The Beat with Ari Melber - Season 10 Episode 07
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00:00Thank you. Welcome to The Beat. We begin with this escalation in President Trump's crackdown.
00:05The FBI has now executed a new search warrant at a Washington Post journalist's home in Virginia.
00:13The administration says this is part of an investigation into a government contractor
00:16that they accuse of illegally retaining classified materials. The Post reporting FBI agents
00:22have now seized this reporter's phone, two laptops, and a watch. One of the laptops was
00:28a personal computer, the other a Washington Post-issued laptop. Investigators tell the
00:32Post reporter that she's not the focus of this probe, that the target is a government contractor,
00:38and according to the criminal complaint, is alleged to have had secret documents in a lunchbox and his
00:44own basement, which could be a violation of the rules. Attorney General Bondi alleges the Post
00:49reporter also published illegally leaked information. Of course, that is, when you cover the government,
00:55what happens all the time. It is also worth noting the complaint, which may be partial,
01:02may only be the start of the story, but the complaint itself does not accuse that contractor
01:06of leaking classified information. Now, this is obviously drawing intense scrutiny, because while
01:12the government does have wide latitude in legitimate national security cases, and there have been times
01:17in the past where we've seen, as a last resort, reporters basically dealt with and investigated
01:24or their materials investigated in security litigation, this comes amid a time where the Trump
01:30DOJ under Bondi has very little credibility, and the president has mused about going after all kinds of
01:37opponents and has done so. And he and his allies have viewed many in the press, as you know,
01:42as their sort of political opponents. Times reports that it's exceedingly rare to search
01:47a reporter's home, and it refers to a 1980 law that bans searching reporters unless they are the
01:53suspect committed, I should say, they are the suspect in a criminal probe. Obviously, for example,
01:59being a journalist doesn't mean that the authorities can never deal with you if they have something
02:04separate from your journalism that you did wrong. Washington Post executive editor says,
02:09this extraordinary aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and
02:14concern around the Constitution of Protections for our work. Some of this was also telegraphed
02:20because the administration, in contrast to past administrations in both parties, had recently
02:25diluted the rules that protect journalists. So we knew they were already, we knew they were already
02:34going down this road because there was some level of intent. If this is a valid factual pursuit, if
02:41ultimately they overturn and find materials that supports the investigation, everyone will look at
02:47that and report that out. But it comes at a time where the administration is going after all kinds of
02:53public opponents. It's going after the Federal Reserve chair. It's using criminal probes to intimidate.
02:57And so there are obviously real questions about whether this pursuit, kind of breaking a line we
03:04haven't seen yet in the second term of a mainstream major journalist's home and their property and their
03:10materials, whether that itself is an exception that's lawful or part of a larger selective prosecution
03:16campaign. As for developments in that campaign, look at the targeting of lawmakers. Democratic Senator Lisa
03:23Slotkin now says she has federal prosecutors investigating her and their claim involves
03:31something that all lawmakers have very protected. It's literally in the Constitution. It's called the
03:35speech and debate clause. And they refer to things she said in a video that was about the military
03:41following the law. You can think about the obvious irony or Orwellian twist of a lawmaker who, of course,
03:49has authority over writing the laws, reminding the military to follow them and not do unlawful
03:53orders or campaigns. And that itself is what this administration now says could be a crime.
04:00Slotkin is objecting to Trump's playbook, saying this is intimidation and physical intimidation meant
04:04to shut people up. Democratic Congressman Chrissy Houlihan says she was also contacted by the DOJ and is
04:10being investigated over the same video. And the Pentagon is using its powers, and this is different than
04:16criminal probes, but also suggests possible corruption because it is using the powers it has for its brave men
04:25and women who serve, which, of course, is supposed to be always patriotic and nonpartisan. But there are
04:30questions about political corruption in Hexfess Pentagon and whether they are abusing the rules and authority
04:36they have over a Democratic senator from that video who happens to be a retired naval officer, Mark Kelly.
