00:00It is day 270 of the second Trump administration.
00:03Former Trump official and outspoken Trump critic John Bolton
00:06has officially been indicted by a grand jury.
00:09Bolton is facing 18 separate counts,
00:12all related to retaining or transmitting classified information.
00:16Two senior federal law enforcement sources tell NBC News
00:19that Bolton is expected to surrender to authorities tomorrow
00:22and will have an initial court appearance on the same day.
00:25He served as Trump's national security advisor
00:28for part of his first term,
00:29but the president quickly turned on Bolton
00:32because of his 2020 book
00:34where he harshly criticized his former boss.
00:37Here's how Trump reacted to the news earlier today.
00:39Watch.
00:42John Bolton was just indicted by a grand jury in Maryland.
00:44Do you have a reaction to that?
00:45I didn't know that.
00:46You tell me for the first time,
00:48but I think he's, you know, a bad person.
00:50I think he's a bad guy.
00:53Yeah, he's a bad guy.
00:55He's too bad, but it's the way it goes.
00:57That's the way it goes, right?
00:59That's the way it goes.
01:00Will I what?
01:01Have you reviewed the case against him?
01:02No, I haven't.
01:03I haven't.
01:04But I just think he's a bad person.
01:06In a statement, Bolton denied doing anything illegal
01:09and said the following.
01:10When my email was hacked in 2021,
01:13the FBI was made fully aware.
01:15In four years of the prior administration,
01:17after these reviews, no charges were ever filed.
01:21Then came Trump, too,
01:22who embodies what Joseph Stalin's head of secret police once said,
01:26quote,
01:27you show me the man and I'll show you the crime, end quote.
01:32These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries,
01:36but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents,
01:40to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct.
01:44Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America's constitutional system
01:49and vitally important to our freedom.
01:52That's the end of the quote.
01:53Bolton is the third outspoken Trump critic to be indicted over the last few weeks,
01:58along, of course, with former FBI Director Jim Comey
02:00and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
02:03Meanwhile, in D.C., the Senate took another failed vote
02:06on a clean funding bill to reopen the government.
02:09That means in about one hour, we're going to begin day 17 of this shutdown.
02:15With that, let's get smarter.
02:16With the help of our lead-off panel this evening,
02:18Barb McQuade is here, veteran federal prosecutor
02:20and former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
02:24Jeff Mason joins us, White House correspondent for Reuters.
02:27And Jonathan Cohn, senior writer for The Bulwark.
02:29He is also author of the book,
02:31The Ten-Year War, Obamacare,
02:33and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage.
02:37Barb, break down this indictment for us.
02:39I mean, Donald Trump's been complaining about John Bolton's mustache
02:42since the day they met,
02:43but to now be out there just saying he's a bad guy,
02:47you get what you get, this is serious.
02:50Yes.
02:51You know, President Trump's comments about someone being a bad guy
02:55is really irrelevant to whether they're charged with a crime
02:59because that's based on conduct.
03:00But I will say, Stephanie, that in stark contrast
03:03as to the indictments against Jim Comey and Letitia James,
03:06this one looks like some very serious alleged misconduct.
03:10Violations of the Espionage Act, 18 counts,
03:13each of which brings a 10-year potential maximum sentence
03:17that could be stacked.
03:18And it alleges that he transmitted these classified information
03:23to family members via email,
03:27referring to them as diary entries,
03:30apparently for use in his upcoming memoir,
03:33The Room Where It Happened.
03:35And according to the indictment,
03:36it alleges that there's some very serious national defense information
03:40protected at the top-secret level that he communicated.
03:43If the allegations in this indictment are true,
03:46and, you know, this is some professional work here.
03:48This quotes emails.
03:50This is not the kind of bare-bones indictment we saw
03:52in the last couple of weeks.
03:54If these allegations are true, these are some serious charges.
03:58But the FBI has been investigating Bolton for years,
04:00like since the Biden administration.
04:02That's different than what we're seeing with Tish James and Jim Comey, Barb.
04:07Yeah, you know, we don't know all the facts here,
04:09but I recall that there was some reporting
04:11that occurred earlier this year
04:13that we got a tip from an ally
04:16about this hack by the Iranian government
04:20into John Bolton's email.
