge Boseberg is about to hold a hear was about to hold a hearing tomorrow on the preliminary injunction or today on the preliminary injunction what is the rush let him complete the record courts are not supposed to rule at the appellet supreme court level without complete records so um they ignore all that they ignore the 250 people human beings that are left to rot and die in an El Salvador jail they do not order their return they do not order them to come back to a federal district court in the United States even in Texas where they left from in order to have this due process that they claim they're now extending by this opinion see they're saying "Well we gave them due process." The government agrees they should have due process and notice but not apparently not their first 250 only those that are still in detention and them they have to go one at a time go find lawyers let's say let's just do a number a numbers game here under judge Boseberg method he certified a class so there could be one judge deciding the issue of whether there's constitutionality of this of this order of this procedure whether it violated the administrative procedures act the fifth amendment and the rest under the world just established by the Supreme Court there's now going to be 500 a thousand or more 2,000 individual habius corpus petitions because it's individual to the prisoner with an individual lawyer and a judge in Texas or wherever they're picked up um and and the government has the ability as was noted by the descent to pick their friendly forum by just putting these people on a plane and shipping them to Texas they don't want to be in New York and New Jersey they want to be in Texas in Florida they just did it with a Colombia University graduate student who they whisked out of New York and New Jersey and sent to to Louisiana and Texas so it gives the government the advantage to stick it wherever they want and only then individually one person shackled next to a lawyer one judge thousands of habius petitions including as you can imagine inconsistent results one judge hearing the exact same evidence as another judge could make an entirely different ruling and this would be individualized rulings about whether Donald Trump violated the constitution visav this one person um as opposed to a nationwide ruling or injunction so this is again a win for the Trump administration if you had told the Trump administration that they would be able to deport 250 people stick them in El Salvador and avoid all due process and the only thing the Supreme Court would require them to do is in the future wherever these people are arrested or processed at that moment which they can choose to appear individually one at a time before a federal judge in the in the venue of the court of the Trump administration's choosing that's their wet dream they would take it in a minute and they that's what uh Katanji Brown Jackson and So Mayor are saying about being rewarded for bad behavior to the to the um five on the majority and to Kavanaaugh in his concurrence he just says "Well everybody agrees up here there's nine of us 90 they're entitled to due process and uh and uh habius corpus and fifth amendment you know evaluation individually where they were arrested and they com I mean there's not I defy you to read this opinion and find me one mention by the majority of the 250 people who are left to rot in El Salvador because you will not find it so now there's no ability let's talk about the ricochet effect had issued an order which they have now vacated at the United States Supreme Court they just ripped up his order was the basis for a contempt hearing he was about to enter a contempt order against the Trump administration for willfully violating his order continuing to fly planes after he had grounded them by his injunction rip that up because the Supreme Court's never going to support that the underlying order was valid so you can't violate an invalid order so while he could try to hold them in contempt it's never going to be supported by the Supreme Court that's the first ricochet the second ricochet or domino or shoot to drop is this case about a Mr armando Abrego Garcia that's also up now at the United States Supreme Court roberts having issued a stay an administrative stay while they finish briefing today that case is a case of a guy with a green card living with a married to a US citizen in Maryland hanging out at the IKEA parking lot to try to get work who had an order of protection in his back pocket from a immigration judge who who uh uh notice to stop him from ever being removed to El Salvador under an asylum argument and he got deported and the government admitted it was an administrative error but they also admitted they can't get him back so that case came up through Judge Zennus in Maryland and a um a decision by the uh fourth district uh the fourth uh circuit court of appeals who ruled um 2 to1 that uh actually 300 that this guy has got to be returned by midnight last night roberts issued a stay off the appeal by the Trump administration the solicitor general Donald Trump's former criminal lawyer filed his brief if as a solicitor general arguing that they can't get him back it was an error they can't get him back and but now you have to put the two things together he gets due process he gets habius corpus petition relief he's entitled to fifth amendment uh notice but he's in El Salvador so here's the question based on this ruling is the court Supreme Court going to rule that Abrago Garcia's got to be brought back to the United States for due process and due processing through a federal judge or they're going to throw up their hands and say "Well you know it was an error his rights were violated but there's nothing we can do about it because he's in El Salvador now." I think it's the latter and that's the problem with where we're at i said to the United States in challenging them the Supreme Court and challenging them in a number of hot takes what country are you going to tell us we live in where people can be uh the government can defeat due process by secretly imprisoning them outside a federal court's jurisdiction is that the world we want to be in to reward a government like that as of right now that is the ruling 5 to four i know the headline is Trump has to use due process and notice to use his Alien Enemies Act power because they didn't even take on his Alien Enemies Act power at all um they yeah that is the ruling except you have to ignore the 250 that are already rotting in that prison in El Salvador and probably Mr abrego Garcia as well and that concerned the minority the four in the minority including Amy Coney Barrett about what about Abrego Garcia what about people who are who were secretly deported and administrative error rotting in jails how do you give them due process never addressed by the five to four majority we're going to continue to follow this case and you know uh in its ricochet effect on other cases that are being briefed today like the Obago Garcia case and what happens with the contempt proceeding in front of Judge Boasberg now that his order has been reversed right here on the Midas Touch Network and of course on Legal AF
LIVE: Dems Hold SHADOW HEARING on Trump DOJ MeidasTouch Streamed live on Apr 7, 2025
Senator Schiff and Congressman Raskin, along with other Democrats, hold a "shadow hearing" to question lawyers pressured by the Trump administration.
Transcript
0:00 this week an immigration attorney at the Department of Justice told a federal court that he would implore his 0:07 department to seek to return a man wrongfully deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador a man who 0:14 had been deported in violation of a judge's order And the department's response to this gross miscarriage of 0:20 justice was not to accept responsibility or to take urgent action to correct the problem and seek the man's return No the 0:28 department's response was to punish the department's own lawyer for speaking truthfully to the court for what it 0:35 deemed an act of insubordination for failure to give fullthroatated defense to the department's illegal act This is 0:43 why we are here today We are here today because the rule of law and democracy in 0:48 the United States is under attack Not by a foreign adversary or some distant threat The rule of law is being attacked 0:55 and subverted from within from an administration intoxicated by its own power and enabled by a supine 1:02 Congress to 1:09 our Donald Trump is taking unprecedented steps to bend our justice system to his 1:15 will and his administration is moving systematically and swiftly to dismantle 1:21 the legal pillars that hold up our democracy the independence of the legal system the idea of impartial justice the 1:28 right to counsel and the principle that no one not even a president is above the 1:34 law If Donald Trump and his personal criminal defense lawyers now running the 1:39 Justice Department succeed the consequences will be profound The impact will be felt by Americans from all walks 1:46 of life and by future generations This is why ranking member Rascin and I have taken the extraordinary step of 1:52 convening this unprecedented hearing We brought together both chambers of Congress the Senate and the House to 1:58 conduct real oversight and to serve as a check and balance to hold those who misuse power to account and to carry out 2:06 our constitutional duty Convening this hearing was not our first choice We have tried to get our Republican colleagues 2:13 to hold hearings to do meaningful oversight to assert Congress's authority as an independent branch of 2:20 government But to our great disappointment our Republican colleagues have abdicated that important 2:25 responsibility They have stood by as the president has runshod over the legislative branch and turned Congress 2:32 into little more than a rubber stamp So today we'll hold the first of what we hope will be more biccameal oversight 2:38 hearings We will do the investigative work that our colleagues across the aisle refuse to do We will expose the 2:44 illegality abuse and corruption of this administration and within the Department of Justice We will have brave witnesses 2:50 speak to what's actually happening behind closed doors how the Trump administration continues to try to 2:56 intimidate them from speaking out and why it matters to Americans across the country The Trump administration is 3:03 following a well-worn playbook History serves as a guide and as a warning In 3:10 the 1930s a Jewish lawyer in Berlin tracked in meticulous detail how Germany 3:15 gradually became what he called a dual state First to keep the country running the 3:20 ordinary legal system remained in place for most people And yet step by step a 3:26 parallel system of governance and law emerged What one scholar called a lawless zone A parallel system carry out 3:34 the will of the leader and to go after his enemies real or perceived To punish to reward to 3:40 co-opt To intimidate silence or take over institutions that make a society 3:45 free and vibrant The courts the lawyers the universities the press even 3:51 businesses And over time the emerging authoritarianism would swallow what remained of the rule of law And now 3:58 Hungary provides a more present- day warning Methodically Victor Orban has 4:04 tried to dismantle the independence of Hungary's judicial system its education 4:09 system and free press undermining democracy while pretending to uphold the law And we have our own history that we 4:15 must not forget In the 1950s in this very institution Senator Joseph McCarthy 4:21 and his enablers wielded the power of the government to go after perceived enemies Many shamefully did not stand up 4:28 at the time Some chose expediency political gain or profit Others thought 4:33 they could weather the storm by cutting deals or staying silent If this sounds all too eerily familiar it is because it 4:41 is But there is a silver lining and a reason for hope Those who defended 4:46 fellow market fellow Americans then are now rightfully viewed as vindicated by history The courage demonstrated by 4:54 Americans in decades past and by brave men and women in other countries should serve should serve as our inspiration 5:01 and a roadmap for standing up Standing up for the rule of law for each other 5:06 and for our democracy Today's hearing therefore is a step towards real oversight and accountability Our 5:13 witnesses have demonstrated remarkable courage like Ryan Croswell who resigned 5:18 after witnessing as we all have the corrupt use of the Department of Justice's prosecutorial power by 5:25 striking an illicit bargain with the mayor of New York to do the administration's bidding These witnesses 5:30 refused to enable a two-tier system of justice that grants favors and cuts corners for the famous or wealthy And as 5:38 we'll hear today they bravely stood up to ongoing efforts by the Department of Justice to intimidate them from speaking 5:44 today including when they planned to send armed marshals to the home of one of our witnesses Liz Oyer in order to 5:51 discourage her from testifying today These witnesses like Stacy Young are 5:56 supporting others who continue to serve the public interest continue to be employed by the Department of Justice 6:02 and who cannot speak for themselves One of our witnesses Rachel Cohen stood up when her law firm would not Even as 6:09 other law firms beat a path to the White House to capitulate to the extortionary campaign of the executive branch even as 6:16 that campaign weakens the right to counsel the right of free speech and the right to take on unpopular causes 6:24 Today's witnesses represent the antidote to the collective action problem we have 6:29 seen when law firms universities and other institutions race to the White House to cut their own deals rather than 6:37 stand on principle In this defining moment our institutions must not gravel 6:42 before power They must not retreat They must stand together They must lead law 6:48 firms universities public servants Congress each has a unique role an 6:54 important role to play Because a democracy that fails to hold power to account ceases to be a democracy at all 7:02 Because we cannot allow the law to be twisted into a tool of personal or political vengeance or favor And we 7:08 cannot let threats to our democracy go unchallenged Before we introduce the witnesses let me 7:14 turn to my colleagues Ranking Member Rascin and Ranking Member Durban both of whom have demonstrated extraordinary 7:20 leadership during this moment of profound challenge I'm grateful that we are convening this hearing together and 7:26 I'm grateful for the courage of today's witnesses who have refused to remain silent I now yield to my colleague Mr 7:33 Raskin for his opening statement followed by Mr Durban Well thank you Senator Schiff for those moving remarks 7:40 and thank you Ranking Member Durban Thank you both for uh working with us to 7:45 hold this oversight hearing which um Republicans on neither side of the 7:52 capital were willing to call Special thanks to our witnesses today Your bravery is inspiring to an anxious 7:59 nation today Even in the face of great pressure each of you has stood tall and 8:05 held fast to your oath to uphold the Constitution and the integrity of the legal profession Just as the president 8:12 has crashed the stock market with his illegal tariffs he has crashed the justice system with his dreadful 8:18 appointments and vindictive policies He's filled the leadership of the Department of Justice with his personal 8:24 lawyers unapologetically extremist sickopants like Cash Patel and Ed Martin 8:29 who elevate their devotion to Trump over any semblance of fidelity to the Constitution the rule of law and the 8:36 rules of professional responsibility Our witnesses are people who have refused to bow down and be complicit in the way so 8:44 many of our colleagues have been complicit The president fires dozens of DOJ lawyers simply for doing their jobs 8:50 and prosecuting the January 6th insurrectionists who violently assaulted and wounded more than 140 of our police 8:58 officers The Republicans say nothing The president issues executive orders banning disfavored lawyers and law firms 9:05 from federal buildings federal courouses federal employment and federal security 9:10 clearances unless they offer him blind loyalty and millions of dollars in free 9:16 pro bono services for his promalum causes And the Republicans say nothing 9:22 Trump sacked 18 inspectors general who saved us $91 billion in actual waste 9:28 fraud and abuse last year His team gutted the Office of Public Integrity and suspended enforcement of the Foreign 9:35 Corrupt Practices Act They withdrew prosecution of New York City Mayor Adams 9:40 on serious bribery and corruption charges because he formed an alliance with Trump causing seven top prosecutors 9:47 to resign their offices led by Danielle Sassoon the US attorney for the Southern District who clerked for Justice Scalia 9:54 and was an active member of the Federalist Society Our GOP colleagues are silent about these scandalous 10:01 offenses but House Republicans are outspoken about this Many are calling for impeachment of the judges who've 10:08 rendered 56 preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders against this reign of fear and terror The 10:14 president and Elon Musk go online and call them radical left rogue judges Even 10:19 Judge Boseberg a pillar of the bar and chief judge of the DC District Court who was first appointed to the bench by 10:26 President Bush and was Justice Kavanaaugh's roommate at Yale We have only impeached 15 judges in the entire 10:33 history of the United States Always for corruption offenses bribery tax evasion 10:40 habitual drunkenness not even occasional drunkenness habitual drunkenness Never 10:45 foral disagreement with their rulings much less when their rulings are 10:51 manifestly correct As Chief Justice Roberts put it a few weeks ago the proper response to a decision you 10:58 disagree with in the district court is to appeal the decision not to impeach 11:04 the judge They're not making America great again but they're definitely making the government corrupt again 11:10 We're grateful to you witnesses for having the courage to speak up against this outrageous corruption of our 11:16 justice system as it came to affect you And we're eager to hear your important stories You will teach America how to 11:22 stand tall Miss Oyer I understand the deputy attorney general tried to send armed marshals to your home at night to 11:30 deliver a clear message not to speak to us at today's hearing And yet I see you 11:35 here today undaunted and unbowed proving to Mr Blanch and any other Trump 11:40 official that you can't bully and silence everyone That kind of courage is 11:45 contagious But we must emphasize to a watchful nation that courage is not the opposite of fear Real courage in fact is 11:53 experiencing all the fear all the terror of these official threats and harassment 11:59 Registering the fear of vigilante and online attacks metabolizing the fear of 12:04 your own government hounding you but then pressing on anyway with conviction 12:11 and passion for what you know to be right and lawful and just No courage 12:17 which is a virtue is not the opposite of fear which is an emotion and indeed a necessary and adaptive emotion Courage 12:23 is a virtue and it's the opposite of cowardice which is a vice The worst cowards are the tyrants and desperates 12:30 themselves who choose to terrify other people because they have allowed their 12:35 own terrible fears and insecurities to turn them into monstrous deformed and 12:41 cruel people But the people who enable tyrants and desperates who do their bidding and work their will and flatter 12:48 them and bow and scrape before them they are cowards too undoubtedly at least if 12:54 they have any choice in the matter Every authoritarian regime runs on lies and runs on fear Every authoritarian regime 13:01 fears the truth and fears people who act justly and defiantly based on the truth 13:07 And that means they fear people like you and what you have to say to your fellow 13:12 citizens Thank you for recognizing the fear of this moment feeling it and nonetheless deciding to go ahead and act 13:19 with courage and composure against the tyrant and his accompllices I yield back 13:24 to my very good friend Senator Schiff and I turn it over to Mr Durban for his opening statement 13:31 Thank you very much Congressman Raskin It's an honor to be here All across America this last weekend thousands of 13:38 people many whom never participated in a political event came out to demonstrate 13:44 their concern about the current state of the American government and what is happening with this 13:50 administration There were a thousand in Springfield Illinois some 50,000 in Chicago Illinois And that story is 13:57 repeated over and over again We are at a unique moment in our history presidents 14:03 have constitutional issues Virtually all do but few have a constitutional crisis 14:09 which we are facing now in this country I want to thank uh Congressman Raskin 14:14 for coming here today along with his colleagues from the House and thank my colleagues for the Senate But I want to 14:19 particularly thank Senator Schiff He's in a unique position bridging bridging 14:25 the experience you had in the House of Representatives uh with this administration and now your 14:30 responsibility here in the United States Senate I think this may be unique in American history but it's certainly 14:37 warranted and I thank you for your leadership Senator in bringing us together When you take a look at what we 14:43 face today it is truly a constitutional crisis How did it start well it 14:48 certainly started with questioning a legitimate election and the outcome Stop 14:54 the steel movement was an indication of pure effort to stop the constitution 15:00 from working its way But the courts rejected President Trump's uh efforts to 15:07 turn the results of the election and now we see what he does in his second term 15:13 First President Trump has gutted and weaponized the Department of Justice and our federal law enforcement 15:19 agencies The Justice Department is supposed to enforce our laws and protect our citizens But President Trump 15:26 appointed his personal attorneys to fill numerous excuse me senior positions at 15:32 DOJ including attorney general and deputy attorney general As many of us predicted the new DOJ leadership has 15:39 treated the Justice Departmently like the president's personal law firm From dismissing corruption charges 15:46 against mayor of New York in exchange for supporting the president's policies to restoring gun rights to domestic 15:53 abusers who supported the president to threatening universities that don't tow the MAGA line The Justice Department has 16:00 abandoned its commitment to the rule of law to advance the personal and political interest of Donald Trump alone 16:07 We need to fight back against this weaponized Justice Department That's why I led the Judiciary Democrats in filing 16:13 a bar complaint against Trump DOJ official AO Bove for his role in corrupt 16:18 bargaining with Mayor Adams That's why I've led the Senate Judiciary Democrats in demanding an explanation from 16:25 Attorney General Bondi for the firing of the pardon attorney and the restoration for God's sakes of Mel Gibson's gun 16:31 rights This brings me to the second way in which President Trump has threatened the rule of law targeting law firms 16:38 simply because they dared to employ attorneys who were involved in litigation or representations that the 16:45 president didn't care for We have long recognized the importance of parties before court having representation by 16:52 attorneys of their choosing even in unpopular and politically charged cases 16:57 This goes back to the founding of the republic John Adams our second president 17:02 and one of the nation's founding fathers famously represented nine British soldiers accused of perpetrating the 17:09 Boston Massacre The right to council is so fundamental that it's enshrined in the Sixth Amendment But instead of 17:16 protecting and defending the Constitution as he swore to do President Trump has used his position to settle 17:22 political scores and target law firms he deems insufficiently loyal Over the past 17:28 two months he's issued executive orders and attempted to suspend security clearances limit access to government 17:35 buildings and prohibit government contracts for certain firms If those orders sound lawful lawless it's because 17:42 they are and multiple federal courts have appropriately blocked large portions of those executive orders The 17:49 Republicans on the floor and in the committee complain and moan and groan about all of the judicial cases that 17:56 have been ruling against him and many have The fact of the matter is that this president has issued over a 100 18:03 executive orders many of which fly directly in the face of clear constitutional law The president's 18:09 actions pose an existential threat to the targeted law firms Some have 18:15 capitulated For other firms even the threat of future executive orders was enough to lead them to preemptively cut 18:21 deals with the Trump administration That of course is the point The president wants to intimidate 18:28 law firms so they'll think twice before taking on a client whose rights have been violated by the administration That 18:35 should alarm everyone This is the kind of thing we expect from 10p pot dictatorships in other parts of 18:42 the world But these kinds of attacks on lawyers and the rule of law are unprecedented in the United States of 18:48 America They are not normal and we cannot allow them to continue I look forward to hearing from the witnesses 18:54 and thank you for your courage coming forward today It's important that we hear this uh story that each of you has 19:02 lived And I want to close by saying to all those who gathered across America and who communicate through social media 19:09 asking what Congress is doing to try to stop these excesses and these violations of the Constitution remember what 19:16 happens on this day because on this day I think we are making history at the right moment Thank you Senator 19:23 Thank you Ranking Member Durban Uh we'll now introduce the witnesses and these will be the briefest of introductions so 19:30 we can leave more time for testimony and questions Uh but today we're joined by Liz Oyer uh who previously served as the 19:37 pardon attorney at the Department of Justice We're also joined by Stacy Young who previously served as an attorney in 19:43 the civil rights division in the Department of Justice Uh we're also joined by Ryan Cwell who 19:50 served as a federal prosecutor in the public integrity section of the Department of Justice and Rachel Cohen 19:56 who served as an associate attorney at Scatteren one of the largest law firms in the world Thank you for being here 20:02 and we'll turn over to you for opening statements Uh Miss Oyer why don't you start us off 20:09 thank you very much Exactly one month ago today Can you uh 20:14 turn your mic on or bring it close can you hear me now a little closer if 20:20 you would How's that better Thank you Thank you for having me Exactly one month ago I 20:29 was terminated from my job as the Justice Department's pardon attorney The pardon attorney is a non-political 20:35 position that is entrusted with advising the president about the exercise of his constitutional clemency power 20:42 When I was fired there were over 6,000 applications pending from ordinary 20:47 Americans around the country who were seeking the president's mercy and second chances through 20:54 clemency I had planned to talk today about the events leading up to my 20:59 firing but some more recent developments have persuaded me to focus my time on 21:06 the callous cruelty with which DOJ leadership is is treating dedicated 21:12 public servants like myself For me this began with my abrupt 21:17 firing It was 2:00 on a Friday afternoon I was in a conference room meeting with 21:23 colleagues from several different DOJ offices We were brainstorming about how to implement a priority of the attorney 21:30 general Halfway through the meeting I was frantically pulled out by my deputy 21:36 in the hallway She broke the news to me that security officers were waiting for 21:41 me in my office to serve me with termination papers and escort me out of the building I rushed back to my office 21:49 There I was handed a three-s sentence memo signed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch firing me effective 21:56 immediately I had never met Mr Blanch and I received no explanation for his 22:02 decision That afternoon I walked out of the 22:07 building for the last time carrying a grocery bag filled with my personal effects I had no time to say goodbye to 22:15 my team I was in shock Everyone I passed on the way out was looking on in shock 22:21 and horror I want Deputy Attorney General Blanch and Attorney General Bondi to know it is 22:30 traumatic for everyone in an entire organization to see a beloved colleague 22:36 and leader treated that way My heart aches for my colleagues who 22:41 had to go back into that office on Monday with no explanation from DOJ 22:48 leadership and no assurances about what the future holds for them 22:54 They are good dedicated people and they deserve 22:59 better After I was fired I chose to speak publicly about the events leading up to my termination I felt that it was 23:07 my obligation to share my concerns about the reckless and unethical use of 23:13 department resources to accomplish political objectives including favors for loyalists and 23:20 friends Shortly after I did so Mr Blanch contacted the media to accuse me of 23:27 lying This still puzzles me because his staff has all of the memos and emails 23:33 that substantiate everything I have ever said I requested those documents through 23:40 FOYA but Mr Blanch's staff still has not produced them 23:48 I have made some other simple requests of the department since my firing One was for my annual performance 23:54 evaluations which show that I received outstanding ratings every year One was 24:00 for personnel documents that I would need to file for unemployment DOJ responded to me that 24:06 these were complex requests and I could not expect a response in any reasonable 24:11 period of time for weeks after my firing DOJ also 24:17 refused to provide me with documents about my benefits including my health insurance and including my retirement 24:25 plan Finally on April 2nd after my requests got some media 24:31 attention I got an email advising me that my health insurance would expire in 5 24:36 days I learned that to extend my coverage the cost to me and my family would more than quadruple 24:44 I was told that to keep my family members covered I would have to prove my familial relationships with them I was 24:51 told that I would need to provide my marriage certificate the birth certificate of my child and proof of a 24:56 common residence or joint tax filings with my spouse 25:03 Perhaps the most personally upsetting part of the story is the lengths to which the leadership of the department 25:09 has gone to prevent me from testifying here today 25:16 On Friday night around 9:15 I learned that the Deputy Attorney General's office had 25:23 directed the Department Security and Emergency Planning Service to send two 25:29 armed special deputy US Marshals to my home to serve me with a 25:36 letter The letter was to be served at my home between 9:00 and 10:00 on Friday 25:42 night I was in the car with my husband and my parents who are sitting behind me today 25:48 when I got the news that the officers were on their way to my house where my teenage child was home 25:56 alone Fortunately due to the grace of a very decent person who understood how 26:02 upsetting this would be to my family I was able to confirm receipt of 26:07 the letter to an email address and the deputies were called off The letter had been emailed to me 26:14 just before 8:00 that night At no point did Mr Blanch's staff pick up the phone 26:21 and call me before they sent armed deputies to my 26:31 home The letter was a warning to me about the risks of testifying here today 26:38 But I am here because I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing 26:43 corruption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice DOJ is entrusted with keeping us 26:50 safe upholding the rule of law and protecting our