04:41Now, in normal times, people who go from military service, showing their public service, their
04:50valor, their bravery, into Congress, that's usually considered a plus. But let's be clear. Kelly is
04:58saying and his allies are objecting to the fact that it looks like the Trump administration is treating it
05:03as a kind of a minus, as a way to get leverage over him and now endangering his military rank,
05:09and something that people who do public service rely on is pension payments that come out of the past
05:15service. Senator Kelly is fighting back, filing this lawsuit against Hexfess and the department,
05:21trying to block what he says are these retaliation efforts. And these are the latest targets of a larger
05:26crackdown that we have been reporting on. Because remember, even in MAGA land where they say many
05:33things, admitting that they have an actual enemies list, that they would break rules and law and go
05:41after their enemies at the DOJ, that was too much for many in MAGA. And so when questioned about this
05:47originally when they were taking in their jobs, confirmation hearings at the beginning of this year,
05:51they all resisted and said they don't have an enemies list. But you can look at it,
05:54you can see how they've weaponized investigations, subpoenas, probes. On the left and the green,
06:01you see some of these have already been dismissed because they are so weak, although they take time,
06:06money and energy even when they end quickly. And on the right, you have cases that are going forward.
06:10Congresswoman indicted, former Trump official Bolden indicted, and new this week lower right corner,
06:17Jerome Powell facing a criminal probe because he says he's resisted Trump's unlawful efforts to kneecap the
06:24Fed to get a sugar high economic plan to try to help Trump politically. Now, here's what Trump is
06:30saying about all this. It's limited by my morality, and I have a very high grade of morality, so therefore,
06:39it's limited. Not the Constitution, not the courts? That's what I thought you were going to say.
06:42Well, the Constitution, of course, that goes without saying, but you're asking me what really can stop?
06:47We'll never get to the courts. We'll never get to the Constitution, because I want to see what's good for our country.
06:54And you know what? The courts want to see that, too.
06:58Donald Trump doing an interview there with CBS, which has been under scrutiny for how its editorial choices,
07:05after trying to cozy up to Trump, after settling lawsuits, now having new leadership,
07:10is trying to basically be a friendlier media outlet. What you'll also notice, if you keep track of this
07:16kind of thing, is that Donald Trump thought the Venezuela effort would be a big win for him. I mean,
07:22clearly from the way they promoted it and touted it and did all their press. And yet, two-thirds of the
07:27country doesn't understand why we'd even be trying to run Venezuela, and it's basically not for that
07:34operation. And then Trump started doing more and more press. He did a long New York Times interview.
07:39I just showed you the CBS interview. There is clearly a view at the White House, from trying
07:44to change the Fed policy for the economy, to trying to do a lot more press, to trying to sort of
07:50distract from the Epstein failures and a lot of other things that have been going on,
07:55where this president can see there are problems. He's just trying to shout them down, paper them over,
08:01and intimidate anyone who points them out, rather than maybe address the underlying problems that
08:06are dogging his actual presidency and leadership of the United States. And given how many of these
08:13cases revolve around whether there's a valid investigation or not, from the new Washington
08:19Post probe to, of course, the Fed and the other cases I mentioned, I want to bring in someone who's
08:25really an expert at this and has done this for years. Andrew Weissman, of course, is a prosecutor. He was
08:31on the Mueller probe and also remind people as FBI general counsel, he would literally look at and
08:36enforce the rules for the people doing the enforcement of the law for the rest of us.
08:42Welcome, Andrew. I wanted to stay first big picture.
08:48Anyone who's followed any story or any case knows it takes time to get all the facts. And so the
08:53Washington Post action is definitely severe. We can report that it is severe and unusual. But whether
09:01it's ultimately part of a lawful probe that judges would bless from the beginning to the end, we don't
09:07really know. But the big picture I mentioned is that you have multiple lawmakers who are literally being
09:13threatened over their First Amendment rights. What they said about policy on a video,
09:18the Fed for its job. Big picture. What do you think of the legality of these crackdowns?
