- 3 hours ago
Category
đź“ş
TVTranscript
00:06We begin with something that is usually unconstitutional and unlawful, and in each case we can follow
00:13the facts to proof that up, but the president continues to abuse the government and the powers
00:19of arrest, of detention, indictment, prosecution, jailing even, to go after critics. This is a
00:27diverse list of targets, and while some people are busy and have looked away, and there were
00:33Republicans who initially said, well, what's one or two cases? We're going to show you tonight,
00:37we're way past that, with new developments in the key case of something that many people thought
00:42wouldn't happen in America, journalists rounded up and indicted for their coverage. What all the
00:46people targeted have in common is that they have criticized Trump, even if they once were Trump
00:52officials or Republicans. Today, Don Lemon, a veteran CNN anchor known to so many, who also is an
00:57independent journalist, was back appearing in court because the administration continues to push
01:02what are widely derided legally as flimsy charges, probably unconstitutional, but this case is real.
01:09This is not going away. Now, he was covering a protest in a Minneapolis church where other
01:14individuals may have violated the law, including storming a church, but Lemon was covering it.
01:20This is a huge deal. He pled not guilty.
01:26This isn't just about me. This is about all journalists, especially here in the United States.
01:31For more than 30 years, I've been a journalist, and the power and protection of the First Amendment
01:35has been the underpinning of my work. The First Amendment, the freedom of the press,
01:40the bedrock of our democracy.
01:44Lemon spoke broadly, as most defendants are advised to do by their lawyers, not to get into
01:49the facts or the details that will be dealt with at trial if this case isn't tossed before trial.
01:54Most legal experts, First Amendment experts, people who've looked at these kind of things,
01:58don't see a case here. There's a lot of video evidence of what happened. No traditional DOJ would
02:04charge in this situation, and he was there with the accoutrement of journalism, interviewing people,
02:11holding a mic with a cameraman. He repeatedly referenced that day that he was a journalist and
02:17doing journalism, although, by the way, you could be reporting at a foreign capital and not constantly
02:22wave your hand and say you're a journalist. You'd still be fine. This is what free speech looks like.
02:26Here's one part where he was outside the church talking to people. Today, the Post reports the video
02:30also contradicts key claims by Trump's prosecutors. The charging document went out of its way to try to
02:36turn what I just mentioned, video of him basically interviewing people. I mean, that kind of facility
02:41with people running around can have some mayhem, but what he was basically doing, which is all
02:46captured on the video, was kind of twisted in the prosecutor's document, which claimed that he
02:52somehow physically obstructed churchgoers who were trying to exit. Best we can tell, they are
02:58misdescribing moments like this.
03:02Just on the fact. You're not a journalist. Yes, I am. I want to give you the facts. No, no,
03:05no.
03:05Did you know that undocumented people and immigrants commit far less crime than American citizens?
03:11We're done here. We're done here. We're done here. Than natural-born Americans. You won't listen.
03:15What you're looking at there is standard free speech. Lemon's asking questions and talking. This gentleman
03:21talked for a while and decided that we're done and wanted to leave. He has every right. The man you
03:24see
03:25on the left, every much is right as Mr. Lemon has, both of them to speak in this country. As
03:31for the
03:31physicality, well, you saw it with your own eyes. Lemon sort of moved with the man and at one point
03:36held the door open for him. Now, that is the incident they're trying to use. More broadly, we know that
03:44Mr. Lemon, a veteran of CNN, now independent, has been publicly using his speech rights to times
03:50cover and criticize President Trump.
03:55Donald Trump didn't conduct himself properly. Donald Trump inspired an insurrection. What he's
03:59doing is objectively bad for the world. It's objectively bad for our democracy. History's
04:04not going to look fondly on Donald Trump for doing what he's doing. Donald Trump is strong-arming,
04:12bullying.
04:15That's what Lemon told us the last time he was on this program. The criticism of the administration
04:20is being attacked. And when you look at the people who are targets of Trump's retribution,
04:27it is quite clear how broad this list is. We just added all the green no charges signs you see
04:33here on
04:33the left there. That's new this week because Donald Trump just tried to indict six lawmakers.