civil rights It is not a 26:57 personal favor bank for the president Its career employees are not 27:02 the president's personal debt collectors 27:08 I see only Democratic members here today but this is not a partisan issue It should alarm all Americans that 27:17 the leadership of the Department of Justice appears to value political loyalty above the fair and responsible 27:24 administration of justice It should offend all Americans that our 27:31 leaders are treating public servants with a lack of basic decency and 27:36 humanity Thank you Thank you for your testimony and for the 27:41 courage you're demonstrating by being here Jamie did you want to introduce Mr Croswell 27:51 it's my pleasure to introduce Mr Ryan Croswell who previously served as a federal prosecutor in the public 27:57 integrity section of the Department of Justice and Rachel Cohen who previously served as an associate attorney at 28:03 Scatteren one of the largest law firms in the world Uh we thank you both for 28:09 being here And now Mr Cwell you're recognized for your five minutes 28:16 Good afternoon Ranking member Rascin Ranking Member Durban Senator Schiff and members 28:23 of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees For 10 years I served as a 28:28 federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice but I started my career in public service as an officer in the 28:36 United States Marine Corps I was motivated to join the military after September 11th 2001 28:43 and I've tried to live my life by the Marine Corps ethos honor courage and 28:50 commitment My career as a federal prosecutor started in Baton Rouge Louisiana where I prosecuted white 28:55 collar fraudsters drug traffickers child predators and violent criminals 29:02 I then served as a prosecutor in San Diego California where I prosecuted border crimes including immigration 29:08 offenses and the smuggling of dangerous drugs into this country from 29:14 Mexico Finally for the last four and a half years I served as a prosecutor with 29:20 the department's public integrity section The public integrity section was formed 29:25 in the aftermath of Watergate and it prosecutes corruption at the federal 29:30 state and local levels Throughout my time with the 29:36 Justice Department I followed the principles that guide all federal 29:41 prosecutors Follow the facts in the law wherever they may lead Seek justice in an even-handed and 29:49 apolitical manner act with fairness impartiality integrity and adherence to 29:56 the rule of law On February 17th of this year I 30:02 resigned from the department as part of a sequence of events that can only be described as among the saddest in the 30:08 department's history I want to make clear that I had no role in the prosecution of New York 30:15 City Mayor Eric Adams My knowledge as to the facts and the 30:20 evidence are limited to that which has been publicly reported Let me also state that I speak 30:26 for myself and myself alone The chain of events that led to my 30:32 resignation began when the acting deputy attorney general ordered the United States United States attorney's office 30:39 in New York to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams 30:44 This was not based on the prosecution's merits And we know this because he 30:49 openly acknowledged in a memorandum that department leadership had decided to dismiss the case quote without assessing 30:56 the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based This a this action leveraged the 31:03 threat of future prosecution to ensure political compliance The message that this sent intentionally 31:11 or unintentionally was that public officials may be prosecuted or may be protected from prosecution as long as 31:18 they're politically aligned with the Trump administration In a properly functioning 31:24 justice system any public official wishing to avoid prison has to live by 31:30 one rule of thumb Obey our nation's laws 31:35 And this action raised an even more chilling question Is a justice department that 31:42 will drop charges against those who acquies to a political demand a justice 31:48 department that will bring charges against those who 31:54 don't When the acting US attorney in the southern district of New York stood up 31:59 for the rule of law and resigned rather than carrying out the order the case was 32:04 transferred to the public integrity section When our acting chief and our 32:10 deputy chiefs stood up for the rule of law and resigned rather than carrying out the 32:15 order the remaining attorneys in our section were ordered to find two attorneys to sign a motion to dismiss 32:23 Ultimately one of our attorneys signed a motion to stop the destruction of the 32:29 section The public integrity section has protected the American people against 32:34 abuses of power for nearly 50 years but it was nearly eliminated in an 32:40 hour over a dismissal of charges against a man that a grand jury had found to 32:45 have engaged in a criminal abuse of power himself 32:51 At this point too many lines have been crossed and so I too 32:59 resigned The threats the threats against current members of the legal community 33:06 both in public service and private practice are real and they're of 33:13 consequence To those attorneys facing such threats I share with you a message that 33:19 I received on the day that my colleagues and I were ordered to dismiss the Adams 33:25 case It came from a fellow Marine It read "Keep your head up and 33:31 keep your values and your oath at the forefront." 33:37 Every attorney who takes an oath to uphold the law and every citizen who 33:43 values democracy must have a line in the sand that cannot be 33:52 crossed Speaking out and doing the right thing increasingly comes with personal 33:59 risk But the day after I resigned my sister 34:06 had her first daughter And I want my niece to know the same democracy that 34:12 I've known That's worth any cost That's worth fighting 34:19 for Thank you Thank you very much Mr Coswell 34:25 Uh Miss Cohen uh your opening statement and I should take a second of personal 34:31 privilege over here in the Senate just to say that Miss Cohen was very close friends with my son Tommy at Harvard Law 34:37 School and he always told me that you were a woman of great intelligence and great character It's good to see you 34:46 Thank you I'm grateful for the opportunity to 34:51 speak to the members today I acknowledge this is not the first Monday of unemployment that I anticipated but I am 34:59 appreciative to be here On March 20th I tendered my conditional resignation to Scatteren 35:05 Arps where I was employed as a finance associate I did so because I believe our country is teetering on the brink of 35:12 authoritarianism and that many leaders of our most prestigious and profitable law firms recognize this risk and choose 35:18 to ignore it because they are afraid It's likely they're afraid of losing profits but I think it's also likely 35:26 that these leaders are afraid because standing up to authoritarianism is scary 35:31 It is easier to ignore what is happening than to acknowledge the fight that lies ahead 35:36 I resigned amidst a series of attacks on the legal profession that began on February 25th when the Trump 35:42 administration stripped large law firm Coington and Burling of government contracts for representing special 35:47 counsel Jack Smith during his investigation of the president Then the president entered an 35:54 executive order against law firm Perkins Kuey not only stripping Perkins of government contracts but also targeting 36:01 thirdparty contractors that retain Perkins as counsel Again the 36:06 administration named Perkins's past representation of clients and causes the president dislikes as the 36:13 cause Perkins chose to fight back It challenged this blatantly 36:18 unconstitutional order and successfully won a temporary restraining order the next 36:23 day In a normal presidency this sends a message to the administration press 36:28 pause while the Perkins executive order is litigated But the president continued to enter 36:34 executive orders targeting firms based on past representation Enter Paul Weiss the next 36:40 target of an executive order Instead of fighting back Paul Weiss offered the Trump administration $40 million in 36:47 proono legal services for pet projects and promised to evaluate hiring and retention practices in partnership with 36:54 the president He withdrew the order Paul Weiss's decision was a stunning 37:00 betrayal of the firm's associates and the legal system that made its partnership very very 37:07 rich Like calling this hearing resignation was not my first choice Throughout this period associates across 37:14 the industry were engaged in measured advocacy internally and externally hoping to get our firms to band together 37:20 and stand up to the administration's attacks on the broader legal profession Paul Weiss's capitulation made me 37:27 realize firm leadership was not motivated to act collectively I became certain my employer was not going to be brave and 37:35 so I resigned I was heartbroken to be proven right 8 days later on March 28th when 37:42 Scatteren promised the Trump administration $100 million in probono 37:47 legal services despite no executive order being entered against them Other 37:53 associates resigned in protest two of them publicly They're sitting behind me And I am so unbelievably 37:59 grateful We did so because our adversarial legal system only functions when parties have 38:05 representation Everyone deserves an advocate That principle is invoked by law firm partners to justify high-profit 38:11 but distasteful representations Everyone deserves an 38:16 advocate American justice is not suante Without skilled lawyers meritorious 38:21 lawsuits may never be brought in the first place Public interest attorneys themselves separately targeted by the 38:27 administration are now also scrambling to replace resources and attention these 38:33 firms historically provide as they challenge unconstitutional actions and provide direct representation to clients 38:39 in need This is intentional Courts are perhaps our last line of defense against 38:45 authoritarianism I was raised to advocate and to be aware of the racial financial and other 38:52 privileges I hold that make it more likely that my voice will be heard in halls of power I am the daughter of two 38:58 government attorneys who both served their country in the United States Air Force While in high school in Ohio my 39:03 best friend was one of the only Latina students in our graduating class and faced overt racism And I remember 39:09 following a particularly egregious incident when we went to the principal together how my outrage was heard as 39:15 much or more than hers After studying political science at the Ohio State University I spent four 39:21 years teaching in Providence public schools And my students some of whom I know are watching right now are brave 39:27 and smart and bold But there were many times where despite the self-evidence of 39:33 my students brilliance people did not believe it existed until a white native English speaker pointed it 39:39 out Acceptance to Harvard Law School and employment at SCADN made my already powerful voice even louder The cowardice 39:46
The cowardice or apathy in some of these spaces at times caused disillusionment But those dear to me including your son 39:52 Congressman Raskin made sure I remembered that just because such cowardice is common doesn't make it 39:58 acceptable And as you said courage is a choice I was asked here because my voice 40:04 is loud But I came here for the same reason I resigned It is important for 40:09 the very real people whose voices are not heard in the same way to have an advocate today and 40:14 always This advocacy cannot be defined by fear of future retribution My 40:20 students and non-white friends and colleagues deserve brave advocates 40:25 Mahmood Khalil Rumiza Ostark Kilar Armando Abrego Garcia and Andre Jose 40:30 Hernandez Romero deserve brave advocates People seeking abortion care 40:36 or birth control or gender affirming care deserve brave advocates And to be clear everyone else the law firm 40:42 partners enabling this slide into autocracy the voters who put Trump into office and are waiting and will wait 40:49 forever for him to care about the difficulties that they face Those of us in this room today we all deserve brave 40:57 advocates The administration cannot pick and choose who gets representation It cannot use executive 41:03 power to scare lawyers out of advocacy If we allow any president to dictate who 41:09 deserves a lawyer our legal system fails Like firm leaders I am afraid of 41:15 where this intimidation campaign leads But unlike most of them I will not 41:20 allow my fear to manifest as silence I choose courage Thank you 41:28 Thank you for your testimony and I hope uh your courage and that of your two colleagues seated behind you will be 41:34 contagious uh among the bar Um Miss Young thank you for your service in the civil rights division and you're 41:40 recognized for your testimony Thank you Uh ranking member Rascin Ranking Member Durban Senator Schiff and 41:48 members of the committees thank you for the opportunity to appear at this important hearing about the ongoing 41:53 attacks on the Justice Department After 18 years as a career litigator in DOJ's 41:59 civil rights and civil divisions I recently founded Justice Connection an 42:04 organization mobilizing DOJ alumni to support the department's workforce 42:10 The Justice Department's 115,000 employees come to work every day to 42:15 uphold the rule of law keep our country safe and protect our civil rights All 42:20 but a few hundred of these employees are career civil servants The department's employees shield our communities from 42:27 gun violence prevent terrorist attacks on American soil investigate and 42:33 prosecute drug traffickers responsible for the deadly fentanyl epidemic and so 42:38 much more Yet the Trump administration has unleashed an allout assault on these 42:44 public servants who are now facing attacks on their employment their integrity their well-being and even 42:50 their safety Over the past three months employees at all levels have been fired 42:57 suspended demoted and reassigned They include senior career officials across 43:02 the department including in law enforcement components like the FBI and ATF They also include officials assigned 43:09 to cases disfavored by this administration Many have been forced to resign rather than follow orders they 43:16 concluded were unethical or unlawful The attacks on the department's workforce are too widespread and 43:22 numerous to catalog in a single hearing but I'd like to highlight three particular aspects that are especially 43:29 alarming First the administration's purge of career law enforcement and national security employees makes us 43:36 less safe Congress should be deeply concerned about the termination of some of the 43:42 most senior leaders at the FBI And the ouster of top officials from the 43:47 department's National Security Division Criminal Division and ATF Removing these 43:53 investigators and prosecutors has left our communities more vulnerable to violent crime and terrorism Proposals to 44:00 restructure and downsize the department's law enforcement work for example by merging ATF and DEA will only 44:07 make the problem worse Second the department's political leadership is 44:12 getting rid of career employees because they refuse to behave unethically To be clear career employees 44:20 should carry out the policy priorities of the executive branch even when those priorities change across administrations 44:27 That's why long-term career lawyers like Eros Ravaney zealously represent the 44:32 interests of the United States in controversial cases regardless of underlying policy judgments But 44:39 department officials must still follow ethical requirements court rules 44:44 governing statutes and the justice manual Increasingly career employees are 44:50 being told that to keep their jobs they must ignore their ethical duties and oath to uphold the 44:56 Constitution We should all be grateful to Ezra Raaney and others who choose the rule of law over partisan loyalty a 45:04 choice DOJ employees should never be forced to make Finally the interim US attorney in the 45:11 District of Columbia has run roughshot over prosecutorial norms threatened investigations of dedicated career 45:18 prosecutors and carried himself as a general in the president's war on his enemies instead of a backs stop on crime 45:25 in our nation's capital Ed Martin Jr came to the job with no prosecutorial 45:31 experience and a history of representing January 6th defendants who his new 45:36 office spent years successfully prosecuting He's destabilized his office 45:41 by firing prosecutors involved in those cases and demoting widely respected 45:47 supervisors in the process cratering morale and unit cohesion and eroding the 45:52 judgment experience and institutional knowledge that are essential to the office's vital work If his reign 46:00 continues DC will be far more vulnerable to drug trafficking terrorist attacks 46:05 and violent crime The animous facing DOJ employees is unlike anything I saw in my nearly two 46:13 decades of service and I don't believe there's any precedent for it in the department's history We can't expect 46:20 employees to counter these attacks alone Protecting them and DOJ's missionritical 46:26 work must be a top priority of every member of your committees and of all 46:31 Americans who will suffer if the department is destroyed Thank you 46:38 Mr Haskin do you want to begin questions thank you very much Miss Oyer Um the DOJ 46:43 tried to stop you from coming today because they were very eager to silence your voice You were fired hours after 46:51 you refused to agree to the deputy attorney general's demand that you sign your name to a memo and that you 46:57 recommend that Mel Gibson a convicted domestic abuser who also happens to be a 47:02 friend of Donald Trump and his special ambassador to Hollywood get all of his gun rights restored Is that right that's 47:09 right And you you refused to be complicit in that sequence of events 47:16 because you had serious concerns You said quote "He is the profile of exactly 47:22 who you would not recommend for this type of relief citing his history of 47:27 domestic violent abuse alcohol abuse and so on." Is that right that is correct Um 47:33 and you were fired just a few hours after you told the deputy attorney general that you could not go along with 47:38 this request within hours Yes Now they're disputing your account They're calling you a liar You filed a foyer 47:45 request to demonstrate exactly what happened Have you gotten the documents back yet i have not gotten any of the 47:52 communications between myself and members of Mr Blanch's staff which 47:58 illustrate that everything I have ever said about this matter is true Um and we have some of your contemporaneous uh 48:05 communications with your own colleagues that corroborate your account That's right I did pursue to Foya get 48:12 some documents that were in possession of the office of the pardon attorney and they also corroborate my account All 48:18 right Then uh they had sent two armed marshals to your home to try to 48:24 intimidate you with a letter telling you not to come today Why did you decide to come i came because I don't want to be 48:30 complicit in what is happening inside the Department of Justice which is the misuse of the resources of the 48:36 department to do political favors for friends of the president for loyalists and I just don't believe that that's 48:44 right and I don't want to be part of it So I feel that I need to speak up 48:50 Um I've uh your courage is heroic to us and I 48:57 want to say to you and your family thank you and we are with you and we're going to stand by you Um just this past 49:04 weekend we saw another shocking example of retaliation DOJ suspended the prosecutor who had stated in court that 49:11 a man Kilmar Abrago Garcia of Maryland had been erroneously deported to El 49:16 Salvador as an administrative error and imprisoned there where he faces serious danger and gang violence The judge in 49:23 the case demanded that the Trump administration seek Garcia's return to the United States and the administration 49:31 is despite confession of its error arguing to prevent Mr Garcia's return 49:37 saying he's out of the custody of the United States and they wash the hands of uh of the matter Uh Miss Young is there 49:45 uh any doubt in your mind that this prosecutor's suspension was retaliation 49:51 simply for speaking the truth in court as this prosecutor was sworn to do uh 49:58 that's what the facts seem to suggest Well um I think that all of these events 50:06 should stir the conscience of America and we thank you all for stepping forward now um to sound a cry about 50:13 what's taking place I yield back to you Mr Chairman Thank you Mr Raskin Um I just want to 50:20 put a fine point Miss Oyer on your testimony Um you apply the same standard did you 50:27 not with reference to Mel Gibson you would apply to anyone on that as you look to the facts to determine whether 50:33 you should recommend restoration of gun rights You didn't consider friendship 50:39 with the president or any other impermissible consideration You just looked at the facts Is that right well 50:44 Mr Schiff let me say that this is a project that was not within the normal purview of the office of the pardon 50:49 attorney There was no real interest from this administration in considering the work that this office normally does 50:56 which is provide advice that is non-political in nature to the president about how to use his constitutional 51:02 clemency power So this whole project was something that was very different It was not the normal work of the office of the 51:08 pardon attorney but we jumped in and tried to do our best to support it because we understood that it was a 51:14 priority of the leadership of the department And in doing so uh a primary 51:19 concern was considerations of public safety Would we be able to recommend that someone could safely receive their 51:25 firearm rights back and that was my concern in the case that you have discussed that I did not have enough evidence in front of me to make the 51:32 recommendation that that could be done safely So based on the evidence in front of you you didn't believe it could be uh 51:38 the restoration of gun rights to Mel Gibson could be done safely I did not have enough information to convince me 51:44 that I could recommend that it could be done safely And you know your description of the office of the pardon 51:50 attorney raises another question which is was your office consulted on the what 51:56 is it550 pardons of the January 6th insurrectionists that were granted by the president i learned about those 52:03 pardons on the news just like every other American And were you the head of that office i was I remember Pam Bondi 52:11 testifying I think in this very room that she was going to go through those cases one by one Normally a pardon 52:18 request for any of those individuals would have gone to your office for review and examination to determine if 52:26 there was a grounds or there was acceptance responsibility or service of time or whatnot Would it would that have 52:32 been the process the ordinary pro process is that individuals apply through the office of the pardon 52:38 attorney The office carefully vets the applications that we receive and we look at all of the individualized factors 52:44 that would support uh or or weigh against a pardon in a particular case and we make a recommendation on that 52:50 basis That's not something we were asked to do in that context and in fact it's not something that the office um as of 52:56 the time of my departure had been asked to do at all in the context of clemency grants by this administration 53:03 So in the in the case of Mel Gibson there was one standard for a friend of 53:09 the president for a Hollywood celebrity with respect to gun right restoration regardless of the public safety issue In 53:16 the case you testified about Mr Coswell Um you resigned after your 53:22 office attorneys in your office were asked to dismiss a case against the mayor of New York which a grand jury found probably 53:30 caused to believe he had engaged in corrupt acts Your attorneys were asked your 53:35 colleagues were asked to dismiss that case not because of any flaw in the evidence not because of any insufficiency in the evidence but 53:42 because of some kind of a bargain between the Department of Justice and the mayor regarding an 53:49 unrelated policy matter that is immigration Is that your understanding from the public record 53:55 um Senator the the memo that the acting deputy attorney general sent to the US 54:01 attorney's office in New York explicitly stated that it wasn't based on the facts um or the legal theories on which the 54:07 case was based So um that that was was very explicit And I I just I was an 54:14 assistant US attorney for almost six years in California And I just want to underscore how truly 54:20 extraordinary that is what you just testified that a meritorious 54:26 case is dismissed against a 54:32 politician not because of a flaw in the evidence not because of any prosecutorial misconduct but because of 54:37 an interest in having that politician um carry the president's water over 54:45 unrelated policy matters I never saw anything like that in my almost six years in the department Have you ever 54:50 seen anything like that in your experience Senator and really from when you start 54:56 as a federal prosecutor you're trained that everything is based on the facts in the law We prosecute based on the facts 55:02 in the law And that that ensures that um you know we're we're holding the bad 55:09 guys accountable and um innocent Americans remain free as long as it's 55:15 based on the facts and law that's the best way for us to um be doing our job 55:20 effectively to keep the American people safe And and I just want to underscore before I turn uh to ranking member 55:26 Durban something you said in your testimony too which is if the Justice 55:31 Department believes that it can intervene in the case of friends of the 55:37 president like Mel Gibson to give him special treatment or in the case of the mayor of New York to give him special 55:43 treatment because of unrelated policy uh help to the president They can also 55:49 weaponize that same Justice Department against the president's perceived enemies And Senator White House has uh 55:57 well demonstrated how that principle has applied in going after funds made 56:03 available for renewable energy projects under the Inflation Reduction Act Um thank you for your testimony and I now 56:09 yield to Senator Durban Ranking Member Durban for his questions Thank you Senator Schiff Let me say to all of the 56:15 witnesses who are here today this remarkable hearing should help to restore uh the nation's faith in the 56:22 democracy and the courage of the witnesses who have come here today to testify and the courage of their family 56:29 who stand behind them Uh Miss Oyer it's my understanding that there are 56:35 guidelines to be considered with pardon petitions And among those guidelines 56:42 there is a requirement that they be granted in part based on quote the petitioners demonstrated good conduct 56:48 for a substantial period of time after conviction and service of sentence and 56:53 that quote a petitioner should be genuinely desirous of forgiveness rather than vi 56:58 vindication One of the first acts of office obviously of President Trump was the full unconditional pardon of 57:07 1500,600 I the number I'm not sure of but I think it's in that range of those 57:13 who participated in the uh insurrectionist riot here in the capital 57:19 Most of us at this this table were witnesses to that those crimes and certainly understood what happened to 57:25 the men and women in law enforcement who still protect us to this day and risk 57:30 their lives for us on January 6 I've taken a look at some of those who 57:36 were given these pardons and gone through what they have done even since 57:41 in the few weeks since that happened It is outrageous some of the conduct that 57:47 has been uh well documented My question to you as a pardon attorney at the time 57:53 were you consulted on the pardons of the January 6 riers i was not consulted No 57:59 member of my office was consulted about those pardons What would have happened to the pardon request for January 6 58:06 offenders had the normal DOJ pardon process been followed had any of those 58:11 individuals applied for a pardon they would have been in due course fully vetted on an individualized basis and 58:18 the office would have formed a recommendation about the individual applicants which would have been provided to the president The whole role 58:25 of the office is to ensure that some uniform and consistent standards are provided And more importantly the role 58:31 is to ensure that people who are waiting their turn who have meritorious cases 58:36 that those cases can make their way to the president's desk Those folks who have access to the White House through 58:43 the front door they don't need the help of the office of the pardon attorney to elevate their cause And there are 58:48 thousands of ordinary Americans who are seeking the mercy of the president through the clemency process who are not 58:55 being considered right now because the office is not being consulted There are individuals who are serving incredibly 59:02 lengthy sentences under outdated mandatory minimum sentencing laws who are seeking reductions of their sentence 59:08 People who have demonstrated rehabilitation over the course of decades in prison There are people whose 59:14 family members are writing in pleading for their return home There are individuals who are in the community 59:20 doing incredibly well who have demonstrated rehabilitation and given back over the course of years who are 59:26 asking for pardons And all of those people are on hold because no interaction was happening as of the time 59:34 of my departure between the office of the pardon attorney and the white house about clemency The only people being 59:39 considered for clemency were people who had some sort of inside access inside track to the White House and could get 59:46 their cases in front of the president without going through the ordinary process And that is very concerning and 59:53 it causes um real reason to lose confidence in the clemency process and 59:59 real damage to our system of justice Have you followed what has happened to 1:00:04 those who were given pardons by President Trump who were engaged in assaulting uh law enforcement here on 1:00:11 Capitol Hill have you followed any of the cases what has happened to them since i have sir And what have you seen 1:00:19 well there seems to be chaos in litigation that's happening around the country about determining what the 1:00:25 intended scope of the pardons was That's one thing I've observed and that's one way that you can tell that my office was 1:00:31 not involved Had we been involved we would have written the paperwork in an intelligible clear way So there was no 1:00:38 ambiguity about what it meant But instead there is litigation happening around the country in which the 1:00:43 department is taking inconsistent positions and reversing itself about what those pardons mean Uh they have 1:00:50 created a lot of chaos in a lot of different ways and that is not the way the process is intended to work At least 1:00:56 one of these people has been shot dead assaulting a police officer Are you aware of that 1:01:03 i don't want to um o overstep the area of my knowledge I've seen things in the news but I don't have any personal 1:01:09 knowledge about the facts of that case or others Mr Chairman let me conclude by saying that last week our New Jersey 1:01:16 colleague showed strength and resolve and courage to stand for more than 25 1:01:22 hours to speak for fairness and justice He made history This hearing continues 1:01:28 in that spirit Thank you all for your courage in attending I'd like to recognize Mr 1:01:35 Nadler from New York for his questioning Thank you Mr Chairman and thank you for holding this important hearing shining a 1:01:42 light on the most lawless administration in history Donald Trump may pride himself on mastering the art of the deal 1:01:48 What he has really perfected