09:26So big picture. So first, I do think with respect to the leak investigation, if you turn your attention
09:36away from the alleged leaker who has been charged and the complaint looks like a sort of, you know,
09:42the plain vanilla charge that you would see in a case like this, that, of course, is the irony that,
09:49you know, of course, we have a president who was facing the exact same charges, but was alleged to
09:54have done far worse. Let's leave that aside. To me, the thing that we do know from the Washington Post
10:00is that the normal processes that would have been followed in other administrations were not followed
10:08here. It really seems like they just jumped to a search warrant. And, you know, that is a real attack
10:15on the so-called fourth estate. Did they try and get the documents just voluntarily? Did they issue a
10:22subpoena? Was there negotiation? What we're being told by the Washington Post is no. So I think big
10:28picture, we do know that this is a very different stance that the administration has with respect to
10:36people who are supposed to, as you do, Ari, cover the news and call out sort of, you know, bogus
10:47statements by the government. And when it's right, we're supposed to say it's right. And when it's wrong,
10:52we're supposed to call it out. So this is an attack on that. And I think what you're saying,
10:58with respect to Senator Kelly, with respect to Senator Slotkin, what you saw with Letitia James,
11:05with James Comey, I think is a variation on that. You're seeing the sort of true weaponization of
11:13enemies. But at the same side, you're seeing a lack of investigation of Pete Hegseth when he
11:20uses signal to talk about war plans, a lack of investigation of Tom Homan when he is alleged to
11:31have taken $50,000 of cash in a kava bag, a lack of investigation of the ICE agent who we know shot and
11:41killed an unarmed woman in Minnesota. But we are seeing, by the way, an investigation that's now been
11:49reported of her background and that of her widow. So you really are seeing the sort of
11:56true weaponization of the department by this administration.
12:03Yeah. And the president reportedly just is unhappy that while the actions matter and the harassment
12:10matters, the cases so far have been thin enough that a year in, I would remind everyone, no one on
12:16that chart we showed has been convicted of anything. And journal reports, Trump says they're not moving
12:22fast enough at DOJ to prosecute his targets, which that reporting would suggest a confession. At what
12:29point, other than getting these cases dismissed, Kelly seems to be going more on offense. At what point
12:35would there be more of a reckoning for people at the DOJ who knowingly abuse those powers without
12:42meeting the required legal standard for these cases?
12:48Well, one of the things I would note is that the administration seems to be taking a step to avoid
12:54the Department of Justice altogether. They announced just a few days ago that they're
12:58going to have an alleged fraud prosecutor. But that assistant attorney general is not going to be within
13:06the Department of Justice. They're going to be housed and reporting directly to the White House and not
13:13reporting to Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch. So that is, you know, complete eradication of a separation
13:20between the White House and the Department of Justice. And what can happen to people at the Department of
13:25Justice, at the leadership, if they are engaged in wrongdoing sort of intentionally or in bad faith?
13:33You know, the answer is right now, not a whole lot, although down the road, if it can be shown,
13:42there are consequences from losing their bar ticket or having bar complaints and sanctioning
13:51to things that are more serious. But the more serious is unlikely to happen because you do have to
13:59show intentionality if they were intentionally to commit a crime. And also at the federal level,
14:06the president can pardon people on his way out the door, assuming he leaves and goes out that door.
14:11Right. Right. Which goes to the whole problem of of of what the DOJ is like in these in this moment.
14:19Andrew, stay with me. We're going to continue this. I just have a quick 90 second break.
14:22We're back with Andrew Weissman and we're following several of the moves by the Trump administration.
14:32People can feel from the horrific shooting by the ICE agent in Minnesota to these other measures that
14:40things are heating up. The Washington Post reports on what we were discussing with the search of this
14:46Washington Post reporter's journalist home that any search target journalist warrants intense scrutiny
14:50because these kinds of searches, according to First Amendment expert, Jamil Jaffer,
14:55can deter and impede reporting. And when you look at what Bondi rescinded that I mentioned in April,
15:01this was what was telegraphed. Bondi basically canceled what had been a Biden policy preventing
15:07officials from searching reporters records when trying to ID government personnel. Bondi said in a memo
15:13that the media shouldn't get those protections. And what you described was an interest in a show of force.