04:38Unlike the Lemon case, where they shopped it around and found a way to move forward, that case has stalled
04:43out this week, best we know. The guardrail that has held back that has those green stamps is the
04:49American people who've stepped up by serving on these citizen juries. In the old days, they would
04:55always talk about how because the grand jury process is the first step, not the last, it's easy and a
04:59grand jury will basically indict a ham sandwich. That's because prosecutors are supposed to follow
05:05the rules and have way more evidence than they need at that first step. Everything now in these cases is
05:10upside down. In fact, there was a struggle to even get an indictment on the guy throwing
05:16a sandwich, speaking of sandwiches, at a federal officer on video because this DOJ under Trump in
05:23one year has essentially lost a lot of the credibility that usually gets them a benefit of
05:29the doubt when they want to bring charges. Americans are increasingly skeptical of selective prosecutions
05:36even as we are now in a country where journalism and being in the opposition party and serving on the
05:42Fed
05:42and serving on the FBI, among other faces I showed you, are all reasons for Donald Trump to harass, subpoena,
05:49or charge you. With all this in mind, we want to turn to an expert that we've called on for
05:54some of these
05:54deeper conversations, especially as we take a step back at the end of the week. Ty Cobb is back with
05:59us, a long time
06:00legal expert, former prosecutor, White House attorney in the first Trump administration. Welcome back.
06:05I'll put those faces right back up here, Mr. Cobb, because between the last time you and I spoke
06:10and now about a week, we've got those six new lawmakers, most of whom are veterans or intelligence
06:19veterans of some kind, and they tried to charge them this week. They just failed. How do you look
06:24at that in concert with Mr. Lemon as a defendant and these other individuals?
06:31So I think those, the Congressional Six, if you will, folks and Mr. Lemon and Pete Hegseth,
06:40you know, they all wrap into the First Amendment issues. You know, a judge in D.C., Richard Leon,
06:49yesterday excoriated Hegseth and the Department of whatever it is, defense, for, you know, even
06:57attempting to stifle the First Amendment privileges of Mark Kelly, a man who'd flown 39 combat missions
07:06and four space shuttles and served the country for decades. And he and his congressional colleagues
07:16were, they attempted to charge them for truthfully explaining in the terms that exist in the Uniform
07:24Code of Military Conduct that, you know, the military, when asked to commit war crimes,
07:28is not obligated to follow illegal orders. So they got kicked out of court there. You know,
07:37they're coming back to try to defend themselves on additional grounds, which I think will go against
07:41them. You've got Don Lemon. Of course, that's a flagrant First Amendment violation. The magistrate
07:48before whom he entered a guilty plea today, only a few days ago or a week or more ago, threw
07:54out the
07:55government's request to indict Mr. Lemon. The federal judge to whom they appealed it ruled likewise in
08:04the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to honor what the government had attempted to do. Now,
08:10they later got a grand jury indictment, unlike the Congressional Six, where not a single grand jury
08:20juror is reported to have voted in favor of the indictment. I mean, it's highly unusual that you
08:27don't get a true bill. It's, I think, unprecedented in America that not a single grand juror would vote
08:34for a true bill. And only with Jeanine Pirro, who couldn't indict the ham sandwich, and Ms. Halligan
08:44in Virginia, who, you know, attempted to indict Comey and James unsuccessfully by acting inappropriately,
08:51only these Trump sycophants that are appointed to these positions are flailing in that regard.
08:59Mm-hmm. And you mentioned Mark Kelly and his heroism. There's also just the basic fact that lawmakers are
09:08going to speak, whether they speak on video, as you said, explaining a matter of how the military works. And
09:13those
09:13veterans certainly have some credibility there. But even if one disagreed with their explanation, we have big
09:19disagreements. That's what our First Amendment protects. And here's what Kelly is saying about it.
09:26We were saying something that we felt because of this president and what we know about him and who
09:33he is, a message to tell people, hey, first of all, we have your backs. But this is an important
09:40message to hear, that you do not have to follow unlawful or illegal orders. We have an administration
09:47that is, you know, trying to prosecute senators, a president who is threatening to hang U.S. senators.
09:56And against that backdrop, if we look at impeachment as a constitutional question,
10:01which we all know it can be, that's where it starts. But it's also a question of what
10:06the constituted members of the House or Senate think. But at what point in your view constitutionally,
10:12Mr. Cobb, how many such cases targeting critics become a high crime, become impeachable? One or two,
10:20maybe people of good faith debate. Five or six is more than we've had in decades. We'll put the
10:26chart back up to remind people as we end the week, because it's grown a lot this week with Mr.