is the art of the shakeddown Look no further than the corrupt quid proquo with the mayor 1:01:55 of my own city of New York Eric Adams After cozying up to Donald Trump the 1:02:00 charges against him were dismissed without prejudice Was it because the prosecutors determined there wasn't sufficient evidence to bring him to 1:02:07 trial no It was because Donald Trump wanted something from him He wanted the mayor to help carry out his extreme 1:02:14 immigration agenda against the wishes and the well-being of millions of New Yorkers So he and his administration 1:02:19 orchestrated a corrupt bargain to drop the charges in exchange for the mayor doing his dirty work and by dismissing 1:02:25 the charges without prejudice meaning they could be reinstated at any time effectively kept the mayor on the hook 1:02:31 to assure he did whatever Trump wanted And of course there is the president's effort to bully and intimidate major law 1:02:38 firms that employ lawyers who dared to try to hold him accountable when they served in government His campaign of 1:02:44 retribution is a classic case of extortion threatening the livelihood of these firms unless they do his bidding 1:02:50 If it weren't for the Supreme Court's immunity ruling last year Trump could be prosecuted for extortion violation of 1:02:57 the Hobbs Act Of course Trump's captive DOJ would not prosecute In any event Mr 1:03:03 Cwell thank you for being here In your testimony you told us about the reasons why you resigned Perhaps you can 1:03:09 elaborate I know you did not work directly on this case on the case but 1:03:14 how would you characterize the evidence you have seen publicly reported against Mayor Adams was it substantial was it 1:03:20 overwhelming what was some of the most egregious examples of public corruption you saw in this matter particularly as 1:03:26 it related to the mayor um thank you for the question Congressman Um you know if the case had 1:03:33 not been dismissed with prejudice by Judge Hoe last week u Mayor Adams would have had his trial and like any other 1:03:40 citizen he'd be presumed innocent until proven guilty Um that said um it was 1:03:45 obviously deeply concerning that this was being dis dismissed for reasons that had nothing to do with the evidence And 1:03:50 so in terms of my own resignation um that was concerning I I probably 1:03:56 would still be a public public integrity had it not been for the fact that then five five of my colleagues um incredibly 1:04:04 talented um dedicated um and 1:04:10 and friends of mine with with with deep integrity then also had to resign 1:04:16 because they wouldn't sign the order Um and that that really kind of goes back to my experience as as a marine officer 1:04:22 um you you take care of um the people that work for you and you expect them to do the right thing You don't force them 1:04:28 to resign over it But based on public reports you don't want to characterize the strength of the evidence at this 1:04:34 point in that case Sorry I said based on public reports you 1:04:39 don't want to characterize the strength of the evidence in the case If if uh Congressman if everything that 1:04:46 was alleged in the indictment um would have been able to proven by the prosecutors that that looked like it would be a strong case Thank you Mr 1:04:54 Croswell Um Miss 1:05:00 Cohen thank you for being here and sharing your story with us I know you mentioned why you left Scatteren Arps in 1:05:06 your testimony Can you tell us more about why you think the law firm gave into the president's demands how intense 1:05:12 the pressure is coming from the administration and how dangerous that type of pressure is to the rule of law 1:05:18 in this country absolutely Thank you I think that the the strength of the pressure 1:05:25 is exponentially higher because law firms are not standing together and are 1:05:31 instead treating the president's attacks as if they are normal course and not 1:05:36 something that would easily be challenged in a court And so I think that the pressure here comes from 1:05:42 presuming that standing up to the president means you fall out of his favor I think that ultimately because 1:05:50 these executive orders have pointed to past representation particularly challenging the government it's 1:05:57 massively dissuading large corporate law firms from taking cases that might be viewed as problematic to the Trump 1:06:03 administration They were instrumental in 2016 in bringing challenges against unconstitutional action but it's not 1:06:10 limited to 2016 Large corporate law firms provide a significant amount of financial and staffing resources to 1:06:18 public interest organizations that are challenging unconstitutional actions under both Democratic and Republican 1:06:23 presidents They also provide an immense amount of direct services work like to migrants seeking asylum and two veterans 1:06:31 seeking benefits things that the the president alleges may be frivolous or 1:06:36 counter to his interests Thank you When lawyers are too intimidated to take on the 1:06:41 administration when it clearly violates the law then what remedy do any of us have to enforce the law and protect our 1:06:48 rights from a president with dictatorial demands given the nature of our adversarial system we have almost no 1:06:55 hope That's why we have to act now Thank you We got to I think we got to shift back to the Senate side now because 1:07:00 we're impinging on their time So um thank you um Mr Nadler And I I regret to 1:07:08 uh announce that the chief justice during the course of the hearing Chief Justice Roberts has indefinitely blocked 1:07:14 the court order requiring the return of Kilmore Arbago Garcia Uh this ruling 1:07:20 came out uh during the course of this hearing So we now have the deportation of someone 1:07:26 uh in violation of court order uh and a further court ordering his return has 1:07:32 now been countermanded by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Uh Senator White House you are recognized 1:07:40 If you um read the appellet court decision 1:07:48 um regarding the stay one of the things I think you'll note is the 1:07:55 power of the language that was used by those judges So 1:08:01 I'm disappointed I guess yet again in uh Chief Justice Roberts's decision I think 1:08:07 um we often read decisions which say say the decision was misguided the decision 1:08:12 was erroneous the decision was clearly erroneous the decision was wrong the 1:08:18 decision stood on inadequate facts In this case the app court said the decision was 1:08:24 unconscionable You don't see that very much So my questions will be to you Mr 1:08:29 Crosswell I think you're the um most experienced criminal prosecutor at the in the panel And um one of the things 1:08:36 that we've seen has been uh the Trump MAGA crowd uh paring the notion that 1:08:43 there was weaponization of the Department of Justice against Mr Trump which is obviously a narrative that you 1:08:50 would like to deploy if your leader is in fact a criminal 1:08:57 was convicted in certain places was indicted uh in others 1:09:03 um and had the prosecutive team say "Hey we had a we had a good case here when it was closed down." So faced with all that 1:09:10 evidence obviously the thing you want to say is weaponization fake news all the usual denials So I'm want to take a 1:09:17 minute and compare what happened in a recent case the one that uh was referred to about the um unlawful effort to try 1:09:26 to seize climate funds And because the veto 1:09:32 period had passed by about two years to cook up analysis that would have allowed them 1:09:38 to seize the funds had to cook up a crime that would give them the ability 1:09:43 to say well you know while we're investigating this crime we need to seize the funds So that's the backdrop 1:09:49 and in the course of that the first thing that happened is that the uh political appointee was told by uh his 1:09:58 career staff that there was no evidence of any crime and they couldn't proceed Do you recall any time in any of 1:10:06 the Trump federal cases where a political appointee was told by the career staff that they had no case 1:10:14 senator I I've been doing the job for 10 years and I can tell you that I have 1:10:20 never ever seen anyone myself or anyone else be directed to prosecute or drop a 1:10:27 case based on politics It just does not it does not in this case the woman who 1:10:33 was at the head of the office who told the political appointee that he had no case was forced to resign as her penalty 1:10:40 for not going forward Nothing like that ever happened in any of the Trump investigations that I can recall Do you 1:10:46 have any recollection of uh any career folks being fired for refusing to go 1:10:52 forward with a case that had no merit senator it my supervisors have 1:10:58 always expected me to do the right thing I I think something people need to understand about prosecutors is we're 1:11:05 unique in the sense that we our job is not to win a case It's to do justice And so every supervisor I've ever had would 1:11:12 demand nothing less than me to do the right thing for justice And if that means dismissing a case that was that's 1:11:19 what you would do Um so it so then let me just go forward a little bit more 1:11:24 because after that what happened is that the political appointee went forward with the pleading that no 1:11:30 career attorney would sign The only signature on it was the political appointee Did you recall that ever 1:11:36 happening in any of the Trump cases in my in my personal experience I've 1:11:41 never had a situation where I was asked to do something that um well except for 1:11:48 the Eric Adams case that was the first time I was asked to sign something that um unusual to go forward with a pleading 1:11:56 where no career attorney will sign for the Department of Justice Correct Only with a political appointee signature Yes 1:12:02 sir Yes it is Um and then um in the Trump cases I don't recall 1:12:10 anyone ever getting shot down any of the prosecutive team when they went for an 1:12:15 order And in this case when the political appointee went for the order and went to the magistrate judge he got 1:12:21 shut down When I was a US attorney if we got shut down for an order by one of our 1:12:26 district judges that would have been like stop figure out what went wrong This is a 1:12:32 never event Let's figure this out so it doesn't happen Do you recall that uh any of the 1:12:40 Trump orders were ever shot down by a judge or every time the that prosecution team went to a court for an order they 1:12:46 were successful senator not sure about which order I would say that it would be um if if I 1:12:54 went to a court and shot down for probable cause that would that's happened But you try to avoid that Yeah 1:13:00 you try very hard to avoid it And after that's happened do you ever go to another district to try to shop the same 1:13:08 case where the judge had found that there was no basis to proceed it's never came up in my career 1:13:15 Senator Um if I did I would certainly tell the next judge the last one found 1:13:20 no probable cause and that probably would not um bode well And then um I don't believe in the 1:13:27 Trump cases any prosecutor ever made public statements outside of the pleadings about the culpability or wrong 1:13:34 of the subject of the investigation And yet in this case both the political appointee and the agency chief uh who 1:13:42 was engaged made public derogatory comments false allegations it seems of 1:13:48 fraud defamatory per se Um what are the concerns of the Department of Justice 1:13:54 when political appointees make statements about the potential guilt or culpability of an uncharged 1:14:02 person senator you're aware we conduct grand jury uh investigations in secret 1:14:07 for a reason because if we can't substantiate the case against someone we close it without the public ever knowing 1:14:13 and that's to protect the American people And in this matter the last thing that happened um was that the agency had 1:14:20 been going forward with its own case under the president's executive order shifted to the fraud argument to try to 1:14:29 improve its uh argument before the uh federal judge not a magistrate judge the US District Court judge And the US 1:14:36 District Court judge said "Guys there's no evidence here You've shown me no evidence to support this claim that 1:14:42 there's fraud or misconduct here And yet they continue And I can pretty well bet 1:14:49 that in none of the so-called weaponized Trump cases was there a moment when a 1:14:57 federal judge said there is no evidence here And yet the department continued it 1:15:03 So I guess the conclusion I draw from this is that there is fake weaponization 1:15:09 which is what you say when you're following somebody who has serious criminal liability has been indicted has 1:15:15 been convicted and you want to make all that go away with a narrative about oh that's just weaponization And then you 1:15:22 put your people in power and what happens the actual weaponization begins And this counts by my count seven red 1:15:30 flags any one of it which would have called a check to a case um in the 1:15:36 normal department of justice So thank you Adam thank you Jamie Thank you 1:15:41 Senator White House Uh recognizing Congressman Hank Johnson of the fourth district of Georgia and the ranking 1:15:46 member of our subcommittee on courts IP and artificial intelligence Thank 1:15:52 you Thank you uh Mr Ranking member and 1:15:57 Mr Ranking member for holding this hearing You know after losing the 2020 election 1:16:03 the lame duck President Donald Trump embarked upon an illicit and multi-prong 1:16:09 scheme to remain in office beyond his term This plan culminated in the January 1:16:16 6 2021 insurrection which failed But Donald Trump wasn't finished Over the 1:16:23 next four years he hatched a plan to create the conditions where if he won 1:16:28 the presidency again he would never have to leave office And during that planning 1:16:34 process Trump was given an assist when the Supreme Court of the United States 1:16:39 which he magnified with three appointees ran the clock out on efforts 1:16:45 to prosecute him while giving him immunity from prosecution for official act swalling office Once back in the 1:16:53 White House and with immunity so that he was above the law Trump's first order of 1:16:59 business was to destroy the rule of law so that he could then systematically 1:17:05 dismantle our democracy and there would be no checks on his illegal behavior In 1:17:12 less than 100 days he has turned the Department of Justice into the 1:17:18 Department of Injustice He effected this transformation by 1:17:24 installing sickopanic loyalist and purging career employees whose only 1:17:30 offense was adherence to the rule of law Good people like our witnesses here But 1:17:37 even purging career employees is not enough for a tyrant A tyrannical leader 1:17:43 like Trump must also intimidate people to ensure their silence And that's why 1:17:49 Trump's DOJ directed armed US marshals to deliver a letter to Miss Oya at her 1:17:57 home about testifying to Congress And it's why the administration is now 1:18:04 claiming that she is muzzled by executive privilege which is a baseless 1:18:09 claim And going after government lawyers is not enough for this aspiring dictator 1:18:15 Trump is also attacking lawyers in the private sector in an attempt to decimate 1:18:20 our system of adversarial justice which is crucial to a functioning legal system 1:18:27 Any law firms that employed lawyers who previously investigated Trump challenged 1:18:32 his administration or worked on causes he didn't like were st were slapped with 1:18:38 executive orders And these executive orders threatened to strip law firms of 1:18:44 security clearances terminate government contracts with the firm or deprive them 1:18:49 of business in any way that they can even preventing their employees from 1:18:54 entering government buildings The idea is to scare lawyers enough so that no 1:19:01 one brings cases against Trump or his administration's illegal actions And 1:19:07 even though Trump thinks he has the Supreme Court in his pocket he cannot risk cases working their way through the 1:19:14 legal system and finding out that even for the justices he appointed it might 1:19:20 be a bridge too far in destroying our democracy So far Trump has issued five executive 1:19:27 orders targeting top powerful and wealthy law firms to send a message to the less powerful and wealthy that if 1:19:34 you challenge his illegal actions they'll be held to play Several of his 1:19:40 targeted law firms have folded like cheap lawn chairs while others have stood and fought back Trump wants to 1:19:47 scare the legal profession into silence And we're honored today to have these brave and patriotic lawyers with us who 1:19:53 refuse to be silenced Mr Crosswell you 1:20:02 know you found yourself at a crossroads after Donald Trump returned to office 1:20:08 and de uh acting deputy attorney general BV ordered you and your colleagues at 1:20:14 the public integrity section to sign a motion to dismiss the indictment against 1:20:20 New York City Mayor uh Adams Is it true that Mr both told you 1:20:27 and your colleagues that whoever complied would be rewarded with a 1:20:32 position of leadership within the department and that whoever pushed back would face professional 1:20:40 consequences If I could interrupt for one second um the witness can answer the question We're being reminded that we 1:20:46 have just five minutes each I think a lot of us on the House side were under the impression that people spoke for 15 1:20:51 minutes here but it is a it is a fiveminute rule We're going to comply with you 1:20:56 Well I've only gone for 5 minutes and 13 seconds but if you would answer that 1:21:03 question I'll gladly uh yield back my time Congressman my my best recollection 1:21:08 of the conversation that or that what was said to us was in my resignation letter and um I think it was very very 1:21:17 much implied if not stated that um there be promotional opportunities for anyone that would sign the motion Um and and I 1:21:24 also think it's very fair to say there was an implicit threat for those that won and and that was done through 1:21:30 reference to what took place in the Southern District of New York That's that's my best recollection Thank you 1:21:35 Thank you Yes Thank you Senator Ship And I just want to correct the record Uh 1:21:40 Representative Raskin we don't speak for 15 minutes We speak for 25 hours here in 1:21:46 the United States Senate So thank you both for holding this hearing and thank you also for shining light on the simple 1:21:55 idea that the president is not king We are not a kingdom and um it is many of 1:22:01 our colleagues sadly on the Republican side of the aisle are acting like subjects to the king instead of being 1:22:07 independently elected officials to the point where uh we're holding this shadow hearing because they won't hold such a 1:22:13 hearing So I'll start with you Mr Crosswell And I as a former prosecutor I 1:22:19 uh just I was so in awe of what you and others did um after you were forced to 1:22:25 drop bribery or asked to drop bribery charges against Mayor Adams and wouldn't 1:22:30 do it Um the words of the lead prosecutor on the case Hagen Scotten um 1:22:36 forever I will remember He said "I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a 1:22:43 coward to file your motion but it was never going to be me." And I'm sure you felt the same way Could you talk about 1:22:51 uh why you u made this decision thank you Senator 1:22:56
Um Senator as I I think I mentioned earlier I I I would probably still be at public integrity Um as deeply concerning 1:23:04 as what happened with Eric Adams was for me the the straw that that broke the camel's back was what happened to my 1:23:11 colleagues Um these were individuals I cared about 1:23:16 and um they they had to resign because they weren't going to sign a motion um 1:23:22 that should not have been signed And for me and and I think also just the fact that then we were ordered to do the same 1:23:29 thing Um for me it almost felt like an abuse of power against me myself And so 1:23:36 um I just I mean I didn't have a job lined up or insurance lined up but um 1:23:42 I'd rather be unemployed and not be insured than than work for someone that would do something like that to my 1:23:48 colleagues um and and to me Okay Thank you Um Miss Young kind of coming off 1:23:55 that how does firing career prosecutors or trying to make them to do something 1:24:01 that they consider illegal how does that uh weaken public safety send the wrong 1:24:08 message to law enforcement in general of course this includes people who just happened to work on the January 6 cases 1:24:15 who were just called in to um play various roles in it might have been in someone who'd been in the office for a 1:24:21 year or someone who'd been there longer Just talk generally about how it weakens the rule of law and law enforcement 1:24:28 Sure Prosecutors at the Justice Department are some of the best lawyers 1:24:33 in the country So when you fire them uh you necessarily 1:24:40 uh make American communities more vulnerable When you fire national security lawyers you make our nation's 1:24:48 security um less tight Um you're you're these terminations are 1:24:56 due to career employees doing their jobs accepting cases that they were assigned 1:25:03 not uh prosecuting these cases would be insubordination It just it's antithetical to the nature 1:25:10 of career service and uh people are are are resigning preemptively and it's also 1:25:18 going to prevent really great lawyers from wanting to go to the justice department and lots of really great 1:25:24 lawyers have always wanted to go to the justice department So the more of these terminations we see the more 1:25:30 intimidation we see the less safe we're going to be and and the less um the less 1:25:37 strong and seasoned and uh a DOJ will be And without a strong robust DOJ the rule 1:25:44 of law will suffer Exactly Um quickly Miss Oyer um justice departments take an 1:25:51 oath to the Constitution Could you in 30 seconds the difference between representing the people of the US and 1:25:58 representing the president as we know the line has been completely crossed here As you know from your own 1:26:03 experience it's very concerning that the department is currently being run by people all of 1:26:09 whom represented the president personally Uh there are certain decision-making authorities of the 1:26:15 department that have been delegated to people who personally represent the president including oversight of matters 1:26:20 of ethics and professional responsibility Um that's evidenced in the letter that was sent to me which was 1:26:26 sent to me by someone who was one of President Trump's personal defense attorneys This is a way of stripping 1:26:33 away any of the safeguards against the tremendous powers of the Department of Justice The administration is currently 1:26:39 attacking the safeguards within the department as well as the safeguards external to the department like the 1:26:44 defense bar that play a vital role in push which Miss Cohen is well aware of Yes Yes So it's sort of a a 1:26:50 multi-pronged attack on the rule of law and that has real consequences for real people including things like individuals 1:26:57 being deported mistakenly or individuals being swept up in immigration raids who 1:27:02 happen to actually be US citizens It's very very concerning Thank you Thank 1:27:12 uh recognize the gentle lady from Pennsylvania Mary Gay Scan who is the ranking member on the Constitution 1:27:18 subcommittee Thank you for convening us today and thank you so much to our 1:27:23 witnesses I really am in awe of your courage and your dedication to the rule 1:27:30 of law which is what makes our country great and I we all really really 1:27:36 appreciate your willingness to stand up and be counted when it really counts Um over the past few weeks the White House 1:27:42 has unleashed an unprecedented attack upon lawyers and judges who serve our American justice system with the White 1:27:49 House attempting to suppress challenges to the lawless orders that it is issuing 1:27:55 They're threatening and intimidating some of the country's most accomplished lawyers some of whom are with us here 1:28:01 today Congress under Republican leadership has thus far acquiesced to this lawless behavior The courts and 1:28:08 lawyers are acting as the primary defense against executive action and doing so successfully in the vast 1:28:15 majority of almost 200 cases brought so far I want to focus on the orders and 1:28:20 sanctions issued against private law firms because that's the world I came out of Um these law firms have been 1:28:28 selected because of their relationship to attorneys who represented the president's political opponents opposed 1:28:34 his administration's actions or aided efforts to hold him accountable These firms and lawyers targeted by the 1:28:40 administration had been the standardbearers for the highest ethical obligation of their profession to 1:28:46 provide free legal services in the public interest or proono publicico They've been willing and able to 1:28:53 dedicate top legal talent to undertake the costly and time-consuming work of 1:28:59 ensuring due process in difficult cases reforming broken systems and vindicating 1:29:06 human and civil rights of those subject to our laws This administration's attempt to sideline these efforts stands 1:29:13 in stark contrast to prior administrations which understood that our justice system only works when 1:29:20 everyone has access to representation And I'm thinking about 1963 President 1:29:26 Kennedy's call to action to the most prominent law firms in our country asking them to marshall the resources of 1:29:33 the private bar to protect American civil rights The Trump administration 1:29:38 has chosen instead to undertake a grotesque attack on the fundamental right of access to justice So while the 1:29:45 action of targeting private law firms are designed to hurt those most at risk those who can't afford a lawyer and 1:29:52 specifically those with the guts to stand up to this administration's blatant violations of the Constitution 1:30:00 due process and civil and human rights Now we've seen the administration's 1:30:05 um campaign begin to achieve its purpose intimidating lawyers who might represent 1:30:10 those challenging its actions Some law firms targeted by the White House have settled with the White House Others that 1:30:16 have regularly participated in this kind of class action and other work in the past are declining to do so This 1:30:24 administration is employing the tactics used by authoritarian regimes to crack down on those who defend the rule of law 1:30:31 places like lawyers universities civil society and the independent media So now 1:30:37 is the time when all lawyers law firms judges law schools bar associations and 1:30:42 elected officials of every and no party have to stand up and condemn this attack 1:30:49 because democracy doesn't only die in darkness It also dies with silence or acquiescence So I am encouraged by the 1:30:56 growing resistance to these actions and Miss Cohen whether willingly or not you have ended up being a face of that I 1:31:03 understand that you participated in leading a letter that over 1,800 1:31:08 uh junior lawyers at these prestigious law firms have joined Can you tell us a little bit about that absolutely Thanks 1:31:15 so much As I stated in my opening testimony it was not my first choice to 1:31:21 resign I adore my co-workers I did really meaningful work both billable and 1:31:26 pro bono And I also expected that firm leadership would do the right thing not 1:31:32 just at my own law firm but across the industry And so something that that was 1:31:38 frankly quite scary was that all of the conversations about what the executive orders were aimed at doing and were 1:31:44 doing everyone agreed across political stripes across level of seniority that 1:31:50 the president was targeting private law firms in an attempt to scare lawyers 1:31:55 broadly But no one was willing to say anything And so I worked with a group of 1:32:01 a variety of other associates to put together a way that people could anonymously express their concerns about 1:32:08 this We modeled it off a statement that was put out by the American Bar Association a nonpartisan association 1:32:15 prior to even the Perkins Executive Order coming out in the first place about these troubling rule of law attacks And so that was just one of many 1:32:23 steps that we took to to not reach this point in the hopes that firms would come together and do the right thing I do 1:32:29 think it's really important that lawyers and law firms stand together I mean after all it is through having a 1:32:35 rules-based order that many of these law firms have been able to be so successful and the erosion here affects everybody 1:32:43 So thank you I yield back Thank you And now it gives me pleasure to introduce Ryan You'll be happy to 1:32:49 know another former marine but also someone miss young who has been leading our inquiry into uh what the law firms 1:32:57 are doing is Senator Blumenthal Thank you Mr Chairman Uh there is no such thing as a former 1:33:03 Marine as we know uh Seridelis and thank you Mr Chairman for 1:33:10 holding this hearing Uh and to both of you Senator 1:33:15 uh Schiff and uh Mr Raskin Thank you Congressman Raskin for joining me in 1:33:22 seeking to shine light and for your support uh Senator Schiff uh because 1:33:29 America needs to be aware needs to be afraid of what is happening here and 1:33:36 needs to know that there are people like you who took the risk and made the 1:33:43 sacrifice that others far wealthier more resourced and more powerful were 1:33:49 unwilling to take members of our profession who declined to stand up and 1:33:54 speak out But here's the good news for America There are lawyers willing to take on 1:34:03 this fight against a bully 504 signed an amicus brief Others are representing the 1:34:09 firms Let's say their names Cington and Berling Perkins Kuy Jenner 1:34:15 and Block Wilmer Hail who are trying to 1:34:21 break this pattern And it is a pattern Donald Trump hammers bullies 1:34:28 intimidates and then offers to negotiate He's doing it with law firms He's done 1:34:33 it with universities He's doing it with countries and companies through tariffs 1:34:38 It is part of a slide toward tyranny Tim 1:34:43 Snyder my friend a professor at Yale has said the first rule of 1:34:50 tyranny from the 20th century the first lesson is do not obey in advance That is 1:34:57 what Scatteren Arps Milbank and Wilky Far have done They didn't even wait for 1:35:03 the executive order They obeyed in advance And I just want to make really clear 1:35:09 what is most offensive to me They exceeded in effect to allow 1:35:18 Donald Trump to tell them who their clients would be and who they would 1:35:23 hire I've been United States attorney in Connecticut I was attorney general for 1:35:29 20 years but I've also been in private practice And if there's one thing that matters to me as a trial lawyer and I 1:35:36 still consider myself proudly a trial lawyer it is nobody tells me what to do 1:35:42 And when I represent a client it is 100% And when I take on a 1:35:49 client against a big corporation and then some other big corporation or that 1:35:54 corporation offers a great representation to me I 1:36:01 say "Sorry can't do it I've got the little guy whom I represent and I'll 1:36:07 give up the bonuses and the wealth and the money and the hour billable hours 1:36:15 because I believe in my profession Donald Trump has boasted and I'm quoting 1:36:22 him that he has built quote an unrivaled 1:36:27 network of lawyers These lawyers are h in in his pocket And 1:36:33 when they're in his pocket they cannot represent that little guy They cannot 1:36:39 represent the individuals that Wilky Far did that got them 1:36:46 blacklisted Ruby Freeman and Sheay Moss who volunteered as pole workers in 1:36:51 Georgia in 2020 to help their fellow citizens vote in the midst of the global pandemic 1:36:58 He is depriving resources of people who really need that representation And I'll 1:37:03 tell you what strikes me as most abhorentt and repugnant As reported in 1:37:08 the New York Times and Mr Karp stated it there were other law 1:37:15 firms and I'm quoting now from the New