15:21That rather than saying, well, we want to get this material. So there's ways we can get it and subpoena
15:25it. And that's our priority here. There seems to be a willingness or even an interest in starting with
15:33what was the last resort, show up at the home, make it a big deal. Some of these cases we're learning about
15:39because the targets like Powell and lawmakers are sharing the information. With your experience of
15:47the judiciary, at what point do judges who are not supposed to read the temperature, that's what they
15:53tell us. Can't look at one of these cases in isolation and be totally blind like Lady Justice
16:01when you got 15, 20 people being harassed by the government and they all have one thing in common.
16:07And it's not what their skin color and it's not their party. It's just whether they have independently
16:12exercise their rights in a way Trump doesn't like.
16:16So, you know, there there is there's good news, although I'm just going to briefly at the end
16:22just talk about when it comes to a search of a journalist, the limited authority that a court has.
16:29But what you're talking about is something that we've seen the courts push back. There were pending
16:36motions by Letitia James and James Comey for vindictive and selective prosecutions. Those
16:42never needed to be decided because the cases were dismissed on other grounds. But if those cases were
16:47to come back, those motions will be made again. But we have seen places where the court has reached that
16:56issue. Mr. Abrega Garcia, the individual who was illegally extracted from this country and sent to
17:03El Salvador, where he sort of rotted in a prison there. His judge in the criminal case has said that
17:10he is entitled to discovery on his claim for selective and vindictive prosecution. There's going to be a
17:16hearing on that at the end of January. In addition, Just Security, the legal forum, has recounted
17:24scores, scores, scores of judges who no longer are giving the government the presumption of regularity
17:33because they have seen the government make statements that are simply not true. They have
17:40questioned whether their orders have been followed. And they've just recounted over and over again things
17:46that were unheard of in Republican and Democratic administrations. And I just want to be clear,
17:52I've served in Republican and Democratic administrations. It is unheard of that as a
17:58government lawyer, you would disobey as well as not be completely candid with the court about what you
18:07knew. But when it comes to the journalists, let me just quickly say there's limited authority for what
18:13the courts can do there. This really is a question of Department of Justice policy. It is true that Pam
18:21Bondi sort of loosened the reins a bit from Merrick Garland and Eric Holder. But even she has said that
18:30this is supposed to be a last resort. And it's not clear how so far how this is a last resort given the
18:38Washington Post reporting as to what was not done beforehand.
18:42Yeah. Andrew Weissman, thank you. I want to tell folks later tonight we'll hear from Jacob Soboroff,
18:50who's covered ICE and deportation for a long time as we see these protests, these videos showing all
18:58kinds of conduct. So he will be an expert for us tonight. Also revelations about Lindsey Graham
19:04calling out Donald Trump for lying when he could testify in secret. That's a new story.
19:09Meanwhile, we have a president losing at home, but clearly trying to use war powers abroad to sound
19:16or look tough. We have a special guest on that next.
19:23Donald Trump has faced many setbacks at home. His first year put him as the most unpopular
19:29president at this point in the second term. And that may explain why he has turned abroad,
19:35using war powers that are harder to review in real time. Today, officials in Greenland and Denmark
19:39were at the White House going from those countries to visit with the Trump administration. They spoke
19:44to Rubio in advance while Trump publicly vows to take Greenland.
19:51On Greenland, sir, the premier of Greenland said today, we prefer to stay with Denmark. Do you see
19:58that as the final word? Who said that? The premier of Greenland. Well, that's their problem. That's
20:06their problem. I disagree with them. I don't know who he is. Don't know anything about him,
20:11but that's going to be a big problem for him.
20:16We've heard that the discussions were described with Vance and Rubio as frank by the Danish diplomat.
20:24U.S.-controlled Greenland, we're told, is not necessary. That's putting it lightly.
