00:00But we begin this hour, as millions of Americans are expected to gather in small towns and major cities across the country today
00:07to protest what organizers describe as the authoritarian policies and corruption coming from Donald Trump and his administration.
00:14That surely includes the ongoing use of the Justice Department to enact Trump's retribution campaign.
00:20Yesterday, Trump's former National Security Advisor and vocal Trump critic John Bolton
00:24pled not guilty in a Maryland federal court to 18 counts of illegally collecting and transmitting national defense information,
00:31allegedly about everything from U.S. covert actions to foreign adversaries.
00:37These allocations were serious and were brought by career prosecutors.
00:41That is in contrast to the other indictments of Trump opponents, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James,
00:50which were brought at the hands of a political appointee and a former personal lawyer to Donald Trump.
00:55Last month, the president said he expected more people he considers his political enemies to face criminal charges.
01:02And in a stunning Oval Office meeting this week, standing beside his Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, and FBI Director,
01:09Trump delivered his latest list of targets for them to hear while claiming he has every right to do so.
01:15Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal.
01:19And I noticed his his interviewer was I think that was Weissman.
01:24And I hope they're going to look into Weissman, too.
01:26Weissman's a bad guy.
01:28And he had somebody in Lisa who was his puppet, worked in the office really as the top person.
01:36And I think that she should be looked at very strongly.
01:40I hope they're looking at Shifty Schiff.
01:42I hope they're looking at all these people.
01:44And I'm allowed to find out.
01:46I'm allowed to.
01:46You know, I'm in theory the chief law enforcement officer.
01:50But I have a very good, talented group.
01:52I don't have to leave it up to them.
01:54But I choose to at this moment, at least.
01:58Joining us now, Christy Greenberg, MSNBC legal analyst, former federal prosecutor and host of Courtside.
02:04Christy Greenberg on YouTube.
02:07Jelani Cobb, staff writer for The New Yorker, dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism,
02:12and author of Three or More is a Riot.
02:15Notes on how we got here 2012 to 2025.
02:19And Miles Taylor, former DHS chief of staff during Donald Trump's first administration,
02:24and author of Blowback, a warning to save democracy from the next Trump.
02:29Miles, I want to bring you in.
02:31But first, I want to start with the table here, because we were just having, I'm sorry to exclude you,
02:35a lively conversation about the John Bolton charges and the 26-page indictment that a bunch of us nerds were feverishly going through this week.
02:45But there seems to be the argument that some Democrats are trying to make right now,
02:50which is that we should ignore these charges because they're just a part of Trump's retribution campaign.
02:58I think there's a little bit more context there, which, Christy, I want you to go into.
03:03And also, just, I don't know, I want you to talk about this idea that we can hold several things to be true at the same time here about these charges.
03:11And yes, they can be a part of a political retribution campaign.
03:15John Bolton has been on Trump's target list for a long time now, actually one of the longest next to James Comey.
03:22But there's also maybe some merit here and maybe something problematic about what John Bolton was doing,
03:28regardless of whether or not it's been done before.
03:30And yes, the fact that I think the more appropriate context here is that the current president was charged on 40 counts of doing something similar.
03:41Although, although notably worse.
03:44Yeah, so I don't think there's a question that Donald Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice.
03:49The fact that you have the three stooges there that you showed in the in the Oval Office standing there as he goes forward and says,
03:58oh, at this moment, it's your Department of Justice.
04:01But, you know, we'll like with that threat that if you don't, I'm going to list all of these names of people for you to investigate.
04:08If you don't, dot, dot, dot, like what comes?
04:12I mean, it's clear if heads are rolling, if people are not doing what he wants in these various U.S.
04:18attorneys offices, they're losing their jobs.
04:20So the threat is very real and the weaponization is very real.
04:24And that said, you know, taking, you know, separately looking at each indictment, you have to look at the facts of each case.
04:31Right. We saw the Comey indictment.
04:33I've never read a an indictment for false statements where I couldn't figure out what the false statement was.
04:38And his attorneys don't even know.
04:41They didn't wouldn't even say in court.