York Times of March 14th Some of the biggest competitors were calling top 1:37:21 lawyers at the bleaguered law firm one of the nation's most pretigious asking if they would jump ship along with their 1:37:29 lucrative clients The firms are named Sullivan and Cromwell and Kirkland and 1:37:34 Ellis and Congressman Raskin and I are writing those two firms along with the 1:37:41 others and asking them what they did to try to lure away those clients and 1:37:47 partners to try to poach their business and their resources Most apparent to 1:37:55 me is the potential that they acted in that way Uh Miss Conn do you know of any 1:38:04 uh specifics about attempts to take away lawyers or clients from either your firm 1:38:12 or others that you may have heard senator Blumenthal I read the same 1:38:17 report and I think it's particularly ironic given that I'm also reading reports that Kirkland and Ellis is now 1:38:22 in talks to acquies to the Trump administration in advance So any clients 1:38:28 thinking about jumping ship to any other law firm should remember that until they stand together there's no chance that 1:38:34 their new representation will be left alone either But I will just say I was a 1:38:40 third-year associate when I left and I wish you had someone more senior here to talk to you about this But unfortunately 1:38:47 you do not because the only people in this industry who have been willing to speak on this issue and give up their 1:38:52 salaries in order to do so are associates and I was not close to client work but thank you for I apologize for 1:39:00 going over my time I'd ask that uh the truth social and the New York Times 1:39:07 story that I quoted be entered into the record Without objection and the distinguished lady from Vermont Miss 1:39:13 Balant is recognized for her questioning Thank you to the chairs First of all I really want to acknowledge at the top 1:39:19 the courage that it took for each of you to come here today It shows an incredible amount of 1:39:25 fortitude These are incredibly scary times and it's not easy to stand up and speak 1:39:33 out against authoritarian authoritarians It's not easy to stand up and speak 1:39:38 against the president So all you have to do is look at our Republican colleagues both in the 1:39:44 House and the Senate who are remaining silent So the fact that you're willing to be here to show your face to speak up 1:39:51 for what's right it matters And I just I have to tell you that you this is a this 1:39:57 a critical moment right now And you are doing the right thing even though it's 1:40:02 frightening because you're giving all of us just a little bit of hope in these incredibly dark times Hope that we're 1:40:09 going to be able to turn the tide on this hope that more people will see you and and stand up to the corruption and 1:40:16 the cronyism and and just a little bit of hope that we'll remember that who we are as a people that we're beholden to 1:40:24 the rule of law and as as my colleagues have said that we are not beholden to a king or a 1:40:30 dictator So know that you are doing the right thing even though it feels terrifying 1:40:37 Authoritarians like Trump have nothing but contempt for the democratic process 1:40:43 and and for due process They mock the principle of accountability because they 1:40:48 have none They portray themselves as victims of so-called lawfare so they can 1:40:55 discredit an entire system That's what this is about This is about discrediting the system So we can't believe in 1:41:02 lawyers We can't believe in institutions and that that's 1:41:09 terrifying That is convincing all of us that the rot goes so deeply that the 1:41:15 foundation of our very democracy can't be trusted Ms Cohen in your resignation 1:41:21 letter which I have to say was was such a a a shining light you talk about fear 1:41:27 and powerlessness that motivated some of these law firms in the country to cave 1:41:32 And that's what they did They caved They are bootlicking They are bending a knee Make no mistake that's what's going on 1:41:39 here How is it some that some of the most prestigious and powerful law firms in this country feel that they have to 1:41:46 act in this way i wish I had a good answer for you but when I read things like Brad Karp saying 1:41:53 that it was an existential crisis for a firm whose profit per equity partner was over $7 million last year I don't know 1:42:00 what to tell you I apologize That's right That's exactly right It's not an 1:42:06 existential crisis where they're going to lose some money We're talking about the rule of 1:42:12 law It's disgusting and the courage that you have 1:42:19 to be here when so many of your senior colleagues say 1:42:26 nothing and gravel to a wouldbe 1:42:31 king speaks volumes about your 1:42:36 integrity We are in strange times There were protests across the 1:42:42 nation uh this weekend the Chief Justice of the Vermont State Supreme Court who 1:42:48 trust me does not usually comment on political matters He said quote "No 1:42:53 prior administration has taken such conservative action against the bar an 1:43:00 effort to erode an institutional pillar designed to check abuse of power." When 1:43:06 the Chief Justice is finding his voice and speaking publicly you would think 1:43:14 that some law firms could do the same when it's just about the almighty dollar 1:43:22 I want to conclude by saying Trump and all of his enablers 1:43:29 whether they're in Congress or whether they're at these law firms seem to 1:43:35 think that they can outrun this that somehow we're going to ride this out 1:43:41 We're not going to ride this out It's not going away It's only when good 1:43:47 people stand up and say "No I refuse to bow." And I my hat is off to all of you 1:43:55 You are showing courage that so many people in this moment are not And I just 1:44:01 I'm going to be able to go home this weekend at the end of this week and talk to my two kids I got two high school 1:44:08 students and they're going to want to know that there are good people doing the right thing and I'll be able to tell 1:44:14 them about this I yield back Senator Herono from the great state of 1:44:19 Hawaii Thank you very much and I I thank all of you for being here and obviously there 1:44:25 were a lot of people here who really care about adherence to the rule of law and I'm glad that I was able to make it 1:44:31 for uh this portion So I thank uh Congressman Raskin and uh Senator 1:44:38 Chef So um these are not normal times We have a president who doesn't think that 1:44:44 the rule of law applies to him hated and embedded by a Supreme Court in their 1:44:49 immunity decision So what we have is a president who will go after anybody 1:44:55 including countries corporations law firms anybody who he thinks can stand up to him And basically he is setting 1:45:03 things up so that he can extort from them what he wants And it it is uh more 1:45:11 than sickening to know that the the the people who are supposed to be standing 1:45:17 up for the rule of law I would say the lawyers judges in our country and we see 1:45:22 many of them just I would use the word caving and that that is why caving to 1:45:28 the demands of this very corrupt president So Rachel Miss Cohen thank you 1:45:36 very much for having the courage and for you to note that you know it's too bad that none none of the partners who are 1:45:41 making millions of dollars at your firm would stand up to do the right thing 1:45:47 It's pretty pathetic And for the 500 or so law firms that filed an amicus brief 1:45:53 uh on behalf of Perkins Coy I say uh aloha to them because if we don't all stick together we're all going to be 1:46:00 divided and conquered So thank you very much And for each of you some of you who I know worked for the 1:46:06 DOJ U in fact I think it's um Miss Young you work for the US Attorney's Office 1:46:16 you work for the DOJ you you have a a wonderful background And I remember when we had the hearing on um Pam Bondi 1:46:23 because she had said uh at some point that we should go after the uh 1:46:28 prosecutors prosecute the prosecutors and investigate the investigators during her confirmation hearing in the Senate 1:46:35 Um I asked one of the witnesses who uh 1:46:40 came on the second day of her hearings you know what uh what would be an 1:46:46 indication that she is in fact weaponizing the DOJ to exact retribution 1:46:53 retribution etc And this witness who happened to be a law professor at Georgetown my alma mater and she said 1:47:00 "You're going to see people resigning." And that's what's happening or you going to see people being fired 1:47:06 and that's what's happening All is not well in the DOJ I did want to ask a specific 1:47:13 question of um Ryan Coswell When deputy attorney general Tom 1:47:20 Blanchon came before uh the judiciary committee I asked him about why he was 1:47:27 allowing attrition at a different part of the criminal division the child exploitation 1:47:34 and obscenity section which fights child sexual exploitation and he responded by 1:47:40 suggesting that only US attorney's offices really prosecute crime uh crime 1:47:46 and downplaying the role of criminal division trial attorneys in the DOJ As 1:47:52 someone who worked in both the US attorney's office and criminal division can you explain why having criminal 1:47:58 division attorneys in DC is important and what we will lose if we gut the 1:48:04 criminal division [Music] thank you Senator uh what the criminal 1:48:10 division litigating sections like public integrity bring is a degree of expertise So certainly there are uh assistant US 1:48:17 attorneys around the country that can handle pro prosecutions of public corruption We uh have a deep bench of 1:48:26 very talented lawyers They're experts in this They can go all over the nation And you mentioned that I have been in a USA 1:48:32 in other districts When I was uh a prosecutor in San Diego from 2017 to 2020 I was prosecuting many 1:48:40 immigration cases and the entire time you had a public integrity section back in Washington Hypothetically if I had a 1:48:48 situation where potentially um a federal agent was allowing smuggling to happen 1:48:53 because that agent was corrupt I could call that public integrity section and get their help in prosecuting that case 1:49:01 And so if you worry about corruption if you worry about abuse of power it's good 1:49:07 to have 30 or so 30 or so attorneys who are able to take those cases on which 1:49:13 also allows the US attorney's offices to focus on violent crime immigration 1:49:19 crimes fraud um predation on children That's the 1:49:25 value of it So obviously but the the um justice 1:49:31 department is not particularly interested in um preserving the the expertise or keeping the expertise in 1:49:38 all these areas within the DOJ and they have their own uh agenda which is what 1:49:45 uh I would not call it the people's agenda again for um Miss Young uh thank 1:49:51 you you know for what you are doing and in fact 1:49:57 um when the AG Bondi and 1:50:04 interim DC US attorney Ed Martin referred to DOJ attorneys as the 1:50:09 president's lawyers I think you were asked this question before but do any of you and but especially for you Miss 1:50:16 Young do you consider the the attorneys at the DOJ or US attorney's office the president's attorneys and if not who are 1:50:23 they attorneys for sure Um DOJ attorneys are absolutely not the president's 1:50:28 attorneys The president is free to hire as many attorneys as he wants Uh 1:50:34 attorneys at DOJ represent the United States and the American people and that's it 1:50:41 to think that we now have a um attorney general who says she is the president's 1:50:47 attorney and she's certainly acting in that way So there you go It's it's just 1:50:53 uh entire takeover of I would say uh an institution the justice department that 1:51:00 is supposed to be prosecuting criminals and doing the things that that I know that you've been all of you have been 1:51:06 asked I can't tell what the time is there What what what is that that the time is up 1:51:12 Well that explains it But we have so many concerns and and again I thank each of you for resigning being fired doing 1:51:19 all the things that requires a lot of courage to do but we just need to um continue to fight back Thank you Thank 1:51:26 you Senator I recognize the distinguished gentleman from Illinois Mr Garcia of the Judiciary 1:51:33 Committee Thank you uh Ranking Member Rascin and Senator Schiff for convening 1:51:38 this most timely and important uh hearing to spotlight uh Donald Trump's 1:51:44 assault on our democracy and legal system and thanks all the witnesses for standing for justice and democracy as 1:51:51 well in your respective positions As an immigrant and an organizer who hails 1:51:57 from Chicago who's fought so for civil rights and against machine politics for decades I understand that the rule of 1:52:04 law has always been a work in progress in our country Even before Donald Trump 1:52:10 entered the political arena many immigrants and workingclass people have felt that the law was written and 1:52:16 enforced to benefit the wealthy and well-connected at their expense too often But in the history of this country 1:52:24 the president has ever weaponized the law to this extent No president has done 1:52:30 that before for his personal benefit and in the service of outright 1:52:36 authoritarianism My colleagues have highlighted many important issues and I want to focus on the administration's 1:52:43 shameful and unlawful treatment of immigrants There are too many abuses to 1:52:49 name in five minutes trying to end birthright citizenship which is written into the Constitution attacking 1:52:56 jurisdictions that have welcoming statuses and uh which studies show uh 1:53:03 lower crime rates and increased trust within those communities creating a 1:53:08 draconian registration requirement uh which goes into effect this week by the way on April 11 detaining Muhammad 1:53:16 Khalil uh and uh others solely because of their protected speech and of course 1:53:22 uh lawlessly invoking the Alien Enemies Act and false pretenses to detain uh 1:53:29 people and spend taxpayer dollars to send them to a notorious prison in El 1:53:35 Salvador One of those people is Kilmar Abrego Garcia a Maryland resident father 1:53:41 and a metal worker won the administration sent to El Salvador 1:53:46 despite Judge Bolberg's ruling and despite a 2019 court order specifically 1:53:53 prohibiting him from being removed to that country because of the risk of persecution Last week the administration 1:54:01 uh admitted that its removal of Mr Abrego Garcia was a mistake At a hearing 1:54:08 on Friday a senior career DOJ official Arez Raveni uh expressed frustration 1:54:15 that the Trump administration had taken these actions and produced no evidence 1:54:20 that Mr Abdrigo Garcia is gang affiliated or that his removal was justified The judge then ruled that the 1:54:28 treatment of Mr Garcia was shocking and illegal and order his return to the US 1:54:34 But instead of following the law Attorney General Bandi suspended Mr 1:54:39 Raveni and after the fourth circuit refused to block the judge's order the DOJ has now asked the Supreme Court to 1:54:47 step in and it will A ruling has not been entered yet on the merit of the 1:54:52 case In a sea of authoritarian lawlessness this case stands out So I 1:54:58 want to ask you Miss Young in your experience and based on public reporting 1:55:04 do you think Mr Raven's actions warrant suspension absolutely not And I know Aris Ravanei 1:55:11 he is one of the most zealous advocates in the entire department but he would never violate his ethical duties 1:55:18 including cander to the court What does his suspension tell you about 1:55:25 DOJ leadership and its credibility it tells me that it values loyalty over the 1:55:31 law and I question DOJ's credibility right now And do you believe that what 1:55:37 DOJ has done to Mr Abrego Garcia represents a miscarriage of justice i am 1:55:45 not going to con uh comment on a legal question like that I understand Thank 1:55:50 you for that We're living through one of the most shameful moments in our country's history and it's incumbent on 1:55:57 every one of us to fight back against this laws Your presence here is is an 1:56:03 important signal to the rest of the country that we are doing that Thank you 1:56:08 again Ranking Member Rasin and Senator Schiff for convening this hearing I 1:56:13 yield back Thank you uh Senator Welch from the great state of Vermont and a great champion of the rule of law Oh thank you 1:56:20 And it's wonderful to see my colleague from Vermont here Representative Ballot Thank you But it's mostly wonderful to 1:56:26 see you here Yeah I'm interested in talking to you about why you became attorneys in the culture of law as you 1:56:33 saw it and what you experienced U I'll start uh uh with you Mr Crosswell You 1:56:40 know it's so amazing the code of kind of you're a Marine and a lawyer 1:56:47 Um duty honor loyalty I mean just talk about the culture and why a culture is 1:56:54 important Not just personal values of an individual but an individual is part of a team who's part of a culture that is 1:57:02 the responsibility when you're in that to reinforce the positive values just talk to me a little bit about that and 1:57:09 then how that was challenged with what you faced 1:57:14 Thank you Senator Um you're right My my first job in public service was as a marine officer and you're you're you're 1:57:21 taught to always take the hard right over the easy wrong And um as an officer 1:57:28 you teach the people that you lead the same thing Um that also applies in any law firm 1:57:36 office any prosecutorial office It's about culture Um because when you work 1:57:41 for the government you have an enormous amount of power right you have to be a check on yourself so to speak And so 1:57:48 when I was in the Marine Corps I defended Marines accused of crimes at courts marshall And there were certain 1:57:55 clients that I got acquitted at trial They were found not guilty Um that wasn't because the prosecutors failed at 1:58:01 their job That was because they did their job Because they provided me with 1:58:07 the evidence where I could defend my client That's how it's supposed to be done right and we we need that in every 1:58:13 year's attorney's office No thank you Um Missy uh you know that's an incredible 1:58:19 decision to resign and it's resigning from a job you love and working with 1:58:25 people that you respect and admire Uh and then obviously the personal and professional implications that you're 1:58:31 going to have to deal with for some time So obviously there was a commitment to a culture that you saw being breached and 1:58:38 I I'm going to ask you just to elaborate a bit on that So I was actually fired The decision was 1:58:45 taken out of my hands Well you knew what would happen Yes you were fired Yeah I'm 1:58:50 sorry My role in the department was becoming increasingly untenable every day It was becoming more and more 1:58:56 difficult every day to do the job in a way that was consistent with my values and my obligations as an attorney And 1:59:03 honestly on some level it was a relief to be fired to take the decision out of my hands although I it required me to 1:59:10 leave behind a mission that I care deeply about and a team of people who I care deeply about and I take some heart 1:59:16 in the fact that they are still there carrying on the good work And you you 1:59:22 literally had a couple of armed marshals in route to your home when your teenage 1:59:27 uh child was home alone That's correct Yeah You know I'm going to go back to you Mr Crosswell Do do you do you treat 1:59:35 subordinates that way i mean is that at all acceptable 1:59:41 no Senator All right Uh and and Miss Co uh Miss Cohen uh you you're uh you were 1:59:50 friends with our beloved uh uh Mr Rang uh Mr Nebraskan's uh son and uh we've 1:59:58 heard a lot about him and uh I can only imagine the kind of commitment to public 2:00:03 service you had uh and found a way when you accepted an opportunity to work at a 2:00:08 major in this prestigious law firm uh that tell me about how you saw being in 2:00:16 Scadarps a major Wall Street really world law firm uh as being being also an 2:00:22 opportunity for you to live your values as an attorney your commitment to justice and and also have an opportunity 2:00:30 uh to work for folks who otherwise wouldn't be represented Absolutely In part I'm realizing that it 2:00:36 was just very good marketing but I do think that while I was on the job I had unlimited proono hours It was perhaps 2:00:44 the most important thing to me when selecting a law firm because I wanted to 2:00:49 get trained up on the private sector things My past work was in public education and I I needed to understand 2:00:55 how those things work It drew me to finance but I devoted anywhere from 20 to 33% of my hours to proono every 2:01:04 year And ultimately that is why I resigned I'd love to say it was an abstract rule of law anything else but I 2:01:11 did a decent amount of immigration proono representation and actions by this administration are making it very 2:01:17 clear that that is soon going to be viewed or already is viewed as adverse to the administration despite the fact 2:01:23 that it is just to allow people to survive when they are fleeing harm and persecution and 2:01:29 death And I couldn't I couldn't stay at a place that I knew was on the verge of 2:01:34 of not allowing me to take representations that the president viewed as adverse knowing what he views as adverse 2:01:40 to him Right Well thank you all very much Thank you Thank you Thank you 2:01:46 Senator I want to thank uh all of our witnesses for testifying 2:01:52 today Everyone in this room grew up in a period since World War II where we were 2:01:59 used to seeing a world that was ever increasing in its freedoms We saw walls come down We saw new nations born We 2:02:07 saw the ever greater ability to express ourselves to practice our faith to 2:02:14 associate with whom we would and we came to believe it was inexurable We came to believe that it was like the laws of 2:02:20 gravity or it was uh as Martin Luther King said the moral arc of the universe always bending towards 2:02:27 justice until all of a sudden it wasn't bending towards justice And we've come to realize much to our 2:02:34 shock that there's nothing inevitable about this There's nothing inevitable about democracy or 2:02:41 democratization That this experiment in this country this great experiment 2:02:46 self-governance now two and a half centuries old is not inevitable It was improbable at its 2:02:52 start And we've witnessed something we never would have imagined this country We have witnessed with with incredible 2:03:00 rapidity the creation of a climate of fear by this administration We 2:03:07 see universities afraid to speak out to defend their own 2:03:13 students to defend their own academic freedom You see universities rushing to 2:03:19 make deals with the administration You see universities cowed into silence uh 2:03:25 not stepping up to defend other universities You see members of the press excluded from public events 2:03:32 because they don't use the administration's favored parliament and you don't see other 2:03:38 members of the press in solidarity with them You see law firms rush to cut 2:03:44 separate deals You see lawyers purged from the 2:03:50 Department of Justice You see FBI agents purged from the bureau You see scientists purged from their 2:03:57 agencies A wholesale effort to weed out and drive out anyone of independent 2:04:05 thinking anyone who will stand up and defend the rule of law or science or the 2:04:11 freedom of thought or expression right down to ordinary citizens who are now 2:04:18 afraid If the government of the United States can pluck a man off the street and send him to a prison in El 2:04:25 Salvador without any kind of due process or any process 2:04:33 whatsoever then no one is safe And if the government's response to that is to 2:04:39 discipline a lawyer who dares to speak the truth to a court then no one is 2:04:48 safe And the answer to this climate of fear there really is only one answer and 2:04:54 you're seeing it today and that is courage We must demonstrate courage in the face 2:05:00 of this fear Uh in in this very committee room or one like 2:05:05 it Joseph McCarthy and his allies made the country afraid and caused people to inform on 2:05:14 each other and betray each other Allowed people and and to be 2:05:19 driven out of the government and to be persecuted Uh and we wondered how that 2:05:27 could be We wondered how could so many people be 2:05:32 complicit Well now we know Now we know Now we have witnessed it in our own 2:05:39 time But I will say this of the brave witnesses uh who have come and 2:05:45 testified today All the rest of us have to ask 2:05:50 ourselves looking back at the McCarthy era what would we have done what would we have 2:05:57 done if we were faced with the loss of our jobs if we were faced with the loss of our 2:06:03 livelihood if we were faced with the loss of our position what would we have done well you don't have to ask that 2:06:11 question Your being here is all the answer uh anyone could demand and we are 2:06:19 deeply deeply grateful to you Uh I yield to uh my colleague and friend Jamie 2:06:24 Rascin Thank you Senator Schiff and thank you for your your leadership Um it's been an honor to conduct this 2:06:31 proceeding with you with all these wonderful guests and everybody looking uh at the proceedings across America And 2:06:38 thank you to our great witnesses here Uh Ben Franklin once said "Make yourself a 2:06:44 sheep and the wolves will eat you." And you are for people who have not made yourselves into sheep You've shown us 2:06:51 how to stand tough and stand strong against tyranny and 2:06:57 desperatism And you and all of my colleagues here are speaking today in 2:07:05 the spirit of our constitution We have an anti- monarchical constitution We've got no 2:07:12 kings here We have the freedom of speech We've got no queens here no emperors 2:07:19 here and we have no slaves here And we have no surfs here Just people citizens all of us together 2:07:28 standing equally under the equal protection clause We have an anti- 2:07:35 monarchical constitution It forbids titles of nobility It was so important to the 2:07:41 framers Congress cannot award or recognize titles of nobility We've got an anti- cruelty 2:07:49 constitution The eth amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment We've got an anti-corruption constitution It 2:07:57 guarantees due process to everyone It guarantees equal protection under the 2:08:02 laws as well as freedom of speech and freedom of the press and free assembly the right to petition government for 2:08:08 redress of grievances free exercise of religion no establishment of 2:08:14 religion And so we say to the 2:08:20 courts as Miss Cohen said you're an important line of defense I don't think that you're the last line of defense I 2:08:26 think the people will always be the last line of defense but you're a significant line of defense for us Right now we have 2:08:33 68 court orders that have been rendered by federal district courts preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining 2:08:40 orders against all of the lawlessness that's taken place And we hope that the 2:08:46 US Supreme Court which we know Donald Trump bragged about having packed and 2:08:52 stacked in order to overthrow Row versus Wade and get uh the DOS decision We know 2:08:58 that the court may be in a different posture on some of these things but we ask all of the justices to live their 2:09:06 oaths of office to uphold the constitution and the rule of law I ask 2:09:12 them I ask uh everybody in Congress I ask everybody in the country to go back and read the steel seizure case from 2:09:19 1952 where President Truman ordered the seizure of the steel mills in the middle 2:09:25 of a war in the middle of the Korean War He said it was a national security crisis and we couldn't afford to have a 2:09:32 a strike and a standoff between the unions and the management And so he just ordered that all of the steel mills be 2:09:40 seized And the Supreme Court came back with a remarkable decision saying the 2:09:46 president gets his power only from either the explicit text of the 2:09:51 Constitution or from Congress And Congress had already rejected the idea that the president 2:09:59 should have the power to to seize the steel mills And so the court said in a six-to3 decision the constitution 2:10:06 doesn't grant you that power and Congress forbade you that power And Justice Jackson in his famous 2:10:12 concurrence said "At that point your power Mr President is at its lowest eB." 2:10:17 But here's the remarkable thing about the decision which is indeed the paradigm for interpreting executive 2:10:24 power As uh Justice Amy Coney Barrett said in her um confirmation hearings 2:10:32 over here in the Senate the the remarkable thing about the decision is that there were 2:10:38 nine Democrats most of them New Deal liberal Democrats on the Supreme Court 2:10:43 at that moment President Roosevelt had been in for four terms Truman had come 2:10:48 in The these people they were friends A lot of the justices had served in the Roosevelt administration or in the uh uh 2:10:57 in the Truman administration Some had been in the Department of Justice And in fact the 2:11:03 three justices in descent taunted them saying "You said this was totally fine 2:11:08 You wanted this to be a power that the president would have And now you're on the court and you're saying the 2:11:13 president does have this power." But it was really their finest moment because they distinguished their roles as 2:11:20 partisans when they were either in Congress or in the administration from their role as justices upholding the 2:11:26 Constitution and the rule of law And they said despite the fact that this was 2:11:32 their team they could not allow the president to overstep his bounds in that 2:11:39 way And after the case was rendered Justice Jackson was so nervous that 2:11:45 President Truman would never speak to him again that he had a dinner party with all the justices and he invited um 2:11:52 President Truman to come over there and um there was a round of toasts and 2:11:58 Truman said to Justice Jackson "Well I don't know if I like your law that much 2:12:03 but this is a hell of a good bourbon you're serving us tonight." So uh we 2:12:08 hope that the justices will live up to their titles They're the only jurists in 2:12:14 the federal system who get the title of justice Everybody else is a judge And we 2:12:19 hope these justices will act with justice And I want to just say finally about the law firms because I've been 2:12:26 working with Senator Blumenthal and with Miss Scandlin uh on the question of the law firms Um there is no safety in 2:12:34 appeasement There just is no safety and appeasement These law firms have bargained away um $40 million tens of 2:12:43 millions of dollars in pro bono assistance Well now if Donald Trump gets to choose who your clients are going to 2:12:50 be right and you're going to end up representing I don't know the National Rifle Association the National Right to 2:12:57 Life Committee you name it Anti-environment anti-LGBTQ whatever it is Now not only 2:13:05 are you going to have to put the resources of your firm into these causes on behalf of a president who just shook 2:13:12 your firm down but you're not going to be able to take any of the clients on 2:13:18 the other side because that's a conflict now You are conflicted out of 2:13:23 representing the pro- environment the pro-choice groups the unions If you've 2:13:28 taken the people um on the other side there is no safety in appeasing a tyrant 2:13:35 There's no safety um in selling out And these people are teaching us what the 2:13:41 meaning of the rule of law really is Ben Franklin said "We must all hang together 2:13:46 or we will all hang separately." Let's hang together right now Let's stand tall 2:13:52 America for our Constitution our rule of law and our democracy I yield back to you Senator Sh I thank you uh ranking 2:14:00 member Asin And we are adjourned [Applause]
FATIGUED Trump LOSES IT at Evening Speech MeidasTouch Apr 8, 2025
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump losing his mind on stage at the National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner.