20:28Trump posted that anything less than Greenland in the hands of the U.S. is unacceptable.
20:35This is one of the many threats that Trump is driving, and it's not the kind of thing that other
20:39countries are ignoring or the markets are ignoring. When the sitting president hijacks or takes or extracts
20:47a foreign leader out of Venezuela with no warning or process and then talks about other war powers,
20:52people have to deal with this, even if Trump has a range of motivations. Politico says,
20:57so many wars, so little time. And it's all different than everything Trump claimed last
21:03year when he was running for president and promising not to be another belligerent Republican
21:09getting us into endless wars. I want to bring in David Rothkopf, foreign policy expert who worked
21:14in the Clinton administration and hosts Deep State Radio, the podcast. As you know, David, there's always
21:21the balance between he had a bad end of the year. He has an Epstein debacle. He's very unpopular.
21:29People forget that he's facing one of the largest ongoing protest movements we've seen, and he wants
21:34to change the topic. But if you're over in Western Europe or you're a NATO member, that analysis doesn't
21:43buy you much, does it? They got to deal with this and they're coming and dealing with it. So what do you
21:47see is happening, even if some are concerned that it's a wag the dog?
21:54Well, there is a wag the dog element to it. There's also an element to it that's associated with,
22:00let's say, idiosyncrasies of the president's personality. He said that he feels in this New
22:07York Times interview he did a couple of days ago that the reason to go into Greenland is because
22:11he likes to own things. You know, that's not a rationale for attacking an ally or attacking our
22:20alliance. You know, we've had a treaty for decades that allows the United States to do effectively
22:26whatever we want to in Greenland. We have a base in Greenland. Greenland is part of NATO. There is no
22:33Russian or Chinese threat, as he says. There is no national security interest to do this. So it has
22:41to either address this idiosyncrasy in his personality, or there is a possible other motive.
22:49And the other motive is that this would blow up NATO. And Trump has been negative on NATO for a long,
22:55long time. And if he goes in, if he attacks a NATO ally, particularly one where they're going to be
23:03holding exercises in Greenland that will involve other NATO allies, this could end the alliance.
23:14That would be bad for the United States. It would be real good for Vladimir Putin. And it's something
23:21we need to watch real closely. Yeah, as you remind everyone,
23:27NATO has this collective security agreement to deal with what was the Soviet threat and Putin today.
23:34It rallied across the alliance for the United States in the wake of 9-11. It's such a good thing
23:43in long-term geopolitics that no other president's ever gotten to this point. I mean, you can debate
23:50the dues. You can debate sharing the burden. But nobody's ever said, you know, what we need is
23:55we need to be weaker against Putin. And we need to have fewer friends when we're attacked as we were
24:01after 9-11. It was good to have a treaty with friends. I want to play with the foreign minister
24:05from Denmark was saying after the meeting today, take a listen. We had what I will describe as a frank,
24:13but also constructive discussion. The discussions focused on how to ensure the long-term security in
24:20Greenland. And here our perspectives continue to differ, I must say. The president has made his view
24:28clear and we have a different position. We therefore still have a fundamental disagreement,
24:34but we also agreed to disagree. And therefore we will, however, continue to talk.
24:42He could be describing diplomacy or marriage. David, sometimes you just say,
24:49we're still in disagreement. We're going to keep going. But when you look at Putin in the background
24:55of the shadow, how does he view all this? Is he, even if it doesn't go to a worst case scenario,
25:01is he already getting something for nothing? Sure. Because the United States has pulled back
25:08from funding, for example, Ukraine, and has said, we want to have NATO carry the weight within Ukraine.
25:16Well, if the United States is at loggerheads with NATO over Greenland, if US relations with NATO
25:23are deteriorating over Greenland, then the United States and NATO are less likely to be able to cooperate
25:31on Ukraine. And that's going to create more openings for Putin there. NATO is the single greatest
25:38factor containing Putin's expansionist impulses across Europe, which we've already seen not just
25:46in Ukraine, but in Georgia. We've seen him talk about Moldova. He's talked about the Baltics.