04:42They wouldn't even tell the defense what is the false statement, who's person one, who's person three.
04:46Like what is going on here?
04:48Same with the Tish James indictment.
04:50That was an indictment where she allegedly benefited $18,000.
04:55In my experience, when you would do intake, there was a threshold.
04:58$18,000 doesn't cut it, even if you assume everything in the indictment to be true for a federal fraud case.
05:05That's just it.
05:06You would decline that in any U.S. attorney's office.
05:09So and again, it was also hard to understand if there was really a fraud there.
05:13It didn't seem much of it there.
05:15There's very bare bones.
05:16Whereas the Bolton indictment, looking at it on its face, 26 pages, there's a lot of detail here.
05:22And these are serious charges.
05:24This is mishandling of national security information.
05:27This does not appear on its face at least to be frivolous, where we would just say, oh, he said John Bolton is an enemy.
05:34We shouldn't look at this.
05:35No, if somebody is accused by career prosecutors of mishandling classified documents, we should look at what those allegations are.
05:42We should pressure test it.
05:43And look, he has the ability to go to court and defend himself, say he didn't think this was classified.
05:48He thought he was authorized, whatever he wants to say.
05:50That's why we have a process.
05:51But I'm not prepared to just dismiss this outright because Donald Trump clearly has a vendetta.
05:58The question is, did these prosecutors act on that vendetta in prosecuting him?
06:02The one thing I will say is an extension of that is if he was an ally of Donald Trump, would he be indicted right now?
06:08No, I don't think he would be, because we're seeing, just as you posted, you know, in the prior segment, George Santos gets a commutation because he voted Republican.
06:19If you are, you know, you know, Homan, who's allegedly accepting a bag of cash and $50,000, we don't even look into it.
06:27So there is clearly a double standard here.
06:30It is clearly troubling.
06:31But, yeah, should we be troubled by this?
06:33I was troubled when Donald Trump was accused of keeping national secrets on the bathroom floor.
06:38I'm troubled by that.
06:39I'm troubled by this, too.
06:40I think when this comes up, I always think people always bring up the overclassification of our secrets.
06:47But if these people know that the overclassification is a thing, why do they keep doing things like this, right, whether that's President Trump, whether that's President Biden,
06:54whether that is by former Vice President Mike Pence, and whether that is John Bolton, I want to play some comments he had on the signal gate controversy and get you guys a response on the other side.
07:05It never would have occurred to me to discuss anything sensitive, whether classified or not, anything sensitive, anything potentially sensitive on any system other than government's own secure telecommunication system,
07:22which we have spent decades and billions of dollars to perfect.
07:26I just can't conceive it.
07:27My brain doesn't get it.
07:30Well, he said his brain doesn't get it.
07:32However, here we are.
07:33Um, Jelani, one of the things that is really important for people to understand, other than we can hold both things true or, like, we should think about both things in our same hands,
07:43is that this is the reason why the independence of the DOJ is so paramount.
07:47Oh, absolutely. One hundred percent.
07:48And so, first off, you know, to Chrissy's point, I'm wondering who is Curly, who's Larry, and who's Moe?
07:54Yeah.
07:56You let us know during the break.
07:58Right. We can sort that out after.
07:59But I think that, you know, the reason that this becomes more complicated than it should be is precisely the context.
08:08And that's what independence is supposed to do.
08:10It's supposed to broadcast a particular kind of integrity.
08:13It's supposed to mean that across partisan lines that there are some things that you can just generally trust,
08:18that if there's an indictment being brought by the DOJ, it's something that will hold water.
08:23In this case, you have to ask, is this a Tish James kind of situation?
08:29Is this something else?
08:31And the mere fact that you have to ask the question goes to the heart of the lack of trust and really the lack of integrity.
08:40That's why you don't want a DOJ that is obviously doing the bidding of the White House.
08:46And it's hard, I think, for this White House in particular to understand this.
08:50But it really is in your interests to not pressure the DOJ precisely because you want credibility in moments like this.
09:16And it really is in your interests to pay attention.
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