Transcript
0:00 i've covered a lot of Donald Trump's 0:02 speeches here on the Midas Touch Network 0:04 the one he gave this evening at the 0:06 National Republican Congressional 0:07 Committee dinner is certainly up there 0:09 on the most demented in real time as 0:12 he's giving the speech the futures 0:15 market in the United States was 0:17 plummeting as Donald Trump continued to 0:19 talk about 104% tariffs on China donald 0:24 Trump then also talked about placing 0:26 tariffs on American pharmaceuticals so 0:29 that Americans would struggle to get 0:31 essential medication and then Donald 0:34 Trump started talking about windmills 0:36 again by the way just take a look at 0:40 Donald Trump's physical appearance i 0:42 mean number one you can see his tiny 0:44 hands there on stage you can see his 0:47 face was glowing this bizarre orange 0:50 color it's fitting he's dressed for this 0:54 dinner like he's aboard the Titanic as 0:57 it sinks i mean just just look at him 1:00 physically right there um as our 1:02 editor-in-chief Ron Philipowski said 1:04 about this speech as it continued and 1:07 continue he goes "This is normally the 1:09 time when the nurse at an assisted 1:12 living facility reminds the patient to 1:15 stop talking and finish the mashed 1:18 potatoes and go to sleep." Let me show 1:20 you what went down donald Trump started 1:23 talking about the 1:25 104% tariffs on China how proud he is to 1:28 do that and that it's our turn to do the 1:31 ripping play this clip and people are 1:35 paying tariffs countries are paying 1:37 tariffs right now China is paying a 104% 1:42 tariff think of it 1:46 104% now it sounds ridiculous but they 1:49 charged us for many items 100% 125% many 1:53 countries have they've ripped us off 1:55 left and right but now it's our turn to 1:59 do the ripping that's okay we're gonna 2:02 make our country even next Donald Trump 2:05 talks about how states really don't 2:08 matter they're just an agent of the 2:10 federal government play this clip for it 2:12 i think it's something that you you 2:14 should work on you should go out and put 2:16 a bill in demanding you demand you know 2:19 because the states are just an agent of 2:21 the federal government of you you're to 2:23 demand paper ballots to demand one-day 2:26 elections you know what they do when 2:28 it's longer than one day all of a sudden 2:30 well we're fixing the room up move those 2:32 boxes we're putting an air conditioner 2:33 oh 2:34 really okay more Republicans the party 2:38 of states rights hey am I right then 2:41 Donald Trump talks about placing tariffs 2:43 on pharmaceuticals yes as Dr angela 2:47 Rasbusen says great idea Donald 2:49 americans are going to love not being 2:51 able to afford essential medications 2:53 play this clip put we're going to tariff 2:54 our pharmaceuticals and once we do that 2:57 they're going to come rushing back into 2:59 our country because we're the big market 3:01 the advantage we have over everybody is 3:03 that we're the big market so we're going 3:05 to be announcing very shortly a major 3:07 tariff on 3:09 pharmaceuticals and when you and when 3:12 they hear that they will leave China 3:15 they will leave other places because 3:17 they have to sell most of their product 3:18 is sold here and again just look at 3:21 Donald his ears different color than his 3:23 the whole thing is very weird trump like 3:25 glowing in the dark literally here play 3:27 this clip 3:29 i wonder if you ever turn the room this 3:31 way you know it's interesting because I 3:33 love real estate i love ballrooms have 3:35 nice ballrooms a lot of them i wonder if 3:37 they ever turned it this way instead so 3:39 might be interesting this way I'm not 3:41 talking to a wall 3:44 next Donald Trump says that anybody who 3:46 tells you that the tariffs on China are 3:50 taxes on Americans are lying donald it's 3:53 a tax on Americans that's literally what 3:56 a tariff is here play this clip until 3:58 they make a deal with us that's what 4:00 it's going to be i think they'll make a 4:02 deal at some point china will they want 4:05 to make a deal i They really do they 4:07 want to make a deal they just don't know 4:08 how to get it started because they're 4:10 proud people 4:11 china will now pay uh a big number to 4:16 our treasury this is all taxes and don't 4:19 let them keep telling you that this is a 4:21 tax on our people i hate that you know 4:23 they say it's a tax no often much of it 4:26 is paid and and hey look what happened 4:28 during my first term we had then Donald 4:30 Trump starts whining about windmills and 4:33 you won't be able to sell your home if 4:36 you have a windmill nearby play this 4:38 clip between that and windmills you can 4:39 have windmills too most expensive form 4:41 of energy ever anybody have a windmill 4:44 by your house congratulations you'll 4:45 never sell your 4:47 house and today I signed 4:49 historic executive orders to unleash 4:52 coal production to the highest levels 5:00 ever because you know coal is the most 5:03 powerful thing we have more of it than 5:05 any we have more liquid gold under our 5:07 feet oil and gas and we have more coal 5:10 than any other country any other no 5:12 other country has as much as we have all 5:14 different forms of coal and take a look 5:17 at China they're building two coal 5:20 plants a week think of that two a week 5:25 we are screwing around with wind 5:29 oh 5:31 wind these people are crazy they say "Oh 5:34 it's great for the environment." Yeah it 5:36 kills all your birds hey Donald I just 5:38 think Americans are trying to afford a 5:41 home number one then number two we can 5:44 talk about your deranged anger towards 5:48 windmills maybe make housing more 5:50 affordable which was one of your day one 5:52 promises that you broke as well then 5:54 Donald Trump says "You know what I love 5:56 about coal miners?" He goes "They don't 5:59 want gigs and widgets and waggets and 6:03 woos they want coal." Beautiful guys i 6:08 didn't want to have any arm wrestling 6:09 contests with any of them i can tell you 6:11 that they're good strong guys that's 6:12 what they want to do they love to dig 6:14 hole that's what they want to do they 6:16 don't want to do gigs and widgets and 6:18 wadgets they don't want to build cell 6:20 phones with their hands they're big 6:22 strong hands and daughter remember when 6:24 Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia 6:27 and she had decimated them three weeks 6:30 before in like some state where they 6:33 make little tiny circuit boards then 6:36 Donald Trump goes into this part of his 6:38 speech where it kind of has this 6:39 extortive element where he looks at the 6:42 MAGA Republicans and he's like "You 6:44 better pass the budget right now that 6:47 gives the tax cuts to the billionaires 6:49 because the alternative is hell do you 6:51 want to face hell?" Play this clip the 6:54 one thing they always vote in unison you 6:56 don't see somebody that's holding up i'm 6:58 gonna hold up and the alternative is is 7:01 hell you know the alternative is hell so 7:04 the Republicans just have one little 7:06 thing the Republican party has to do is 7:08 get together and damn vote if you're a 7:11 single guy or a second guy and you fight 7:14 like hell for what you get and then in 7:16 the end you have to vote because the 7:17 policy is phenomenal you know they don't 7:19 get every little ounce doesn't work that 7:22 way and this and by the way it's beyond 7:26 puzzling that the MAGA Republicans like 7:29 "Oh my god he said that they're going to 7:31 be hell oh I'm scared of this guy this 7:33 guy's a demented individual." Like we're 7:36 watching somebody again going back to 7:38 what our editor-inchief Ron Philipsky 7:40 says that in normal times there would be 7:43 a nurse saying "Finish your mashed 7:45 potatoes let's go to sleep." Next up 7:48 Donald Trump then talks about how the 7:51 budget for tax cuts for the billionaires 7:54 better not get derailed by stupid 7:56 Republicans by stupid people here play 7:58 this clip four years ago if we follow 8:01 through on this agenda we will be 8:02 rewarded with a phenomenal economy and a 8:05 massive victory at the ballot box in 8:08 2026 because we will have a record of 8:11 triumph like no president has ever had 8:14 like no Congress has ever had they will 8:18 not be able to even touch your seat your 8:20 seat is secure and we'll pick up 40 50 8:23 or even 60 seats and we'll have 8:26 something that's going to be smooth 8:27 sailing for years to come if we don't 8:30 get it done because of stupidity or a 8:32 couple of people that want to show how 8:34 great they are uh you just have to laugh 8:37 at them or smile at them or cry right in 8:39 their face and then Donald Trump starts 8:42 talking about Democratic Senator Adam 8:44 Schiff he says he has a skinny neck and 8:46 a big head here play this clip and the 8:50 Adam shifty shifts can you believe this 8:52 guy 8:54 he's got the smallest neck I've ever 8:57 seen and the biggest head we call him 8:59 watermelon head how I'd say "How could 9:01 that big fat face stand on a a neck that 9:05 looked like this finger how can it?" It 9:08 was the weirdest thing it's 9:09 a It's a mystery nobody can understand 9:13 it but he's one of the most dishonest 9:15 human beings I've ever seen and you know 9:17 how we can allow people like that to run 9:20 in office is a shame but we did he was 9:23 in charge of the witch hunt you know he 9:24 was in charge of the fake witch hunt 9:26 with Russia Russia Russia it was a 9:28 madeup story and then Donald Trump I 9:30 think gives away the whole game here 9:32 about why he's tariffed the world where 9:35 Donald Trump says all these countries 9:37 are giving me calls now to kiss my ass 9:40 it was all an ego play it's all out of 9:43 the authoritarian playbook where Trump 9:45 wants companies to beg him for 9:47 exemptions and countries to call him and 9:50 beg him and meanwhile the MAGA 9:53 Republicans who control the House and 9:55 the Senate who should control the tariff 9:57 authority are doing nothing play this 10:00 clip this is the largest transaction in 10:02 the history of our country and don't let 10:05 some of these politicians go around 10:06 saying you know cuz I'm telling you 10:09 these countries are calling us up 10:11 kissing my ass they are they are dying 10:14 to make a deal please please sir make a 10:16 deal i'll do anything i'll do anything 10:19 sir then Donald Trump says "But we're 10:21 still going to kick the Democrats ass in 10:23 midterms let's play this one." To have 10:26 that happen to your son and you know has 10:29 a bad effect on a family a bad effect 10:31 you know are you okay Don i am dead but 10:33 I don't understand they keep tying me to 10:35 Russia i don't know anything about 10:36 Russia he didn't know a damn thing about 10:38 Russia it's a disgraceful situation 10:42 that's why we got to kick their asses in 10:43 the midterms so we got to kick their 10:45 asses 10:46 again in four years then Donald Trump 10:50 says he knows what he's doing let's play 10:52 this clip the baseline we call 10:55 it companies are pouring back into our 10:58 country with plants there's a run on 11:00 sites there's a run on old plants most 11:03 of them are being ripped down for new 11:04 plants uh they've stopped building in 11:07 Mexico four or five plants and they're 11:09 come they're all coming into the United 11:11 States i know what the hell I'm doing i 11:14 know what I'm doing and you know what 11:16 I'm doing too that's why you vote for me 11:18 trump says that he thinks that uh the 11:21 MAGA Republicans are actually being 11:22 helped a lot by this tariff situation 11:24 play this clip because that's going to 11:26 be and I really 11:28 think and I really think we're helped a 11:31 lot by the tariff situation that's going 11:33 on which is a good situation not a bad 11:35 it's great it's going to be legendary 11:37 you watch legendary in a positive way i 11:39 have to say uh it's going to be 11:41 legendary but I really And then Donald 11:43 Trump says this was the most successful 11:45 100 days in the history of an American 11:47 presidency let's play this clip i had 11:50 somebody say the most 11:52 successful month first month in the 11:54 history now they said the most 11:56 successful 100 days in the history of 11:58 our country and I I believe that's right 12:01 and we're going to continue that way if 12:03 not more so and we're going to do 12:05 tremendously in midterms there's no this 12:07 odd event uh began by MAGA Republican 12:10 Congress member Tom Emmer just screaming 12:13 randomly at the NRCC dinner in DC play 12:16 this clip hello fellow 12:19 Republicans no hello fe fellow 12:23 Republicans where are 12:25 you i know this is the uh this is the 12:28 cheap time you get to hear from me then 12:30 you're going to get energy out of Steve 12:32 Scaliz and you're going to get some 12:34 energy out of our speaker Mike Johnson 12:36 but guess what the show is Donald J 12:40 trump so get ready we're And then I 12:43 guess there's a new nickname alert where 12:45 MAGA Republican Congress member Tom 12:47 Emmer accidentally calls Donald Trump 12:49 the C-word let's play the clip not an 12:52 option president Trump is counting on us 12:55 the American people uh there you have it 12:57 folks uh this speech lasted 90 minutes 13:01 and longer supposed to be a short speech 13:04 our futures markets tanking while the 13:06 speech is taking place markets are 13:08 crashing trump impo engaging in this 13:11 reckless trade war against China and the 13:14 world ridiculous we'll keep you posted 13:16 every step of the way here on the Meidas 13:18 Network hit subscribe let's get to 5 13:20 million subscribers thanks for watching 13:22 love this video continue the 13:24 conversation by following us on 13:25 Instagram Meidasouch and help us blow 13:28 past 1 million followers
LIVE: MAGA gets UNCOVERED as PANICKED Trump CAVES by Anthony Davis and Ron Filipkowski 4/9/25
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable. Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Apr 09, 2025, 11:18 AM
On today’s UNCOVERED, Ron and Anthony react to Trump’s sudden about turn on tariffs, insider trading and the stock market reaction. Plus, Musk vs Navarro, Trump on Gaza, tariffs on pharmaceuticals and that birthday military parade. Also, Noem out with ICE, pulling troops from Europe and the Texas Senator race causing infighting amongst Republican candidates.
Former Federal Prosecutor Ron Filipkowski and British journalist Anthony Davis expose the epidemic of false propaganda pushing Republican politics to the extreme far-right. A new episode every Wednesday.