25:51And the Europeans realize this is a real threat. Well, without the United States involved or with NATO
25:58in this kind of a conflict, this opens an opportunity for Putin, just as American expansionism like this
26:07sends a message to countries like China that if they want to go in their own neighborhood and do
26:13something in Taiwan, the United States is going to have a hard time objecting because look at what
26:18we're doing in Venezuela. Look at what we want to do in Greenland. So this weakens the US,
26:23it weakens the international structure that we've relied on for the past 80 years and it creates
26:29real opportunities for our rivals around the world. Yeah, understood. David, thank you for
26:37international perspective and the wisdom. We appreciate it. I'll tell folks coming up, you
26:41rarely get to go inside a grand jury room and certainly not one contemplating the indictment of
26:45Donald Trump. But we now have the new transcripts, including Lindsey Graham slamming Trump when he
26:52thought it was in secret. I'm going to read that to you coming up and the ICE backlash.
26:57Jacob Soboroff was reported on this for a long time. Joins me next.
27:04Donald Trump has tried to put troops in the streets, federal agents in the streets,
27:08ICE agents in the streets, often masked and testing how aggressive they can get.
27:13Now we're seeing more and more citizens who know they might be taking a risk,
27:17exercising their rights to document what's happening, including by agents who clearly
27:23don't want people to know who they are. And some of these videos are spreading around the country
27:28just a week after the ICE agent shot and killed US citizen Renee Good. Minneapolis neighborhoods
27:34have been overwhelmed by the scale and the aggressiveness of these tactics. It seems that
27:38the feds at times look like they want to be fighting with citizens and protesters rather
27:44than the ostensible mission, which was to go find some undocumented immigrants,
27:49not attack people who are peaceably assembled. ICE officers dragged a woman from her car
27:54yesterday. This was during the day. She told them she was just trying to go to a doctor's appointment.
28:10The protests are spreading and this comes amid what we've been reporting, an effort to intimidate and harass
28:27some of the most powerful people in the country. You're talking about members of Congress,
28:31members of the fed. And yet on the ground, the intimidation tactics take on a different flavor,
28:37where we are seeing force, people grabbing phones, menacing, attacking, and in some cases,
28:43shooting Americans to death. The young demonstrator in California has been deemed permanently blind in
28:48one eye after an altercation with federal officers. There was a six-hour surgery where doctors found shards of
28:54plastic, glass, and metal in the eye and around the individual's face. There is video of that incident online.
29:03You can also see a federal officer shooting at Jacob Rumler at point-blank range. This was a non-lethal
29:08round. A few minutes later, the officer is then dragging them into a building by his clothing while the
29:14face of that individual there was still seen on video bleeding. That was a 21-year-old. Again,
29:22much of these aggressive tactics are being used in maneuvers that don't even involve the original
29:28ICE enforcement of dealing with undocumented migrants. I'm joined now by MSNOW's Jacob Soberoff,
29:38who so many of you know for being one of our field reporters on many topics, including long-term
29:44coverage of immigration. Also, of course, he was out in his hometown of L.A. dealing with the
29:49reporting on that difficult issue for so many people, the L.A. fires. And he has a new
29:53book, Firestorm, the great L.A. fires in America's new age of disaster that made the New York Times
30:00bestseller list, like so many issues in journalism, a tough story, but a story worth telling. It grew
30:07initially out of him reporting on the devastation that his own community was facing during those
30:12fires. Jacob, welcome. We'll get to both of these topics, but let's start with what you're seeing.
30:18What are you seeing in the way that these federal enforcement actions seem to be spiraling or
30:28spreading well outside of the original so-called mission?