04:22And that is what sort of reopened this whole episode.
04:25There had been an investigation
04:26when he submitted his manuscript for pre-publication review.
04:30And at that time, he agreed that he would return to the government
04:33any classified information that he may have possessed.
04:36But when that hack occurred,
04:39apparently that is when the government learned
04:41that Bolton had been communicating,
04:44transmitting to these family members
04:45who were helping him with his book,
04:47classified information to which they were not entitled.
04:50That led to the execution of that search warrant this summer,
04:53whereupon they found paper copies
04:56and electronic copies of that same classified information
05:00that he claimed to have returned as part of that settlement.
05:03But Jeff, give us a history lesson,
05:05because Donald Trump and John Bolton
05:07have a complicated history.
05:09He was part of the first Trump administration.
05:12How exactly did we get here?
05:15Oh, yeah, he was definitely part
05:17of the first Trump administration.
05:18He was his national security advisor.
05:19I remember traveling with him together for one of the summits
05:23that President Trump held with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
05:27He was a very powerful member
05:29of President Trump's national security staff.
05:33And President Trump would sometimes give him a hard time
05:36and talk about how John Bolton was more
05:39to the right of him on certain issues,
05:42including Iran and other foreign policy issues
05:46that were especially important or things that were especially passion projects,
05:51I think you could say, for John Bolton.
05:53But he hired him to be his national security advisor.
05:56He went through multiple national security advisors, it's fair to say.
06:00But Bolton was absolutely in his inner circle,
06:04and then he turned on him.
06:05And he turned on him in a pretty massive way with the book that Barb was just referencing.
06:12And that, of course, upset Trump.
06:14And he has had him in his sights ever since.
06:17Not your average passion project, it's fair to say.
06:20Barb, the president is now throwing out new names as targets.
06:23Jack Smith, Lisa Monaco.
06:26What are you looking at next?
06:27Well, we know now from what we've seen in the past couple of weeks
06:34that when Donald Trump makes these demands of charges against his perceived enemies,
06:39sometimes those charges follow.
06:41What is not clear at all, however, is what crimes these people may have committed.
06:46It seems that Donald Trump is interested solely in payback
06:49because these are people who presided over charges against him.
06:53So, you know, Jack Smith was the special counsel,
06:55and Lisa Monaco was the deputy attorney general at the time.
06:59Andrew Wiseman was just somebody who worked on Robert Mueller's team.
07:02And so there's no suggestion of any criminal conduct by any of these people.
07:08And so targeting individuals because they're bad people
07:11or because you want to seek payback
07:12is a really inappropriate use of the Justice Department.
07:15So I don't know that prosecutors are going to find any crimes
07:18that they can charge these people with.
07:20But if they do, I think they will be highly suspect
07:23along the lines of the Jim Comey and Letitia James indictments.
07:26All right, Jonathan, new but somewhat related topic.
07:29The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the White House is planning to install
07:33true Trump loyalists in the IRS criminal unit for the not sole purpose,
07:40but one of the reasons is to target left-leaning groups.
07:44What do you make of this?
07:45It sounds very familiar.
07:48And, you know, we've been hearing rumors about this and reports.
07:51And I think Jeff and his team at Reuters did a story a week ago
07:53about targeting these left-wing groups.
07:56And when I hear this, my mind immediately went back to Watergate, actually.
08:01You know, everybody remembers that there was bugging.
08:03You know, that was, you know, they were bugging
08:04the Democratic headquarters back then.
08:06But, you know, there were many other crimes involved with Watergate.
08:09And one of the big ones was Nixon and his henchmen sending a list of enemies
08:13over to the IRS and asking them to go investigate.
08:16I mean, that was a big—that was one of the—it was part of the articles
08:19of impeachment, one of the things that led to his resignation.
08:22Now, of course, that was a very different time because at that time
08:26when that list came over to the IRS, the people—they didn't act on it.
08:30And, in fact, then eventually, you know, Republican members of Congress
08:33stood up and said, this is one of the reasons, Mr. President,
08:35you're going to lose an impeachment vote.