Transcript
Welcome to Wednesday and to uncovered i'm Anthony Davis he's Ron Phillipskowski together we uncover the MAGA propaganda that is not fully covered by the mainstream and corporate media uh Ron it's as if he times these things just for this show last week at around this time he was in the Rose Garden i'm talking about the disgraced President Donald Trump of course uh with that chart that he'd made in his uh kindergarten and was exposing these these tariffs today a week later comes the reversal the announcement that no I was only joking including some news that oh apparently those tariffs were a maximum they were never the actual amount i mean the backpedaling the backtracking is insane he he posted on Truth Social i'll read his post in just a moment but I want to get your reaction first to the news that has ricocheted around the world this morning well you know first of all every everybody acting like this is over is a really bad take it's far from over i mean China's our largest trading partner and we have he he announced simultaneously with the latest pause that he's increasing yet again the tariffs on China to 125% so I mean that is insane china has tremendous leverage over us doesn't seem like she is going to give him an out or back down to allow him to declare victory because I'm sure that's what he's looking for and she is not giving it to him so plus there's 10% global tariffs still so you know yes he he he he went from like completely totally bonkers insane to to a policy that's very insane you know that that's so we've gone from like Defcon 10 to Defcon 9 so yeah I mean it's like MAG is celebrating like declaring victory like this is some kind of great win when it's just stupidity the bottom line is this the bond market is what did it you know he he can he can react to he can withstand or weather volatility in the economy in the stock market i think he was prepared to hunker down and do that based on what everybody was saying last night from the inside the administration but when the bond market rates went way up last night and this morning that is a economy killer in short order and a national debt exploder at the time he's trying to pass a budget in Congress because when the bond yields go up the cost of borrowing goes up for governments and for businesses and that is a economy killer much more than the stock market going up and down so when that happened and he admitted that today when after he reversed his policy and he came out and he was asked point blank was it the bond markets that got you skittish and he he conceded that yes that was a problem so you know whatever spin or whatever propaganda they want to put out there's one reason why he did this and it was the bond market we should also just mentioned the posting that he made earlier this morning where he tipped off his followers on Truth Social that it was a good time to buy stock he posted this at 9:37 a.m this is a great time to buy DJT so that was that was the the tip off and then literally was it four hours later let's look at the uh the the time posting on on this was 108 right an hour later okay so you gave people an hour to make literally billions of dollars well no no you're looking at yours is Pacific time I think there oh yeah pacific that came out at 1:18 p.m eastern time right okay so it was 4 hours later it was 4 hours later all right so let me read this this post that he this was his excuse that he obviously didn't write this because you can tell by just by the the way it's laid out that he didn't write it but uh he may have dictated some of it he said "Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States to 125% effective immediately at some point hopefully in the near future China will realize that the days of ripping off the USA and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable conversely and based on the fact that more than 75 countries have called representatives of the United States including the Department of Commerce Treasury and the and the USR to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to trade trade barriers tariffs currency manipulation and non-monetary tariffs that these countries have not at my strong suggestion retaliated in any way shape or form against the United States excuse me i have authorized a 90-day pause and a substantially lower reciprocal tariff during this period of 10% also effective immediately thank you for your attention to this matter i mean this is we can tell he didn't write that because there were commas and full stops in the right place right would I be right in saying that you you've analyzed a lot of these things this was obviously a statement that was created and then was repurposed for for Truth Social it it was written by Natalie Hara yeah who's his like constant companion yeah who who knows how to like insert some bizarre inappropriate capitals and exclamation points to make it appear like it's the the stable genius yeah she's the one that follows him around with the printer to print stuff out and he's kind of they've become inseparable apparently i mean that whole thing right there is nonsense everything you just read is is BS it's just the idea that like we're going to roll out this major new policy initiative all the members of my administration are out there defending it my US trade ambassador is testifying as as that was put out his trade ambassador was testifying before Congress he had finished he was in the middle of four hours of testimony defending the policy when that was put out and someone told him to check his phone and he had to check his phone and go "Oh guys everything I just said for the last four hours forget all that." Like the idea that this is some kind of grandm strategy is absurd you know and as far as going back to the insider trading possibility you know there's a lot of stuff swirling around that tweet from this morning that post i know most people believe that you know this is some kind of this is market manipulation and all that yes it is market manipulation but you know if he was trying to tip off his friends he would have just told him privately i'm inclined to believe that at the time he posted that 4 hours earlier he still hadn't made up his mind what he was going to do he was just trying to bolster the market as it opened but is that not market manipulation anyway of course it is that the president should not be saying stuff like that as we know no president ever has there has never been a president in the history of United States that has ever told anyone to buy or not buy stock that has never happened before and and Elon got into trouble with this with Tesla a few years ago didn't he famously he got socked with a huge fine for it a hu like hundreds of billions hundreds of millions of dollars yeah so so it it and and we should say that the market obviously has has increased significantly and consequently a lot of people that did buy in in the dip have probably made an awful lot of money it it's it's it's some um it's helpful for people who were really worried about their 401ks but you know some people I read one guy posted "I've just lost $11,000 off of my 401k." You know where's that supposed to come from but as you say it's actually the trade war with China that is more serious in this moment because we knew that he was going to be chopping and changing because that's what he does but the China thing is a long-standing thing and I've been referring to this instead of tariffs as a trade war you know Trump was desperate to go to war and this it seems in the modern day is what war looks like yeah he wasn't getting any traction with you know shooting missiles at Houthies in the desert of Yemen yeah he wasn't getting any uh credit for that so so he's got to get some headlines some other way but look China I mean they pass five-year budgets we We can't even pass an annual budget in this country we haven't done it in over two years we do continuing resolutions because we can't pass budgets they pass five-year plans so you know they play the long game they have tons of capital they don't have the debt that we have they are very well positioned for this trade war we are not we are very exposed and other countries who if we did ever get in a trade war with China other countries that would come to our rescue like South Korea Japan the European Union are disincined to do that at this point australia so I mean they've been burned here a few times right now they don't react to anything Trump does at this point especially the EU i mean the EU ministers I paid attention to what they said this week they're all just like "We're just we're not going to react anymore to any of this nonsense we're just going to sit back and let Trump and the United States destroy themselves and we're just going to go about our business." And and and what uh what the EU president said is like if a month from now you know these tariffs are still in place we'll retaliate but right now you know we don't know what's going to happen from day to day so we're not going to react to every little thing he does and you know that's what she is doing as well but we will not we will not win a trade war with China because see she doesn't have to worry about consumers taking to the streets and protesting and voting him out of office or voting his members of his party out of office he doesn't have to worry about that that's why they can afford to play the long game but these Republicans in Congress have to face voters in 18 months and voters are pissed off right now over all of this chaos and so that's why Trump has to Trump can't play the long game trump's got to react to the to the to the mood of the voters dayto day week to week whereas China does not so I I this the only way this ends is with a lot of pain for the United States with a war with trade war with China or a surrender where Trump somehow tries to save face and declare victory over some some nonsense um and and and lifts the tariffs on China because the the rhetoric out of the White House is oh well Trump was planning on doing this all along that's that's how they're positioning this because of course they'll say anything to to protect him let's look at what he was saying last night when he was all dressed up in his uh tuxedo like an old fat penguin before the bond market went nuts exactly let's take a look but this is the largest transaction in the history of our country and don't let some of these politicians go around say you know cuz I'm telling you these countries are calling us up kissing my ass they are they are dying to make a deal please please sir make a deal i'll do anything i'll do anything sir i mean his skin was actually green there to match his green hair he's starting to look like the Joker out of a Batman show th this this again I was watching that clip last night and I was thinking about what he was saying about you know them them kissing his ass and there was a weird kind of sadistic pleasure attached to this and it made me realize that as we've spoken about before the guy the guy is is a sadist you know he he the idea of shutting down the world economy just so that people can come graveling to him to because he hates himself so much gives him a little bit of pleasure is is really what all this is about this is why you don't put people like this in charge of world economies or nuclear codes or running the largest and most powerful country in the world he he is a he is simply too flawed and and I don't know just watching that it just makes me feel like the the the madness the insanity again it's something we forget to talk about but he is just nuts ron I mean that right there is really what it's all about for him is I'm sure some people did call but I'm sure that that number is wildly exaggerated of course yeah and and what he claims they said is wildly exaggerated i I'm sure that you know presidents around the world who were responsible did the responsible thing and put in a call and said "Hey what's going on can we talk is there any way to resolve this?" And of course Trump chalks that into the column of they're kissing my ass right but look I've heard these "Sir please I'm begging you stories for 40 years out of Trump." I heard these stories in the 1980s yeah i heard that I' I've listened to like 90% of Trump's rally speeches probably 50% of his interviews since 2016 and I've heard different versions of that what you just heard a thousand times whether it's construction workers steel workers uh CEOs prime ministers everybody is supposedly always coming up to Trump with tears in their eyes calling him sir begging him thanking him for saving their life or saving their country or whatever it's all [ __ ] it's it's the facade but it's that strong man autocratic thing it means so much to him to have powerful people the the concept that powerful people are bowing down to me is what is more important to him than just about anything else in the world and also you know to me all of these cases where they were trying to prosecute him for these crimes like over inflating the value of his properties i was thinking about Leticia James and all the work that these people were doing it's like you know if you can't see now how much of a lifetime criminal this guy is and how especially when it comes to overinflating values which is what this entire conversation is about this in the entire period is about it just it's almost like a guilty plea for all of these crimes he you know this is who he is this is how he's always done it extortion to him is sexy that's kind of what he gets off on let me show another clip from from this i just decided which Joker he is he's the Caesar Romero Joker from the 1960s TV show because it's important to be specific here it is deals and people are paying tariffs countries are paying tariffs right now China is paying a 104% tariff think of it 104% now it sounds ridiculous but they charged us for many items 100% 125% many countries have they've ripped us off left and right but now it's our turn to do the ripping that's okay and we're going to make our country even yeah he's he's getting applause cuz he's at the Republican National Dinner there maybe we should talk about the fact that he still doesn't understand what international trade is and what free trade is and the way he talks about countries ripping us off is because he looks at what comes in and what goes out and thinks that the difference is is a problem why has there not been more push back on the fact that he just doesn't know how international trade works i mean the people that are applauding are the ones paying the 104% tariff they are the ones paying it china will pay none of it i mean so they're applauding their own tax increases and that's what these are they're tax increases there are sales tax there are 104% sales tax which is now 125% sales tax on all goods from China and you know you might not think you buy that much from China but the components of the thing you know even if something doesn't say made in China on on the outside of it doesn't mean that there's not a lot of parts or raw materials or rare earths that are that those products were made from I mean you know you think about it china doesn't buy as much as we buy from them well what what does the what do we make in the United States that the average person in China wants to buy that he cannot get in his own country the same thing for a lower price that's the problem is labor costs in America are very high so if you want to protect certain industries from dumping or whatever it is whether it's a steel industry or a particular industry that's important to the national security of your country then then everyone understands that and every country does that but these across the board massive tariffs on every single thing that comes out of China is absolutely insane he thinks so you have to know the impact that that's going to have on the American economy and on the American consumer and on American investors and businesses so you can't sustain that for very long but his rationale is that they're going China is going to surrender china's going to give in and he's going to have this great victory and that's the flaw in the plan the flaw in the plan is that China's not Canada you know where we can almost capsize the Canadian economy if we really want to we can't do that with China and so that's the problem well China doesn't need us like we need it i suppose that's that's really ultimately the the issue here and he there is this kind of egoomania that goes with a lot of these people and Howard Lutnik's another one where they just think that America is where it's at and you know we do this the best and we're the best at that i mean there is a reason why American cars are not sold in Europe and and you know I grew up in Europe and the rhetoric and I apologize if anyone's offended by this but everyone thought American cars were crap they looked nice but they just ultimately didn't work and and that's been the rhetoric for decades but the other thing is that European car manufacturers that he's trying to claim have been ripping us off they build their cars in the US now well and he's complaining about the Europeans not buying our food like our beef and pork i mean you go to Europe why would you want to buy American beef have you been to Have you been to a butcher shop in Europe right i would never want to buy American meat no after visiting a Europe chlorinated chicken with antibiotics filled with water get them all nice and juicy double the weight we grow up thinking what beef and chicken and pork is supposed to look like yeah and then we go to a country in Europe where it actually is real and it doesn't even look like the same meat it looks completely different and tastes completely different same thing with the with wine and everything else i mean it's it's just like okay we have devised this this plan to be able to massroduce huge quantities of big foods that look great and have beautiful color and last a long time on the shelf but it's not the same food as what they're eating in other places around the world and that's why those places don't want to buy our food it's not because of any other reason that's why mortality numbers are so different in Europe people live so much longer than they do in in the US chronic disease and obesity is not the same as it in as it is in the US i I I don't know if I told you this i have a sign on my refrigerator that for my kids and it says "Is it food question mark or an industrially produced edible substance?" And so every time the kids go to the fridge they have to think about whether or not it's actually food and you know it's difficult but yeah you're right even a even a yogurt here doesn't taste much like it does and don't get me started on cheese um let's uh look at I mentioned Howard Lutnik let's let's look at him when he was on Fox trying to kind of make a claim for what manufacturing will look like if it if it comes to the US and notice he doesn't really understand or he certainly doesn't he's not able to recall the word automation i like the way he uses the word robots let's take a look now we're not going to have all factories come back like clothing manufacturing that's tough to bring back but what kind of manufacturing are you talking about returning here well don't you you can't just give that away see what's going to happen is robotics are going to replace the cheap labor that we've seen all across the world i mean think of what our factories did they went to the cheapest labor in the whole world slave labor cheap labor the worst environmental conditions polluting the heck out of it and then we bring back those cheap products here and we feel good about ourselves because we don't see the pain but yeah I don't know what he's talking about meanwhile Trump just signed four executive orders yesterday to invest in coal so um yeah if you want to talk about the worst pollutants then uh you know come back come back to the US do you do you think that Trump really does ever think about US manufacturing in terms of the citizens here getting jobs because I never hear him talking about people actually getting jobs no but you know we've talked about this the White House is very divided on this tariff stuff yeah and you have Lutnik and Navaro versus Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant Elon Musk on the other side who don't want this yeah and and there the Navaro Lutnik vision of the future US economy is that we cheap we won't have to compete with cheap labor we will be able to to have for example a garment manufacturing industry come back in the United States which we largely don't have anymore because robots are going to do all the manufacturing and so when he's asked the question which he was on Fox News well if robots have all these jobs now what are the people going to do and what they said is the people are all all the bluecollar workers this is what they their words They use this word bluecollar the bluecollar workers are all going to be robot repairmen they're going to they're going to be servicing the robots that are doing all the work this is how they envision the US economy now I have no doubt AI and robots are going to make everything now I have no doubt that over time AI and robots are going to manufacture a lot of stuff and make the world and the economy richer and a lot more efficient but you know the concept of like this is going to happen next year is is is crazy and the idea that there are going to be a 100 million Americans repairing robots is equally absurd the reality is that kind of economy makes a tiny handful of oligarchs insanely rich and makes everybody else surfs that's the economy that they envision and that's actually the economy that they want and they're not even using any credible research to make these points are they so much of this stuff is anecdotal it's off the top of their head it's stuff that they've kind of picked up on and they think about automation in a way that it just doesn't really apply and yet you know there is so much data on this stuff this is why they're shutting down universities and any kind of um research because they don't want people to say "Oh well actually that's not true." That you know there's been there's been research on this and and that simply doesn't add up they they're trying to shut all that down and you know I'm always the one to ring the authoritarian bell but this just goes back to Trump's dictatorship and and dictatorship is not just about one strong man but it's also about silencing all of the academics and all of the voices and all of the research so that when he makes a decision nobody can then criticize it well along those lines one important point here is this the founding fathers gave the power the tariff power to Congress in the constitution congress has the sole authority over tariffs and there is a reason for that because the founding fathers Madison all of them uh were worried about this kind of a scenario if one person has the power to to impose tariffs take tariffs off it creates chaos and creates insanity and no one should have the power to manipulate the United States economy like that what no one person should do that however what Congress did two months ago is pass a bill that gave Donald Trump the president complete cart blanch with tariffs and when all this insanity went down a couple days ago and the Senate scrambled and the Senate put together a bipartisan bill which was put together by Chuck Grassley Republican from Iowa yeah to take the tariff power away from Trump so we can't keep doing this to us and to the world mike Johnson in the House said two days ago "No we're not going to bring that up in the House even if it passes in the Senate we're going to let Trump do do his thing he deserves to have a chance to to do this tariff stuff." So they're going against the way that the founding fathers of this country set up the government to work and the Republicans in Congress have just given Trump a blank check to create this chaos they are the ones who are responsible for this and and a few people have been saying that that it's important that we remind people that it's the complicity of the Republicans in Congress that is allowing all of this chaos and it doesn't have to be this way if we vote them out in the midterms we can take strip Trump of tariff power right although that's a long ways away well I was going to say and and also you know the other fear as we've discussed before is that he brings he makes more use of these emergency powers which is what he's been doing for all of these things sure and says we can't have midterms because you know we are we are you know it's it's a it's a we're in crisis um that that would be very worrying but Trump did say yesterday words to the effect of I am Congress and Congress is me i mean they weren't there there doesn't seem to be any separation of of the executive everybody has fallen for his for his brainwashing yeah well we Congress is certainly not acting like a co-equal separate branch of the government yeah they're acting like his informal advisors where they they weigh in on occasion on things that he's doing but um not very strongly uh so I mean but that's definitely not there's no oversight there's no investigations of anything that they're doing there's no oversight there's no checks and balances it's just they they have allowed Trump to do whatever he wants to do it's not the way that the country is supposed to work and we we talked a couple weeks ago about the fact that our one bull work was the courts right that the courts were going to stand up and do the right thing and they had been doing the right thing but in the back of our minds in the back of that discussion was always the caveat of at some yes the district courts are ruling in our favor and stopping a lot of this nonsense but at some point these cases are going to reach the Supreme Court and then we don't know what's going to happen and that is now beginning to happen where the Supreme Court is weighing in and things are things are might get pretty dicey once that happens and even with Amy Coney Barrow who seems to be siding with Democrats on things it's still not enough justices to make it go uh the right way so I want to go back let's just go back to the trade thing because I've got this clip of Peter Navaro on on Fox we'll talk about his falling out with Elon Musk in just a minute but first let's look at his argument for US workers making iPhones in America and did the World Trade Organization but are we going to make iPhones we're going to do yeah we're going to be able to do it through through more automation and there's going to be plenty of jobs for robots plenty of jobs for humans i'm telling you Laura this is going to be a golden age and the thing like golden age for the robots yes my vacuum cleaner can't wait to get a job at Fox Con yeah i mean that's that's the Navaro Lutnik vision of the future US economy is robots are doing everything and and he even said like you you need to go out and buy your own robot from from Musk that Musk is going to be making them and you need to everyone needs to go out and buy a Musk robot so yeah it's uh it's absolutely crazy you know the the the thinking but you know the feud between him and Musk this week was pretty uh pretty heavy pretty serious and you know the odd thing is is that it looked for a time like Navaro was winning that feud i mean you had you had Trump saying you know Musk is going to be leaving soon you know his time is pretty much up it's time for him to get back to his companies and you know you had Navaro and Musk sparring with each other over tariffs because Musk's biggest business partner is China right you know and so you know as MAGA is celebrating declaring victory you know o over these tariff the latest tariff pause you know who's not celebrating elon Musk this doesn't really help him very much because the tariffs got just got increased on China which is where he gets all his batteries from and a lot of component parts for Tesla and so you know Navaro called him out on that and and said "All you care about is all the the business that you're doing in China that's your primary concern not the United States." And you know of course Musk went nuts on on that and called him Peter Rardo and a [ __ ] yeah well this is this is the uh interplay between the the two of them kind of argue arguing it out i'll I'll I'll read it out i guess it's in reverse order isn't it uh by any definition whatsoever Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America says Elon Musk with the highest percentage of US content navaro should ask the fake expert he invented Ronvara and uh and then Musk writes Tesla has the most Americanmade cars navara is dumber than a sack of bricks and then finally Navaro is truly a [ __ ] what he says here is demonstrably false linking to Navaro's posts so this fallout between these guys has made it Let me let me add one thing who's Navaro's best friend do you know who that is tell me steve Bannon oh and who has called out Musk over the years repeatedly for his business deals with China yeah Steve Bannon so yeah that's Peter's best friend so obviously you know this all comes from that they they do not like Musk because Musk is very much wedded to the Chinese government and that's who they want to go to war with so they they want to go to war with Musk's business partner i mean h how is this how is this government going to move forward that's why they're pushing Musk out really I think more than anything else it's two reasons republicans in Congress want Musk out at this point because he's becoming toxic to their re-election he's a liability yeah he's a li especially after Wisconsin that spooked them and then number two you have all these people in the Trump administration who want to go to war with China while they're they're Musk's biggest business partner it's interesting the kind of incestuous nature of of this administration the the fact that there are factions and we've talked about this before with Donald Trump right so we you know Trump is obviously always kind of sucking up to Musk because Musk is the richest man in the world and Trump cannot ignore that to him that's like more important than anything right and then and then you've got Bannon who I think am I right in saying has a direct line uh to to Donald Trump's um policy uh guy Steven Miller steve Miller right so they have a back channel there sure but Bannon's also best friends with Navaro navaro is supposedly the trade adviser he's fresh out of prison so is Bannon interestingly went to prison for the same thing yep into prison out of prison straight back into the White House so got those two have got their thing going and then of course you've got Congress and the Congress people who themselves have their own agenda wanting to remain in a position where they can keep their seats and get reelected without Trump humiliating them or primary them or any of that with Mike Johnson who worships Donald Trump like a god in fact I'm sure there is a kind of religious connection between Johnson and and Trump he really does see him as the as the messiah of sorts it's I mean this is doomed to fail isn't it what we're describing is a is a disaster waiting to happen well and you also have Hegathth and Vance yes wanting to pull US troops out of Europe they're already discussing that and talking about doing that and Marco Rubio is very much opposed to that idea he probably won't say it publicly but he he he definitely is against it so you have that problem too is that Marco Rubio's this trai more of a traditional neoconservative Republican when it comes to foreign policy which is the exact opposite of the Vance Musk Axis Hegs Seth as part of that too so you have that clash going on as well with respect to foreign policy so you have clashes with trade policy domestic policy foreign policy amongst the members of the administration he's just because that's what happens when you assemble a crew of people because of loyalty and other reasons how much money they contributed to the campaign instead of ideology and the fact that they're all on the same page and and you end up with this cabinet full of people who hate each other and don't get along i mean RFK is another one he doesn't fit in with a lot of these people either so it it's a complete mess and then of course you have the ring leader of the circus who's the worst one of all of them well I thought you were going to say Vladimir Putin just he's the puppet master that's right i was thinking who who's the line manager to Donald Trump oh that's right it's Vladimir Putin um I've got this clip of uh of of John Kennedy uh being asked whether or not Donald Trump is now the one to take responsibility for this economy and have to stop blaming Joe Biden and when you've lost John Kennedy you've kind of lost Congress I guess let's take a look it's been painful and and uh but it may turn out well it may not if it doesn't turn out well I think the president will recalibrate to that point do you think it's Donald Trump's economy now oh I think it is there's no question um I think once he decided to to to uh to add the tariffs uh clearly I mean he will be held responsible uh as he should whether it turns out good or it turns out badly is there a point at which you would consider supporting taking tariff authority back into congressional hands there have been some efforts in the Senate to do that well if if I finally concluded that what the president is proposing is not going to work or um or if the treatment is worse than the Z the disease uh sure uh and I'm going to look at Senator Grassley's bill very closely but I'm not there yet yeah well we should say that was from yesterday of course and you know a lot happens in 24 hours in this administration i mean is am I right in saying that Kennedy is a a bit of a barometer yeah let me just say look Kennedy is a very very smart person highly educated went to Oxford was a Democrat for a long time uh was the treasurer of elected treasurer of Louisiana as a Democrat and you know you could go back and watch old interviews of him and he was pretty much what we just saw right there which is not the fogghorn leg horn cartoon character that he plays most of the time because when he switched parties and decided to run for Senate as a Republican that's when he completely changed the way he talks his accent got much thicker yeah uh you know and he started doing all these homalies and sayings and nonsequittors and jokes he didn't do that when he was a Democrat he he did it when he became a Republican senator and it's all stick it's all an act it's all [ __ ] and it's all for the Fox Newsy MAGA dumb down base especially during those committee hearings he loves to play play up in those roles and what you just saw in that clip was the old John Kennedy that's the serious real John Kennedy below that act which is [ __ ] just got real and he just reverted back to the Democrat Kennedy and he ditched the the the the [ __ ] and the and the and the homalies and the jokes and and he that was a a moment of clarity and honesty and I thought a huge statement for someone who is such an ardent respected Trump defender and I say respected by MAGA to say "Hey forget all this nonsense that this is Joe Biden's economy and if something goes bad it's Joe Biden's fault." That's all over with now now that Trump has done this tariff stuff he owns this economy whatever happens good bad or indifferent it's on him and if he keeps going this way we may take this authority away from him that was a rare moment of honesty and clarity from a Senate Republican so far one of the few him and Rand Paul him and Ran Paul are going with Rand Paul i found myself agreeing with Rand Paul for the first time in in our lives rand Paul an hour before we did this show when all this MAGA and all Trump are saying this is all part of Trump's grand strategy he planned it all along ran Paul came out an hour before we started the show and said "No no no no he's reacting to the bond market." That's the bottom line could it be the case so you have these rare moments of truth from some of these guys not many but could it be the case that the reason we're getting these sobering moments from people like Senator John Kennedy and and even Ran Paul is because they have skin in the game yeah sure it's because they have investments of their own they're seeing Paul said that right they're seeing He said "I'm watching my stocks go down right?" And that But isn't it crazy that this is this is a reminder that for so much of the legislation that passes their desks they really don't care cuz it's not going to affect them so they don't bother but when it's something that actually will affect them and their bottom line then they're going to re-election and the re-election then they're going to be the first That's when they care that's when they care you're you're absolutely right i mean I'll give you I mean a perfect example of that is like I'll do this in a bipartisan way you know you have the two uh FE new mom representatives who want the the rule change to allow proxy voting for for new moms right who just gave birth for six weeks and that is co-sponsored by Luna on the Republican side and there's a Democrat who just gave birth and I am drawing a blank on her name right now i can see her face i know who she is uh they're co-sponsoring this this effort we discussed it last week yeah yeah and so this directly affects it i can tell you these two uh members of Congress have posted like hundreds of tweets about this and given speeches and interviews around the clock since they gave birth wanting PRA proxy voting and I look at their timelines on their social media and I don't see them having this level of passion for any other issue because this directly affects them and and I I personally happen to agree with them on this issue but I will point out that they they are extra passionate about something that affects them directly yeah it's it's it's endlessly frustrating let's um just go back to the the the Navarro Musk fallout because I have this clip of of Caroline Leavitt in uh in the White House press room just seeing how she reacted to the question there's been some public sparring between Elon Musk and the president's trade adviser Peter Navarro on some of these tariffs musk actually referred to Navarro today as being quote dumber than a sack of bricks.