30:33It's a continuation, Aria, of the tactics that I reported directly to you on the first day of the
30:40No Kings Day protests in the summer of 2025 in early June. You and I were live on the air together
30:47as those heavy-handed tactics literally resulted in peaceful protesters being targeted with less
30:54lethal munitions. We were chased by local officers on horseback who behind them had federal agents,
31:02heavily armed, masked, kitted up, parading through the streets of Los Angeles under the pretense that
31:09there were riotous mobs routing through the street, and none of it was true. And that is a scene now that
31:15has played out time and time again. I've seen it myself from Chicago to Charlotte to the halls of
31:2026th Federal Plaza in New York. We're watching it play out in Minnesota right now, and this is exactly
31:25as they have drawn it up. Tom Homan said to me the day after I talked to you that he believed people
31:30would die in these confrontations, and his predictions sadly have proven to be exactly true.
31:38Yeah. Yeah, and that's why it goes to the question of what exactly the federal government is doing.
31:43This is America. People have rights, and there is a leadership and a training problem when we've seen
31:49agents on video blatantly. Menace people, threaten people, grab phones. They don't show any of the
31:58balance that I've seen sometimes covering law enforcement, where when you see large demonstrations
32:03in certain places and you see local police, we see it with NYPD and LAPD sometimes,
32:08having layers. And the first layer is usually, hey, we want you guys to have a successful protest,
32:14because that's your right. I mean, I'm not saying any of that. Here's one Minneapolis
32:17protester. We wanted to share what they said today about it going too far.
32:24They're constantly in my neighborhoods. Everybody's in fear. Whether you're a citizen or not,
32:28like, it's just causing so much chaos. And I live right next to that target where those two workers
32:37were pulled out the other day. And I lean more on the right for a lot of issues. But when it comes
32:44to human rights, you know, that's just something that I think is very important for a lot of people.
32:53And Jacob, one can lean to the right politically and still be opposed to
32:59militarized agents shooting a mother of three to death for no apparent reason captured on video.
33:07Of course, Ari. I think that over and over again, what I hear from people in all these places is that
33:11they didn't ask for this, even if they voted for Donald Trump and even if they wanted the largest
33:16mass deportation program in American history. Part of that was not American citizens being harassed
33:22by these same law enforcement officers on the streets, their own freedoms being taken away,
33:26their constitutional rights being challenged. But as J.B. Pritzker has said to me, as Gavin Newsom
33:32said to me just a couple of weeks ago, they believe that all of this, the harassment of American
33:37citizens by mass federal agents on the streets of the United States will be a pretext to the
33:43invocation of the Insurrection Act. The National Guard was taken away from Los Angeles and other
33:47cities and states around the country, you know, after failures in federal court by the Trump
33:53administration to continue with that policy. And with the Insurrection Act, by provoking
33:59these protesters, American citizens that are fighting on behalf of non-citizens,
34:03these Democratic governors think that, you know, Gavin Newsom told me, he doesn't think he can
34:08guarantee that he would stop Donald Trump again from deploying troops, armed army troops, National
34:14Guard troops to the streets of the United States of America if the Insurrection Act is invoked. And
34:18they believe that that's the goal. Yeah. Tell us about this book, which grew out of your reporting,
34:25and what we can learn and reflect on from from those terrible fires.
34:29There's there's so much overlap, Ari, actually, in between what's happening with immigration
34:35enforcement and what we've seen in the wake of the fires in Los Angeles. As I often say,
34:41when you cover big mass casualty events like this, whether it was the family separation crisis,
34:45which I covered in the first Trump term, or the the most costly wildfire event in the history of
34:50the United States of America, which happened to happen in the neighborhood that I grew up in,
34:54in Los Angeles, the fissures underneath our society are laid bare. And one of them
34:59today, which you will read about in this book, Gavin Newsom warned me about it off camera. I write
35:04about it after I interviewed him for Meet the Press is immigration policy. It is stymieing the recovery
35:09effort from this fire. 40 percent of the construction industry, according to some estimates in California,
35:15is undocumented labor. Who is being targeted? As you so rightly pointed out, not the worst of the worst at
35:20all. But people that are standing in Home Depot parking lots looking to engage on construction
35:25projects and get an honest day's work, doing anything that they can. And more often than not,
35:31in Los Angeles right now, where that is needed is in the recovery. Just two days ago, I was with Pablo
35:36Alvarado from the National Day Laborers Organizing Network in Altadena. As we talked about this,
35:41the raids are continuing every single day. I think he told me seven day laborers were taken
35:45just several days ago in Los Angeles. And so how do you recover from one of the largest
35:50natural disasters in American history, the fire of the future that will only happen more and more,
35:54as you will learn in this book? You can't do it with immigration policies like the ones this
35:59administration is putting forward right now. Yeah. Jacob Soberoff, thank you for your work.