08:37You need to resign.
08:39Now we're talking about him putting his henchmen in an IRS.
08:43So if he sends that list over, I think there's a really good chance
08:45they actually do prosecute.
08:47And we see this play out exactly the way we stopped it from playing out in the 1970s.
08:52The difference between then and now?
08:55Shame.
08:56All right, Jeff, let's talk about the shutdown.
08:57Because in an interview with our colleague Ali Vitale,
09:00Senate Majority Leader John Thune revealed that he has offered to guarantee Democrats
09:05a vote on ACA subsidies in exchange for reopening the government.
09:10Some Democrats are dismissing this, saying they do not trust Republicans.
09:14They're going to hold up their end of this deal.
09:16But this, to me, seems like the first sign of some possible movement.
09:20Is it?
09:22Yes.
09:23I mean, I think it's absolutely a sign of some possible movement.
09:26That doesn't mean it's going to get there.
09:28It doesn't mean it's going to happen.
09:29And I think I always go back, as we're talking about the shutdown, to who or on whom the
09:36American public is placing blame.
09:38So far, Democrats are feeling their oats and feeling like they're not getting a lot of
09:45blame for this.
09:46Republicans, of course, are also—I mean, both sides are blaming the other.
09:49But the polls, at least the Reuters-Ipsos polls that came out just last week, say that the
09:54public so far is blaming both sides.
09:55Until that shifts, you're not going to have one side decide to give up.
10:04And the Democrats so far are certainly not giving up.
10:07That said, though, to your initial question, Steph, what they want is for what they, being
10:12the Democrats, want is to have an opportunity to get these subsidies extended.
10:17And the fact that the Republican leader in the Senate is offering them that potential
10:21opportunity, at least what he says is a vote, whether or not—I mean, he said he
10:25can't guarantee where that vote would go.
10:28That is, at least in some ways, an olive branch.
10:31And there haven't been that many olive branches in the last several days.
10:34There are a lot of Republicans saying no way should these subsidies be extended.
10:38They say they were one-time temporary subsidies, only put in place during a time of COVID.
10:43That time has passed.
10:45And Democrats aren't fighting, honestly.
10:47But, Jonathan, it was like yesterday you read my mind, because you wrote specifically
10:52about how this fight feels familiar with Republicans, again, taking on the Affordable Care Act.
10:58Can you explain why this is so popular despite these years of attacks?
11:02Yeah, well, you know, we've gone through the regular cycle of Republican attacks on this,
11:09and they always come back to this argument that Obamacare is terrible.
11:12It's made the health care system a disaster.
11:15Nobody likes it, and we shouldn't be throwing more money at it.
11:18And that's basically—you know, that was the argument they made back in 2017 when they
11:22tried to repeal it.
11:24And, you know, I think they feel like, OK, there are lots of people, if you ask them,
11:28their Obamacare insurance, you know, it's got a big deductible.
11:30It's not ideal.
11:31No one ever said it was.
11:33But, you know, we went from 45 million people with no insurance down to 20 million now—25
11:39million now, which is a massive reduction.
11:41Lots of people are saving money.
11:43People with preexisting conditions can get health care.
11:45And that is actually really popular.
11:48And every time the Republicans try to change it, people say, oh, great, you're going to make
11:52it better.
11:53And then it just—no, no, they're not going to make it more generous.
11:56They're not going to get more people insurance.
11:57What they actually want to do is take away money, take away insurance from people.
12:01And then everyone says, wait a minute, that sounds horrible.
12:03That's not what I want.
12:05And, yeah, they seem determined to sort of rediscover this again.
12:09And I think that's totally related to what we were just talking about, which is the fact
12:12that Democrats are looking around and like, wait, everybody agrees with us.
12:16And you see Republicans trying out these arguments that they're either not true or they
12:20don't resonate, changing their positions.
12:22And that, to me, is the sign of, you know, the Democrats, they have a coherent argument.
12:27They know the public agrees with them.
12:29And Republicans are the ones who are flailing and looking for a way out.
12:31It's on the other side of the mic when they're out.
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