Are you at all or is the administration the president at all concerned that this is maybe impacting the public's understanding of these tariffs that might be messing with the message on it no look these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs um boys will be boys and we will let their public sparring continue um and you guys should all be very grateful that we have the most transparent administration in history and I think it also speaks to the president's um willingness to hear from all sides that he has people at the highest levels of this government in this White House who have very diverse opinions on very diverse issues but the president takes all opinions in mind and then he makes the best decision based on the best interests of the American public tiana she's so bad that she's good right it's getting to that point now i mean the idea that like Trump brought in Musk and Navaro because they have different views on issues yeah is absolutely just ludicr it's just so ridiculous and the fact that like we're being transparent look this are these are like 3:00 a.m tweets by by Musk when he's you know blasted out of his mind on ketamine playing video games and raging at Navarro so the idea that like oh they're having some high-level intellectual debate about tariff policy and the American people should be appreciative that they're so candid and honest you know it's uh it's just absurd i mean it's it's a joke they're they they are undisciplined they're scatterbrained there's no clear plan they're on drugs a lot of them and they hate each other and so we're supposed to see all of that as a good thing i mean it's just it's cra you know it makes me think of like two administrations that did have cabinets that were philosophically diverse which was Reagan's cabinet where they a lot of them disagreed with each other on a lot of issues and John F kennedy's cabinet as well and they they did intentionally with their chiefs of staff set up their cabinets in that way and they but they would have closed-door cabinet meetings where they would hash those things out and argue those things out so it was a deliberate plan to set up their administrations that way and it's rare for administrations to do that important the debate is important it's good but it was all done behind closed doors right it wasn't this circus atmosphere and Trump did not create this cast of characters and criminals like intentionally he didn't choose them intentionally for their diverse beliefs on policy that wasn't it wasn't part of any grand plan i doubt there are any cabinet meetings that go on with Trump the only cabinet meeting is the one that we see with the cameras that's that's basically the only time we see them together but you can tell the way this administration operates the way they announce things the timing of things the backtracking the fact that you've got different people going on the news and and giving different answers for things proves that there is no joined up thinking there is no cabinet there's just a series of individuals whose job it is to say yes to Donald Trump i I actually tweeted that like two nights ago where where because I watch all these interviews of these administration people all day long i watch them and and you can see six different officials on six different shows right giving all talking about the same policy yeah and they're giving six different answers and and and you know what like sometimes it's because one guy might be saying something because that was what the policy was two hours before right and it changed while he was getting ready to go on air and he didn't get the word so it it is it is utter chaos it seems Trump seems to like it though i mean Trump loves the drama he loves the chaos that's the environment that he thrives in as as long as everybody is you know kissing his ass to use his words and I think that he reacts badly when he gets bad press as he has done in the last few weeks over tariffs or last week over tariffs I should say that that part of him ramping stuff up like he has with China today is because he likes to kind of get his own back and likes to steal back the headline he always wants to be on top no matter how much that costs the world economy and it's and again this to me this keeps going back to the mental health this is why people need to be tested for their you know for the for their cognitive abilities before they're able to run for office in this way because it's that narcissistic personality disorder that is the reason that China's facing 125% tariffs right now yeah well the American consumers are yeah oh yeah that's right the people who actually pay it yeah that's true yeah we have to take a quick break but I want to come back and talk about something that actually rattled me more this morning than even the news about the tariff reversals and that is his announcement last night at that dinner that the pharmaceuticals will be next for tariffs i think this is a massive story we'll do that next here on Uncovered. okay let's uh just talk about this pharmaceutical story because I hadn't seen much kind of media attention because of course everyone's distracted with the reversal of of the of the tariffs but this story could potentially be the one that costs people more than anything because you know ultimately as we know in the US the way that pharmaceuticals are dispensed the cost is insane it's volatile and if you have insurance it can sometimes cost more sometimes cost less it's crazy i have my own experiences with this as well let's just take a look at what uh he uh blobed orange said about this last night but we're going to tariff our pharmaceuticals and once we do that they're going to come rushing back into our country because we're the big market the advantage we have over everybody is that we're the big market so we're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals and when you and when they hear that they will leave China they will leave other places because they have to sell most of their product is sold here no they won't uh te tell us what's going on here on um and they they did say today even with this tariff pause that that that this he has not changed his mind about that that this is coming that there there is going to be a new round of targeted tariffs for specific industries that is going to be announced soon of course again here's the problem okay they announce whatever some tariff on pharmaceuticals next week how do we know What's that going to last for a day two days how does any So what he thinks is that all of these companies these pharmaceutical companies will respond to this by building production plants to to to make drugs here in the United States well that cost that takes years that costs billions of dollars and who's going to make that kind of an investment when you know the tariffs could be lifted or changed in three days you know who's gonna who's going to do that so and this is also comes at a time when Congress is is is about to make draconian cuts in Medicare so which covers a lot of prescription drugs so those costs are going to go up with these tariffs you know it it's it's just you're you're basically putting a massive tax on medicine on on medical care as if our health care costs in this country are not high enough already now I agree it it's we probably should manufacture more drugs in the United States and there are ways that you could make that happen but this is not the way you know and and so uh because it's going to it's going to be a shock to the system for people who can't afford it unless you're going to subsidize it on the back end unless you're going to say "Okay we're going to hit all these foreign countries with that manufacture foreign drugs with a 25% tariff but we're going to subsidize those same medications by 25% here." But they're not talking about doing that on the back end no it's going to be when you go into Walgreens or CVS and you you you know pick up your prescription and it's double the price that it normally is that's that's how people health insurance premiums to go up it's the same thing when you tariff auto parts it causes auto insurance rates to go up because auto insurance companies pay mo most of the costs of auto repairs in this country same thing with health insurance costs are going to go up if you raise the tariffs on drug drugs so I I presume that the reason that he thinks he can get away with it is because the pharmaceutical industry is so profitable and it's so huge and that he thinks there's fat in it and people won't notice and this is kind of the the the backwards thinking of somebody who's was born into wealth who's never had to think about paying for drugs and that being too costly for them because go on i I'll tell you you know he does sometimes put you in boxes that make you uncomfortable in terms of like I'm sure that there are plenty of Democrats who don't want to be in the business of constantly defending pharmaceutical companies you know like they're not exactly the good guys a lot of the time and they are highly profitable and making lots of money but they also do put a lot of money into research development testing and all of that but but sure I mean it's like we're in posi we're he puts Democrats in a position of defending big pharma you know with insane policies that go so far in the other direction and so I mean everyone is that's the one thing he's good at from politics you know political perspective is you know he puts you in a position where you know where if you're trying to defend the rights of due process for migrants you end up defending some bad people sometimes because you're defending a legal constitutional principle but they can paint you as your Democrats are defending violent gang members that is if there's one thing Trump is cy and cunning at it is constantly putting Democrats in a position to defend unpopular people or or corporations or industries because they're defending a principle of the law or the constitution or right or wrong right well even in its simplest form saying Democrats want open borders is an example it's like a blanket like an umbrella description because because they want those people to vote right yeah you know what I'm seeing with all of these stories that I'm covering on Five Minute News and just looking into the weeds of them is that what we're seeing is a stealthlike genocide of people that are not wealthy that are not you know white Americans that there is this kind of slow plan to just whitewash America whitewash its history obviously people being turned away at the at the at the border getting rid of any kind of education that this really you know there's so many stories our show would be 10 hours long if we were to cover it you know what's the next but the effect of this is is a gen a genocide of culture and of race you know what the next thing is coming is they're going to they're going to mass revoke visas of foreign students yes along those lines because a lot of those foreign students end up staying in the United States getting green cards getting citizenship after they finish school they don't all go back to their home countries and so that's they they recognize that that that is a way that immigrants from around the world are getting into the United States is through the universities so there's already they're already talking about the way to solve that because they can't get the universities not to accept these students so the way to solve that is you just revoke all their student visas and force them to go home and that I can tell you that's coming they I mean they're experimenting with it with protesters of Israel right that's that's the trial balloon they're I predict that the next move is they're going to revoke all student visas of Chinese students which is like tens of thousands of students well Makmoud Khalil is still in a detention center in Louisiana or something i mean he literally is is unable I think there was a hearing the other day where he briefly saw his wife on a on a video screen but the fact that this is taking so long and there is huge support because what they've done I mean this is a bit of a tangent isn't it by again blanket you know an an umbrella branding of people you know this guy was sticking up for the Palestinians not for Hamas and yet they are now saying and in fact I read a story this morning that said that they're going to be looking for any anti-semitism on the social media of anybody coming in to the U into the US i mean this is this is the story they're gonna be screening social media but I think that that's the tip of the iceberg like I I totally agree and this is a visa they're gonna go with broadbased revocations of student visas right like I'm I I'm telling I think they're going to take every Chinese student and revoke their student visas i agree that's the next step in this Yes trade war they're going to they're going to broaden it out yeah yeah there there was a story out this morning about the ICE director saying that deportations should be run like Amazon Prime for human beings yeah yeah so you know this is where it's going let's you touched earlier on on the withdrawal of troops from Europe this is something that has kind of been mooted let's just talk about this for a second because you know again to me this is the the isolationist uh policies and the more of them that are stacked on top of each other the more the US is basically being segregated from its former allies and we'll need to realign or will we'll need to align with Russia and that's what they're looking at i mean if you look at the map you could almost kind of draw in the gaps and see you know how he wants to position this large land mass including Greenland of course but it's uh the GOP Congressman Mike Rogers who's warned against these plans in the from the Pentagon to to withdraw troops from from Europe and you know if the Republicans are starting to weigh in on it then obviously this means something let's take a look vladimir Putin is not our friend he is an unreformed KBA KGB agent who believes the collapse of the Soviet Union was quote the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century close quote his desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union drove him to attack Georgia in 2008 invade Crimea and the Donbos in 2014 and then launch a fullscale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 those that blame NATO enlargement or suggest that Russia was somehow provoked into attacking Ukraine are wrong the Ukrainian people have fought bravely over three years to defend their freedom but I agree with President Trump it is time to stop the bloodshed president Biden never had a plan to end the war by slow rolling weapon deliveries and imposing loophole ridden sanctions he allowed the conflict to grind to a stalemate president Trump has broken that deadlock ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire as a first step showing their desire for peace russia however has refused to do the same and continues to slaughter innocent victims he he goes on to it's bit long that clip but he goes on to talk about why it is imperative to keep a military presence a US military presence in Europe this obviously has a lot of ramifications because you know many of these military uh personnel they're form part of NATO i mean this is you know part of the NATO alliance it's our membership of the I mean we set up NATO for goodness sake so so really what we're looking at here is Trump preparing in my view for conflict with our former allies yeah and this is not some like squishy rhino Mitt Romney type representative here mike Rogers I mean chair of the Armed Services Committee there from Alabama yeah very MAGA very proTrump you know he he understands that he's criticizing a Trump administration initiative or policy certainly something that many people in the Trump administration want to see happen which is for the US to pull troops out of Europe i mean the biggest advocates behind this are JD Vance Pete Hegsth and I think Trump would like to do it too um and and there's others but there are people who are opposed to it inside the administration so So he understands that when he's going to criticize a Trump something that Trump wants to do he's got to praise him at the same time and criticize Biden which is what he's doing there he's doing that because that's the game that these guys have to play but if you pulled them by secret ballot Republicans in Congress do you think that we should pull out of NATO or pull troops out of Europe 90% of them would say no and yet this very well could be the direction that the administration is heading and this has set off alarm bells in Europe especially Eastern Europe especially Poland is one country where the PM went kind of you know he's pretty level-headed you know even kill guy but he was pretty upset that this even got out that they're even considering this because they are seriously considering withdrawing troops i think what you're gonna see very very possibly is withdrawal from from Eastern European countries you know keep some troop presence in Europe in Germany and in the UK and other places Spain and all that but but not in Poland and other Eastern European countries but I wonder where exactly what Vladimir Putin wants finger yeah and this is this is why all doors seem to lead back to to the Kremlin because as much as they choose to deny it Donald Trump is you know I've described it as a kind of father figure you know even though Trump is older I think he looks up to Putin in a way to try and get that attention that he never maybe got from Fred Trump as simple as that sounds I think he really put Putin on a pedestal we know from the soldiers who just died they were in Lithuania right yes a former Soviet satellite and so we had obviously US troops doing training exercises in Lithuania and that very much bothers Vladimir Putin it has bothered him for a long time uh he calls the the dissolution of the Soviet Union the greatest uh the worst thing that has ever happened to Russia in their history and he wants to restore the Soviet Union so the so the but the problem with that is if US troops are in the former Soviet satellite republics that's a that's an impediment to him being able to do that so so the idea that Pete Hegsth and JD Vance and these characters are actually thinking about doing that I think has really frightened a lot of people and and you had a lot of generals that spoke out um that were called to Congress to testify that that they they all unanimously across the board said "No we don't we don't agree with this at all." You know we we often talk about the the worst instincts we have for what is going to happen next what could possibly happen next and we all dread checking our phones in the morning but I have no doubt that the the withdrawal from the NATO alliance is is on the on the cards you know it's obviously mooted people say and for a lot of people who were you know who are in that sector they see that as the the line in the sand for when you know we've truly lost the United States as a European ally it's all so weird but you need to understand the character of the individuals the you know the cast involved and and what their personal beliefs are and and it's a bit like RFK Jr you know he's like "Oh well you know if I become if I get the job I'm not going to be an antivaxer." And then of course he gets the job and suddenly he's back on the on the measles story you know you have to really push him to get him to to change i I really feel like this is what's happening with Hexath and with JD Vance there is this higher calling that again it's laid out in Project 2025 if you get into the you know some of these kind of libertarian tech stories you'll understand what they want for the repurposing of power across the world and and honestly just as an aside like because we had this conversation among the minus people of as crazy and as terrible and neurotic and manic as Trump is you know if something happened to him JD Vance is president when I think that would be worse worse i'd almost rather have this undisiplined maniac yes you know who changes his mind and changes his policy from one day to the next because he's impressionable then have a cold calculating proin killer as president who who won't jd Vance wouldn't care about the bond market going nuts that wouldn't bother him no like that guy doesn't care trump had another meeting with uh his best friend BB Netanyahu in the in the Oval Office and said some of the weirdest stuff about about Hamas showing signs of of kindness and winking i I'll show the clip i mean it's almost unbelievable this pay attention and we'll talk about it afterwards the stories they told me I mean as an example I said to them was there any sign of love you were there 10 people it's only 10 but it's pretty representative did the Hamas show any signs of like help or liking you did they wink at you did they give you a piece of bread extra did they give you a meal on the side like you know you think of doing like what happened in Germany what happened elsewhere people would try and help people that were in unbelievable distress they said no i said "All of them." I said "Did they ever wink at you like you'll be okay you're going to be okay." No they didn't do that they'd slap us their hatred is unbelievable and the lives you know they lived in a pipe not really a tunnel it was a pipe and they always thought they were suffocating they were going to suffocate and yeah I mean it's like it made me think of like Schindler's List i was just thinking of Schindler's List he's obviously seen the film and he's like "Oh there was one good Nazi who who did some good for the Jews." Yeah he He thinks that all the like commonants of the concentration camps were like Oscar Schindler oscar Schindler that gave him you know an extra piece of cake if they were if they worked really hard you know i mean it's just his warped how his warped mind could go to that i know and why he would want to have that kind of a conversation with these people in front of the Israeli prime minister and talking about Yeah like the Germans in World War II running the concentration camps were were what he's saying is was Hamas as kind to them as the Germans were to the Jews yeah i mean it's like Uh I I don't that that that's it he he used like the concentration camp commonance as like Oscar Schindler in the movie yep and he wants to know if Hamas is like that did they give a piece of bread Ron you know or maybe an extra meal or did they wink they liked you i mean these are people that like had their friends and their family members murdered and the and this is what he's this is the conversation that he's asking them that that he's having with them it's uh he he's def because we've we he has no empathy right he has no ability to connect with human beings he shares that quality with Musk so what else can he have a conversation with them about when you have no empathy for what they've been through you start you know asking them if if their experience was like the movies that he saw from Germany i'd love to get Steven Spielberg's take on on that sequence i just have no words like it's it's like I'm done you know this is the president of the United States because he doesn't read you know he he he doesn't read books so how can you know anything about anything and by the way I don't think he watched all of Schindler's List i think he probably watched like half of it you know because I don't think he could sit there and watch that whole thing i I I I don't disagree with that but that's his that's his knowledge of the Holocaust that's his reference to history but the thing is and this is why he doesn't understand what he's doing with the trade wars because a trade war can escalate into a real military conflict sure and this is why free trade helps buffer the effects of of poor diplomatic relations between major powers is it's it's economic interdependence it gives both sides too much to lose and when and economic barriers are raised then there's an increased risk of of of military conflict but he doesn't he doesn't understand that that that's the reason why we have free trade because it enables us to to maintain diplomacy with nations that we disagree with i mean he's never spoken about China's human rights atrocities or Russia's human rights atrocities wouldn't he doesn't care or North Korea right he doesn't care about any of that stuff but he also doesn't understand that that the markets absorb the effects of wars you know they are absorbing the effect of the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine and so people don't see their own savings affected by this but but the moment you get into a Go on I mean the the the the attacks from the Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea is directly because of the the ceasefire in Gaza ended correct so I mean it's directly tied to that it affects the world economy right there you know so sure all this stuff has impacts this is why you need people who are well read and and to understand that you know Xi Jinping is a completely different type of person to Donald Trump they're they're completely different they're playing two completely different games absolutely and and and she has so much more is holding so many more cards to coin an Oval Office Zalinski phrase we're not playing cards yeah i mean that's what Van said to you don't have any you don't have the cards right you don't have the cards you know Trump just That's what Chi is saying to Trump yeah you don't have the cards man but if you don't we can you know a lot of your rare earths you buy 100% of them from us and you can't get them from anybody else and they're critical in some of your key components and military technology i mean China is kind is kind I mean kind enough china is willing to sell us rare earth that we use in missile and and you know military technology that we can't get from other places they could cut that same thing with medicine life-saving medicines some of that stuff we buy exclusively from China right and very difficult to get it in scale from any other place and yet they sell it to us anyway because adversaries but we're gonna we're gonna end that we're gonna go to war with them he he sees international relations in terms of territory and power and he doesn't have anyone advising him anymore like he did the first time around who says "No sir that's not you know how this works." He's surrounded by people who don't challenge him that's why he's talked about acquiring Greenland or or subordinating Canada or reviving the North American block to rival China and Russia you know he views the EU as weak and divided and and he he just has a completely different view of the world based on movies and not on books yeah and what he's seen on Fox News and what he's seen exactly i think that goes into the television category we are so screwed we really are we really are we just got to I mean it's one day at a time man for me it's like one hour at a time it's so wonderful like listening to experts talk about geopolitics where you know because you and I with great respect to you we we are not that's not our department we can commentate but we listen to people who are smart but when you listen to people who are so well-versed in this stuff who who've devoted a lifetime to it you realize how important how how essential expertise is and this goes back to what we were saying earlier about Trump shutting down all expertise at the HHS and and any anywhere Department of Education anywhere that is going to make America smart again the universities I mean that that's what we're facing we're we're facing an intellectual brain drain because they don't value expertise it's the death of expertise in the United States because they're hostile to the to experts you know people that are highly educated and and know a particular field because they upstage him the Fox Newsification of of everything if he can shut down everybody who is who is less who is smarter than he is that means eradicating 99% of of of Americans that's everybody yeah he and also his economic vision Ron is so rooted in the past he talks about you know the guilded age and reviving manufacturing and restoring respect for the working classes but the US has already transitioned it's already a service-based economy it's not because he views the old you know era of Rockefeller Carnegie right uh as as the best time in America when he sees himself as one people owned everything in this country that that was the golden age for him that's what he wants to return to is that era where you had the mega mega wealthy no middle class and a bunch of surfs uh who are who are coming to him and be begging for for handouts so yeah that that's the economy that he wants to return to that was a tariff a heavily tariffed economy and uh sure that's where he wants to go yeah even Apple struggled to to manufacture in the US they they actually struggled to do it because so much of this chat has been in fact I saw a meme on Instagram of it was like an AI image I don't know if you saw it of American like classic Americanl looking people working in those Foxcon style factory lines trying to put tiny screws into iPhones and also them stitching on bras I think and the how their sad faces of these huge factories you know the the US does not do that anymore in that way this is you know this is the China's economy supports that kind of work the people that uh we have here who might be willing to work in a garment factory we are in the process of deporting deporting currently yes yeah you're not going to get you know your average American to take a $12 an hour job stitching garments in a sweat shop it's not going to happen um talking of deportations we have uh Christy Noom back again she's uh showing off her bite and uh her her strength um going along with these ICE people let's show a quick clip of her in her cosplay let's take a look here we are with Marco and Brian today they're letting me roll with them we're going to go out and pick up somebody who I think is got charges of human trafficking um we earlier had an op that swept up somebody who was wanted for murder so appreciate the woodwork that they do every day and we appreciate them working to make America safe yeah meanwhile you see that Daily Beast article a couple of days ago that said was it 90% of all of those guys that were picked up and taken to El Salvador did not have criminal records yeah and by the way what she's doing right there is pointing her weapon at the guy's head in the face of the guy next to waving it back and forth yeah I'm sure he felt good about that but yeah uh you know I've been posting these Christy Gnome adventure videos and pictures from day one since she got sworn in you know on helicopters on boats putting out fires on on the docks uh you know I mean it's uh SWAT gear all these different outfits all dolled up makeup remember the one in the the prison in El Salvador she was down there um here's what I can tell you we have reached the point where she's lost MAGA now like there she literally like has no defenders at this point which is good it's kind of encouraging to see um that even they are like this is ridiculous i mean I can tell you like I I monitor these guys i listen to their podcasts i moni watch all follow all them on social media they have had enough of this act they're like "What the hell is she doing she's embarrassing us this is ridiculous." Like to them like these deportations this is serious business they want every one of these people rounded up and shipped out of the country immediately and they what they want is a guy like Homeman you know who's like you know I'm kicking ass taking names i'm brown every you know they don't want to see you know Gustapo Barbie there all doled up in her outfits going on adventures around the world so even they have completely stopped defending her and are just like she's an embarrassment interesting may maybe next week we'll talk a bit more about the reaction from MAGA because you know since I came off of X I don't really get that feedback that you do and I I'm I'm very we don't have so much time for it this week but ne next week you know I'd be very interested to get more of a sense of the of the feelings about this administration because we know that the town halls have all been shut down you know with Republican Congress people you know getting any kind of feedback But um can I uh make an editorial comment about that which is yeah before the mass exodus to blue sky it was nice that like there were so many people for the MAGA to go after on X uh besides me you know that that it's sort of like I could hide a little bit more uh but and not draw their fire as much but now that I'm like one of the small Democrats with big accounts attacking them on a regular their basis like I've just become this like lightning rod for a lot of their attention so I thank all of you for leaving and abandoning me yeah i'm like on a hill with a machine gun and like there's hundreds of them charging up the hill and I'm just trying to fight them off you know you're a Marine Ron you've got this you know I don't care you know whatever it's fine le let's talk uh we got a couple of stories left let's talk about this Republican primary battle that's starting out in you know kicking off in in Texas with Ken Paxton should we have a quick look at his announcement attorney General you have a big announcement i understand you want to make tonight what is it well first of all I'm excited to be on your show to do this it's a a great place to do it i'm announcing that I'm running for uh US Senate uh against John Corner who apparently is is running again for his fifth term which would put him there three decades uh it's definitely time for a change in Texas we have another great US Senator Ted Cruz and it's time we have another great senator that will actually stand up and fight for Republican values fight for the values of of the people of Texas and also support Trump uh Donald Trump in the areas that he's focused on in in a very significant way and that's what I plan on doing and I hope that people will go to my website and look at what we're doing at kenpax.com and obviously contribute as well so um what's the what's the story here because I also have this uh video from John Corin uh there's a you know bringing bringing up an al an alternative view but I'll let you set it up first this is going to be this is I've been waiting for this i was in a way I was I was almost just for entertainment purposes only setting aside what's best for the country for a minute and just viewing this from the prism of my own entertainment this is going to be the nastiest most vicious election in 2026 is the primary between John Cornin Senator John Cornin from Texas and the attorney general of Texas Ken Paxton who is one of the most disgusting represent reprehensible people in the world i mean he is as bad as bad gets he was impeached two years ago i think we spent some time on his impeachment trial on this show when it happened he was impeached by Republicans in Texas because he was so corrupt a target of his offic's investigation it was being investigated for bribery and extortion uh he he he had that person he had charges dropped against that person he fired his deputy attorney generals who refused to drop the investigation against that person and then it turned out that person was paying for a kitchen remodel for Paxton's mistress and then Paxton's mistress was supposed to testify in his impeachment trial in front of the Senate paxton's wife is a senator who was one of the jurors so his mistress was going to testify in front of his wife who was one of the jurors by the way Paxton's wife also just introduced a bill two days ago in the Texas legislature to make sex toys illegal in Texas unless you show a photo ID to buy them so you know and Cornin is perceived Cornin is the establishment guy he is the guy that John Thun the majority leader is backing uh he is the guy that most of the other senators are going to get behind but MAGA is 100% behind Paxton uh Ted Cruz has has already said he's staying out of it so the $64,000 question is what is Trump going to do you know because obviously Paxton is banking on getting Trump's endorsement uh hoping that he gets it but this is going to be really really ugly and nasty and and opens the door I think to um Colin all red who ran last time against Cruz and gave him a help brilliant candidate is probably now going to run again which he which he probably wasn't going to do unless Paxton challenged Cornin because this Republican primary is going to be so bloody and so nasty and so expensive that whoever comes out of this at the other side is going to be leaking oil and that opens the door to a Colin Red making another run at at be and and and and the word on the street basically is that if Paxton wins he's so toxic and there's so many Republicans in Texas that don't like Paxton that that really would give Al Red a legitimate shot so in a weird way we have to I guess if you just want to win that seat somehow you Democrats should actually want Paxton to win as bad as he is well Trump is going to endorse the criminal candidate isn't he i mean I think he probably will he will definitely not endorse Cornin uh I think he will either endorse Paxton or stay out let's take a look at Cornin for a second just wondering quickly what's your do you have any level of concern about Paxton running to the right of you in this primary well the biggest potential loser is uh President Trump's agenda um I've been a a supporter of the president uh during his first term of office and that's continued during uh his current term um but we're going to end up spending um hundreds of millions of dollars potentially um on this race in Texas because we can't lose the seat in Texas um and that is money that can't be used in places like Michigan New Hampshire and u and Georgia in the midterm elections um and obviously um Mr paxton has a checkered background he is a con man and a fraud and I think uh the people of Texas know that but u u this is what uh will be litigated during the course of this campaign a uh a con man and a fraud i mean sign me up baby right you can't wait can you i mean this is great i'm I'm gonna be right in the middle of this thing pouring gasoline on the fire yeah i mean this is going to be great i can't wait okay listen final story before we have to wrap up and that is a very special day i'm sure it's marked in your calendar june 14th what is happening on June 14th donald Trump's birthday oh yes it's Donald Trump's birthday and and how can we not know it's going to be a national holiday someday so we should know this h how do you think we should celebrate it because you know traditionally people would just have you know a few friends over a small cake you know maybe sing happy birthday or something but but Trump has other ideas doesn't he no there's only one thing to do on Trump's birthday and that is to have a Soviet style red square military parade right i mean you got you got to roll out the tanks yeah and the armored vehicles the aircraft and have the flyovers and Sure and and is it going to cost how much does a birthday party cost $100 million maybe should that be how much we spend to do this what yes so what he wants to do this is in the planning stages apparently the reporting is he is going to do this uh is that he is going to roll this out it's going to be a three mile yeah 90 to to um military 92 million and district another 21 million and the other problem is they're saying that this is going to this is going to tear up the roads you know the roads in DC aren't the greatest in some places and and what they're saying is depending on how they do it this could really do a lot of damage to the DC infrastructure they're talking about a three-mile parade from the Pentagon to Arlington uh cemetery to the to the White House and of course you know Trump is going to couch this as like it's really not about me it's about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that's how he's going to that's how he's going to uh put it put it out there uh but no this is about uh or anniversary of something and I don't I don't I don't And he'll also have uh he'll also probably announce that the $250 bill will be coming out with his face on it the same day because you know he's obsessed with the with the with the branding you know he wants Well I think that Well what they've talked about is that they also want to put him on Mount Rushmore oh yes that's right on July 4th of 2026 that's the 250 or something anniversary of better start carving now they want to put Trump on there we don't do military parades in the United States it's not what we do it's what they do in fascist countries and totalitarian regimes we don't do it in the United States we never have uh I mean we had a a mild version of it after World War II but it wasn't you know missiles and the tanks being it was it was men just casually walking and waving to the crowd and kissing people and all that it wasn't like people goostepping like we saw in Nazi Germany or in Moscow but that's the kind of parade that Trump wants he wants a a display what he said his quote on this is he wants a display of American firepower to show the world and to intimidate the world that's basically what what Stalin did when are people going to realize that we now are a dictatorship that we are under authoritarian rule that it has already happened that that that you know crossing the Rubicon to a point where a military parade is is you know is given the go-ahead because you know the the the tense is used we talk about these you know foreign lands we talk about these other countries that have fallen to you know the the Stalinism and Leninism and various things over the years but this is what it feels like to go through it and you know I think if you are a white American citizen who has money you might not even think about it you might continue to take your freedom for granted but if you are anything other than that in terms of your race or your culture or your ability to pay uh or certainly your visa status then you are already at that point you've already crossed that line where you're like okay we are now living in under an authoritarian regime yeah and it and it didn't it's it's not the reason why people don't maybe recognize it as as that's where we're headed is because uh it's not the classic you know where there was a violent coup or a revolution and martial law declared and the previous leader executed like that's the way it typically happened throughout history but this is a a uniquely American way of of going towards authoritarianism which is suppressing the press uh intimidating lawyers you know military uh replacing military gutting civil service giving the president immunity i mean no opposition party to speak of that has any power right yeah corrupting the judiciary uh corrupting business and CEOs sure we're we're doing it in a uniquely American way but we are doing it yeah okay well we have to end it there certainly food for thought uh you know we're not trying to put a downer on things but I think that being real and recognizing our reality is is essential in these moments or there'll be no one left to speak for us ron thank you see you next week download the podcast if you want to it'll drop tonight and we'll come back on Wednesday next week and do it again thanks a lot will there be China tariffs in place next week who knows i mean he'll probably announce it 10 minutes before our show so we can only be prepared all right take care bye for now all right [Music]
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BREAKING: Trump CAVES on Tariffs After Insisting They Were ESSENTIAL The Bulwark Apr 9, 2025 Bulwark Takes
Sam Stein, Andrew Egger, and Ben Parker react to Trump’s latest chaotic tariff announcement in a Truth Social bleat, including his stunning 125% tariffs on China and sudden U-turn on tariffs for dozens of other countries. Markets are surging, but confusion remains.