36:05And that book is Firestorm, available now. People can go wherever books are sold or Google it,
36:10Firestorm by Jacob Soberoff, and check out his continuation of that reporting.
36:15I'm going to fit in a break. When we come back, we will go inside the secret grand jury room to show
36:20you what Republicans were really saying as they mocked Donald Trump's 2020 election lies.
36:30Grand juries are famously secret. And when we report on them, you often don't have any idea
36:35what's going on inside. But tonight we have new revelations about what some top Republicans
36:39were secretly telling the grand jury under the rules, it's supposed to be secret,
36:44about Donald Trump's bid to steal the election he lost in 2020. This is from that Georgic
36:52interference case and how alarmed and exasperated Republicans were because back then Trump had lost
36:58and they were just trying to get to a transition of power. The case led to criminal charges and then
37:04was later dismissed. The testimony is newly obtained by the Times and has a kind of a who's who of
37:10people involved in the Georgia issues, including the former Speaker of the House saying Trump's plan
37:16to have fake electors, which we've reported on, was the craziest thing he'd heard. Or the Republican
37:21Governor Brian Kemp, who ultimately clashed with Trump because he wouldn't help steal the election,
37:26called the whole effort to get lawmakers in a session to lie about Trump's loss,
37:32he viewed it as a fruitless exercise. And coming out of Washington, Senator Lindsey Graham testified,
37:38I've told Trump more times than we can count that he fell short on that election. He said Trump's plan
37:44to enlist these fake electors was weird. I just don't want to tell you, just weird. Now that might seem
37:50like a shift because Graham is so often supportive of Trump in this second term. But Graham zigzags so
37:59much, it's clear that neither he nor Trump nor anyone who follows politics is supposed to care
38:04that there's nothing consistent because now Trump has power and Graham supports him. Then, of course,
38:09Trump had just lost. And after that, Graham was testifying about how, yeah, he lost. Get over it.
38:14And if you go back far enough, it was Lindsey Graham who warned everyone against some of what we're now
38:20living through, what he thought was an unfit individual, Donald Trump, to ever be president.
38:29I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office.
38:34Donald Trump is a political car wreck. I think he's a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican
38:39Party. If Donald Trump cares the better of my party, I think it taints conservatism for generations to come.
38:44It does if you believe Lindsey Graham and it taints himself because he was warning this would be bad
38:54if he won. Now Lindsey Graham is part of what he himself said would taint conservatism for a generation.
39:01Trump now has doubled down and said he basically admits that he wanted to seize voting machines,
39:08have the military do it. That would be illegal. That plot was one of the many efforts that Trump
39:13tried. We tracked those arrows where he wanted to overturn the election and eventually turned to
39:19more and more extreme conduct, including the violence that he later pardoned. Someone who worked
39:26with Donald Trump in the White House in the first term, Ty Cobb, warned this.
39:30The White House is very serious about using any leader of government that, you know, inflates Trump's
39:39sense of his power. It will be difficult to stop his occupation of America. It may go toward his ultimate
39:47desire, perhaps not in 2026, but in 2028, you know, to ensure that power passes to his chosen successor,
39:57as opposed to the free and fair elections. The warnings are coming from people who worked
40:05right alongside Donald Trump in the White House as the militarization and the crackdowns continue.
40:11It's not a time to look away. It's not a time to panic. There's a lot more people who still believe
40:17in the rule of law in America than those who would sacrifice it for another round of whatever unpopular
40:24agenda we're living through right now. We'll be right back.
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