Transcript
hey guys me Sam Stein managing ed joined by Andrew Edgar and Ben Parker to talk about um pretty much the craziest we've seen in a long time uh we are also sitting around today waiting for uh the impact of the Trump tariff doom to kick in and then at roughly I don't know 115 or so that's about right Trump puts out a tweet uh post a bleep whatever you want to call it announcing that he is not in fact going forward with the tariffs uh that he had outlined he's going to jack up the ones on China to about 125% and then Andrew correct me if I'm wrong he's going to put a pause an unday pause on tariff hikes for 75 countries that have approached him and been receptive or not adversarial towards him and uh but he will have a 10% reciprocal tariff in place with those countries still i don't know i I it's very hard because we're just reading a bleet to figure out what's going on why don't you break it down for us Andrew yeah so bottom line we are so back uh the the markets have gone absolutely berserk based on this tweet let's just pause for one second to dwell on how insane it is that this is how we get any news at all let alone the news that is you know so world historically important that it has caused the NASDAQ to jump every time you refresh it it's a little higher yes hockey sticks baby it's this bleet is all we have we don't have a statement from the White House we don't have specifics yet and the bleet is obviously written in Trump's own voice it's a little bit unclear essentially what happened is Trump slapped these Liberation Day tariffs on a few days ago right and it's it was a 10% baseline tariff on basically everywhere in the world everywhere in the world but the real kicker was these reciprocal tariffs that he layered on top which were massively massively larger than that you know upwards of 50% on a lot of countries um and or or you know in the neighborhood of 50% on a lot of countries basically just extinction level tariffs for for most trade uh between us in a lot of different places um different countries have responded to that in different ways so China and the EU uh both have responded within the last 48 hours by by slapping new reciprocal tariffs on uh on us um you know the market markets have suffered from those but the real reason that things have been diving down so hard is basically just that there are there's no safe haven right um everyone always kind of knew Trump was going to go after China there might be tariffs and stuff involved there but there were ways for countries to get around for companies to get around this sort of thing without abandoning the whole prospect of global trade at all right a lot of countries moved some manufacturing from China to Vietnam in anticipation of of new China tariffs and things like that so that was why things spiked down so hard now what Trump is announcing is the 10% baseline tariff seemingly according to the wording of his tweet is still going to be in place on everybody so still a real giant disruption to global trade but with the exception of China and the EU and again he doesn't mention the EU in this tweet but you can the implication is there is that he says these 75 countries that have not retaliated of about the 90 who he slapped the tariffs on in the first place um those 75 are going to lose the totally invented totally catastrophic reciprocal tariffs uh and be only at the baseline and again we're seeing markets just blast upward like out of a bottle yeah quick summarization from our friend Josh Wingrove at Bloomberg he says this is a total reallocation of his tariffs and basically amounts to a 10% universal tariff as Andrew said 125% rate for China which will basically amount to something closer to a trade embargo on China and maybe rates higher than 10% for whomever else he thinks retaliated i believe the initial number of countries was 90 plus or 90ish so that leaves about 15 countries that we don't know which countries i don't know mostly here yeah but not the entire EU there's more countries than that in the pieces of it there are 15 non-mentioned countries who still might be targeted with uh higher reciprocal tariffs we don't know we're just going off of the bleet so uh yeah odd way to make uh economic policy Ben yeah definitely you know I think Andrew wrote about this we saw a little hint of this earlier when there was that fake headline going around that they were gonna Oh the Walter Bloomberg one yeah the Walter Bloomberg he was just a couple days ahead he was just a couple days ahead of the news maybe like pre-right he got it right yeah yeah he was just right and you know they saw how the markets reacted this huge spike that lasted all of what five minutes yesterday when everyone thought the tariffs might be not even coming off mind you the tariffs aren't off they're delayed for 90 days now you know who knows a lot could happen in 90 days but the fact that yesterday the White House didn't just take the win and come out and be like "Yeah yeah we are delaying the doing great." They It's not even that it's not even that because last night I I I I think uh I don't know if you watched it i know Andrew did because it was in uh Morning Shots but last night he was at Trump was at the NRCC dinner and he was talking about the tariffs in ways that suggested no pullback whatsoever i think his quote was "This time I'm doing what I want to do with respect to tariffs this time I'm doing what I want to do with respect to the tariffs and then he then like within 12 hours just completely reverses i'm laughing because I'm relieved for the market um but this is a horrible way to prod produce global trade policy it's unbelievable yeah and like how are businesses supposed to make decisions when Trump can turn up tariffs to 125% on a whim and then take them off on a whim like yeah things are better than they would have been before but they're not better than they were three months ago well the most in the most platon in the most ideal situation right i mean if you were Trump you would say well now you have 90 days to move all your manufacturing to the US great okay you have 90 days 90 days to build people watch this bull work channel man you have 90 days to uh to train people to do all your manufacturing that was done 90 days to build a factory hire a bunch of workers and train them on the process yes that's going to work so uh we should talk a little bit more just about the structure of this tweet because it's so good because because yeah all the stuff is talking about we have to be technically correct truth social post all the stuff that Ben is talking about is true like if the point of the White House here were to like make things easy for the business climate but all the chaos and stuff they have not shown any indication that they particularly care or that it matters to them at all based on the White House's rubric for how they are strategically assessing all this this tweet is very funny because I'm sorry this this this post this bleet is very funny because the whole question for them is gosh we've got these markets cratering how the heck can we stop the bleeding here without making it appear that we are reversing course that we're weak that we are you know uh well how do they do that well the way they do it is by leading off with the China news right I mean he did he did bury it based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125% effective immediately at some point hopefully in the near future China will realize that the days of ripping off the USA and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable so he leads with like the I'm the alpha dog you can't you China can't tell the US what to do it's the other way around we're the we're the bosses and then he's like and also by the way um because these other countries were nice enough to reach out to us about you know to come to us hatinand and and do the sir story like please sir what can we give you sir uh because of that we're going to let we're going to I mean like that's that's not the reason like they're going to give a whether whether any country came petitioning him he's not he's not rewarding them he is stopping the bleeding here and I think it was I think it was finally impressed on him that this is the way that he could do that without while still saving a little bit of face in the this is why whenever whenever Tim and I talk and we're you know we do the overunders on how long the tariffs will last or if they'll go in place at all i always take the under because I just feel like this is ultimately just what Trump does it's erratic and then and then and then he his favorite thing is to try to take credit for for fixing the problem that he say this is the best thing the stock market's had in years you know so okay so just to give you an idea my dentist made this point to me the other day when I went in for a cleaning he likes your teeth great they're doing great but really just wanted to talk about the tariffs that's really what he wanted he's like "You're either fine let's talk about trade." Uh pulls away from the chair and he's like "He's done this before." Like he's tried this before and every time the same thing like why does he keep trying the same thing we're going to 90 days we're going to be back all right tariffs are back on markets are going to tank oh I took them off look at what I fixed the problem that I created aren't I amazing we're just going to do this for four years right back and forth and back and forth because I think my such a good heart see my because obviously I mean not obviously but it seems clear to me that he likes doing this that he just likes the chaos and he likes the idea that he has people calling him and begging him for deals or that he can cosplay a tough guy on the international stage he doesn't really care about the actual policy it's just the ability to have somewhat controlled chaos through which you can negotiate and that I think gets his rocks off so yeah we'll be back here in 90 days the funniest thing about this to me one other thing is I I would love to know Peter Navaro's take on this whole thing because this is not the the the America first kind of vision that that Navaro and even Trump himself have laid out for for you know we're bringing it all back to America you're going to have to do it here the whole reason the market is shooting up is because now there's less disruption because people can just move out of China to Vietnam move out of China to India Japan buying things from overseas right exactly and if the point of this was that as Trump just said yesterday we have so much money coming in billions of dollars coming in we're going to be so rich we're going to be so rich well what now he's making us poor by taking the tariffs off well exactly and the tar and the tariffs were supposed to be the revenue raiser for a bunch of different initiatives i guess we don't get those now and then to your point um Navaro and Steven Miller you know it was all about nationalizing pipelines and supply chains and things like that and I guess we'll have to wait for 90 days for those as well i will I will note uh because it's just so extraordinary and it gave me the giggles um Howard Lutnik went on Twitter to to talk about the bleep that was put out by Trump and I just want to read it because I think we should marinate on it for a bit uh Scott Besson and I sat with the president while he wrote one of the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency the world is ready to work with the president to fix global trade and China has chosen the opposite direction does does this qualify as the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency i I haven't really taken stock of all the truth posts it's up there i guess there have been a lot in the first three months I guess so you know maybe the only one that only one that boosted markets 10% in about five minutes so I I have to say the we you know we've talked about the uh the drama between Navaro and Musk in the Trump administration yeah the the Bessant uh Lutnik drama is so good like wasn't Lutnick originally supposed to be Treasury Secretary then he lobbyed too hard for it so we got So like Scott Bessant is only there to frustrate Howard Lutneck and it's working and and it's like you can't keep track of which one's arguing which point they're either negotiating or they're not negotiating this isn't negotiating it's like there's so many different variables coming from this White House uh any other final thoughts Andrew and Ben um yeah we should just be we should just be grateful for this moment because the news is always so stupid and this is so stupid but but at least like this is one of those stories where they're doing this insanely stupid stuff but to an outcome that is so much less worse than the one we thought we were going to get yeah except we're back in 90 days doing the same exact thing yeah they're they're they're backing off and the all the funny is in how they're pretending that they're not but they are and it's great yeah we're still worse than we were worse off than we were a year ago but better off than we were a day ago so there's that uh I will say the funniest part of this to me was the very last sentence of Trump's post which we didn't talk about which is "Thank you for your attention to this matter i didn't read that far oh my god." Thank you you're welcome you're welcome that I paid attention all right Andrew Edgar Ben Parker thanks so much thank you guys for watching subscribe to the feed where you get uh really insightful and humorous content like this about incredible movements in our uh stock market and global finances stay tuned we'll be in touch talk to you soon
A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to restore The Associated Press’ full access to cover presidential events, affirming on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech.
U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that the government can’t retaliate against the AP’s decision not to follow the president’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico. The decision, while a preliminary injunction, handed the AP a major victory at a time the White House has been challenging the press on several levels.
“Under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” McFadden wrote. “The Constitution requires no less.”
It was unclear whether the White House would move immediately to put McFadden’s ruling into effect. McFadden held off on implementing his order for a week, giving the government time to respond or appeal. Shortly after the ruling, an AP reporter and photographer were turned away from joining a motorcade with the White House press pool to cover Trump’s appearance before the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The AP has been blocked since Feb. 11 from being among the small group of journalists to cover Trump in the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One, with sporadic ability to cover him at events in the East Room.
“We are gratified by the court’s decision,” said AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton. “Today’s ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation. This is a freedom guaranteed for all Americans in the U.S. Constitution.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, one of the administration officials named in the lawsuit, did not immediately return a message seeking comment. In its action filed on Feb. 21, the AP sued Leavitt, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich.
Many media outlets have been playing defense with this administration
Trump has moved aggressively against the media on several fronts since taking office again. The Federal Communications Commission has open lawsuits against ABC, CBS and NBC News. The administration has sought to cut off funding for government-run news services like Voice of America and is threatening public funding for public broadcasters PBS and NPR for allegedly being too liberal in news coverage.
The AP had asked McFadden to rule that Trump’s officials violated AP’s constitutional right to free speech by taking the action because the president and his staff disagreed with the words that its journalists use. He had earlier declined AP’s request to reverse the changes through an injunction.
Because of its wide reach, the AP has traditionally always been included in “pools” for coverage of presidential events in places like the Oval Office and Air Force One. McFadden cautioned that his ruling does not necessarily herald a return to those days.
“The Court does not order the government to grant the AP permanent access to the Oval Office, the East Room or any other media event,” he wrote. “It does not bestow special treatment upon the AP. Indeed, the AP is not necessarily entitled to the ‘first in line every time’ permanent press pool access it enjoyed under the (White House Correspondents Association). But it cannot be treated worse than its peer wire service either.”
The judge said that his decision does not prohibit a government official from choosing which outlets to give interviews to, or choosing which journalists’ questions they choose to answer at a news conference.
“This is an important decision,” said Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “The First Amendment means the White House can’t ban news outlets from covering the president simply because they don’t parrot his preferred language. “
And Floyd Abrams, a longtime free-speech attorney, cited American history in his reaction: “What a splendid and well—deserved First Amendment triumph. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would be pleased and relieved.”
Trump came out and said why he made the move
While there was little dispute in a March 27 court hearing about why Trump struck back at the AP – the president said as much – the administration said it was up to its own discretion, and not White House correspondents or longstanding tradition, to determine who gets to question the president and when.
Since the dispute with AP began, the White House has taken steps to control who gets to cover the president at smaller events and even where journalists sit during Leavitt’s briefings, saying both need to better reflect changes in how people get information.
The AP’s decisions on what terminology to use are followed by journalists and other writers around the world through its influential stylebook. The outlet said it would continue to use Gulf of Mexico, as the body of water has been known for hundreds of years, while also noting Trump’s decision to rename it the Gulf of America. Different outlets have used different approaches, some skirting it by calling it the “Gulf.”
“For anyone who thinks The Associated Press’ lawsuit against President Trump’s White House is about the name of a body of water, think bigger,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “It’s really about whether the government can control what you say.”
Testimony revealed AP’s coverage has been impeded
Trump has dismissed the AP, which was established in 1846, as a group of “radical left lunatics” and said that “we’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree it’s the Gulf of America.”
For a news organization that relies on speed as a major selling point, the AP brought its chief White House correspondent and photographer to testify March 27 before McFadden about how its absence from covering certain events has delayed its transmission of words and images. Its lawyer, Charles Tobin, said AP has already lost a $150,000 advertising contract from a client concerned about the ban.
The government’s lawyer, Brian Hudak, showed how AP has been able to use livestreams or photos from other agencies to get news out, and pointed out that AP regularly attends Leavitt’s daily briefings.
McFadden said in Tuesday’s ruling in the case, Associated Press v. Budowich et al, that the government has been “brazen” about why it has excluded the AP.
“The government offers no other plausible explanation for its treatment of the AP,” the judge wrote. “The Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination, even in a nonpublic forum like the Oval Office.”
Dramatic sell-off of US government bonds as tariff war panic deepens. Falling demand suggests loss of financial confidence in US as Donald Trump escalates trade standoff with China by Phillip Inman and Jasper Jolly The Guardian Wed 9 Apr 2025 12.37 EDT https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ic-deepens
US government bonds, traditionally seen as one of the world’s safest financial assets, are suffering a dramatic sell-off as Donald Trump’s escalation of his tariff war with China sends panic through all sectors of the financial markets.
The falls suggest that as Trump’s fresh wave of tariffs on dozens of economies came into force, including 104% levies against Chinese goods, investors are beginning to lose confidence in the US as a cornerstone of the global economy.
UK bonds also came under pressure from investors, who sent the cost of financing government borrowing to its highest level since 1998, heaping further pain on Rachel Reeves as the chancellor struggles to prevent her budget plans from being wrecked by a panic on global markets.
The yield – or interest rate – on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bond rose to 4.516% on Wednesday before slipping back to 4.451%, up 0.14 percentage points on the day. This week it has undergone the three biggest intraday moves since Trump was elected in November. Yields move inversely to prices, so surging yields mean falling prices as demand drops.
The move in the 30-year bond was more dramatic. The yield briefly jumped above 5% to its highest since late 2023 and was last trading at 4.899%, or 0.12 percentage points higher than Tuesday.
Both yields came down from their highest levels, however, after a much-anticipated $39bn (£31bn) US bond auction later in the day met market expectations.
“This is a fire sale of Treasuries,” said Calvin Yeoh, a portfolio manager at the hedge fund Blue Edge Advisors. “I haven’t seen moves or volatility of this size since the chaos of the pandemic in 2020,” he told Bloomberg.
Analysts believe the US Federal Reserve may need to step in. Jim Reid, at Deutsche Bank, said: “Markets are pricing a growing probability of an emergency [interest rate] cut, just as we saw during the Covid turmoil and the height of the GFC [global financial crisis] in 2008.”
[x] Open markets rise as Trump announced partial tariff pause. Percentage change in market performance since 17 Jan 2025
UK bonds came under severe pressure after the US moves. The yield on a 30-year UK gilt hit 5.65%, surpassing a previous 27-year high of 5.472% set in January.
Shorter-dated 10-year gilt yields were slightly higher at 4.78%, while two-year yields ticked down to 4%.
Higher yields on gilts – UK government bonds – will make things even more difficult for Downing Street, as it will raise the cost of borrowing to fund investment.
China’s intransigence in the face of escalating US tariffs appeared to indicate that the world’s two largest economies were heading for a showdown, with an outcome that analysts said was difficult to predict.
“When challenged, we will never back down,” said China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian. The commerce ministry said: “China will fight to the end if the US side is bent on going down the wrong path.” Beijing has promised further countermeasures.
It was not clear whether China, which is one of the world’s largest holders of Treasuries, included among its policy changes the sale of those bonds, accelerating the sell-off and the US administration’s financial pain.
Global stock markets suffered another tumultuous day as the tariffs took effect.
Japan’s Nikkei benchmark index fell almost 4%, while Taiwan’s benchmark stock index was 5.8% lower. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index recouped some earlier falls to close 0.4% down, and South Korea’s Kospi 200 index dropped by 1.8%.
However, China’s stock markets rose, appearing to weather the storm after government interventions. The SSE composite index in Shanghai ended the day 1.1% higher, while the Shenzhen SE composite rose 2.2%.
In Europe, the major markets also fell back. In London, the FTSE 100 dropped by 3% on Wednesday, immediately undoing the gains on Tuesday. Germany’s Dax index dropped by about 2.3%, leading to a 16% drop since 18 March, while France’s Cac 40 fell by 3.3%. Spain’s Ibex index was down by 2.2%.
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U.S. bond sell-off drives market worries around the world. Bonds usually a safe haven when markets are uneasy — but investors were selling them on Wednesday by Abby Hughes CBC News Posted: Apr 09, 2025 8:52 AM MDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago
U.S. government bonds underwent a big sell-off early Wednesday, signalling investors were dumping the usually safe assets as tariff turmoil continues to rock the world.
After approaching 4.5 per cent in the morning, the yield — or interest rate on bonds — on the 10-year Treasury note pulled back to 4.37 per cent following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries and a 125 per cent rate for China.
But that's still up from 4.26 per cent late Tuesday and from just 4.01 per cent at the end of last week, and the moves in the bond market still may indicate economic stress.
These bonds, which are the bedrock of the global financial system, are typically seen as a safe place for investors to park their money. They are essentially loans to the U.S. government, made by the investor who holds the bond.
They're typically seen as the safest bonds in the world because the chances that the U.S. government would default on the loan is virtually inconceivable.
In times of uncertainty, like when the stock market makes wild swings as it has been the past few days, investors usually reach for U.S. government bonds because they're safe. But today, investors were selling them as the U.S. continued to create unease with broad tariffs.
"The U.S. government is the source of instability … nobody trusts that the White House knows what it's doing," said Moshe Lander, a professor of economics at Concordia University in Montreal. "People are racing away from the source of instability."
A general lack of confidence is the main reason economists are pointing to for the slump in the bond market.
Some are also pointing to China — which owns a massive amount of U.S. bonds — saying it's possible the country could have sold some of them in order to intentionally make things harder for the U.S. government, says Joseph Steinberg, an economics professor at the University of Toronto.
But without real-time data to see who is selling and buying bonds, it's unclear whether this is actually happening.
Even after Trump announced the pause on Wednesday, Steinberg says it seems like investors are still looking away from U.S. bonds because the announcement merely kicks the tariffs down the road, rather than finding a stable resolution.
Because yields are an interest rate, their rise can filter across to corporate loans and mortgages, meaning what happens in bond markets can cause economic damage to businesses and households.
"We could definitely expect to see interest rates on some mortgages in Canada go up," Steinberg said. While variable-rate mortgages are tied to the Bank of Canada's lending rate, fixed-rate mortgages are determined by banks, which use the U.S. government bond yield in their calculations.
The increase in yields would also make a recession harder to respond to, Steinberg says. He anticipates central banks would want to lower interest rates during a recession, but if the U.S. government yields remain high, that's harder to do.
Following the chaos in the bond market, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and his Japanese counterpart, Katsunobu Kato, shared concerns about the U.S.'s slate of tariffs in a phone conference, according to the ministry.
Canada is the current chair of the G7. The ministry says Canada is working with Japan and the European Union to maintain global stability in financial markets and the financial system.
In past episodes of market upheaval, G7 finance chiefs have often collaborated on messaging and actions to soothe markets and ensure the smooth function of the financial system.
Abby Hughes, Journalist. Abby Hughes does a little bit of everything at CBC News in Toronto. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. You can reach her at [email protected].