10:29Lemon as well in court. What number does it become a potentially impeachable offense?
10:36Well, it should only be one. If there's one fraudulent, unsupported indictment that's brought for
10:42personal reasons, political reasons, in which the facts are distorted and the law is abused,
10:49that alone should be impeachable. You know, the multitude of cases that we've had now
10:54certainly provides a wealth of evidence that could be used to impeach Pam Bondi. I think,
11:01you know, it's probably difficult to extend, you know, her performance and the illegal and
11:10unconstitutional, unethical way that she's managed the Justice Department all the way to the
11:16president. But the president, you know, on impeachment alone, you know, that issue,
11:22there are so many things in the column that deserve impeachment. You know, taking a $500 million
11:27from the EU. Let me slow you down, because you're very knowledgeable about these things. And so
11:32you're referring to, of course, the impeachment clause is a congressional power under the
11:36Constitution for both the president. That's what we hear about the most. But you're reminding people
11:40it exists for other officers. Are you suggesting that if the Democrats were to win the House,
11:45because we can see how this has not gotten oversight from most Republicans, a few criticize it,
11:51but very few, you're suggesting that they could also try to impeach, say, Bondi, Blanche,
11:56those responsible for this miscarriage of politicized justice?
12:01So, you know, I'm not so sure about Blanche, whether, you know, the confession that he
12:08extorted out of Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for favorable treatment, whether that rises
12:13to an impeachable offense, perhaps it does. But certainly with regard to Bondi,
12:19obviously unfit for office based on her performance yesterday. Christy Noem, you know,
12:25who's supervising the execution of American citizens and lying about them as being alleged
12:32terrorists. Hegseth and the multitude of classified violations that he has and as well as the war
12:45crimes being committed at his behest. All of those people should be impeached for sure. And I expect
12:51that we'll see articles introduced if the Democrats are lucky enough to take over the House. But I think
12:58with the president, you've got really extraordinary information out there, the $500 million bribe from
13:06the UAE in exchange for our AI chips, the $480 million plane from Qatar in exchange for an Air Force
13:15space and and him parking his Venezuela oil revenue account in Qatar. You know, the facts here are just
13:22extraordinary and unprecedented. This is not a matter of degree. This is a this is a ripple in the force.
13:28And
13:30impeachment impeachment, however, is is a weak tool in the hands of a Congress where you have people like Mike
13:38Johnson and and others, you know, willing to do whatever the president desires and certainly not
13:44willing to honor their oaths of office to work for the American people as opposed to Donald Trump.
13:50The Wall Street Journal blowing the lid off the infighting, the chaos, the petty blanket drama
13:56inside what many see as a failed DHS under Kristi Noem. That's next with Molly Jongfast and Jay Comandori.
14:07The Wall Street Journal is out with an expose on Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem,
14:12and it is making waves. It's also drawn a response from the White House. It's one of these big stories,
14:17even as we round out the week. And it involves what the journal has reported from multiple sources and
14:23a lot of backroom detail as a kind of constant chaos at the Department of Homeland Security,
14:29where the stakes are obviously high. There are firings that are described as basically
14:34incompetent or don't make sense. There is a nastiness and pettiness described in the article,
14:38a sometimes circus like atmosphere. The journal says Noem also wants to pin blame on various other
14:44officials. She sees herself in a kind of a PR political war with the other immigration officials.
14:49She wanted the acting ICE director to sort of be the face of the problems in Minneapolis rather than
14:55actually solving the problems. Now, there are plenty of stories like this in every administration,
14:59but the sheer details here are still something. People told the journal that Noem demanded that they
15:07drop a new plan for ICE to carry out targeted enforcement in Minneapolis. But that was the approach.
15:12Of course, the director had been advocating that Noem would berate her staff if she saw Homan on TV,
15:18that she was keeping track of their TV appearances and is also angling with Corey Lewandowski for some
15:24sort of higher role or power within the White House of the Republican Party going forward.
15:29That is the scrutiny on Mr. Lewandowski, who, of course, is an original Trump figure all the way back
15:34from the first campaign. But that even though he is in this special government role at DHS and they fly
15:39on a government jet or a lease jet, they have security and it's DHS. They got officers all over the
15:45place.
15:45For some reason, Lewandowski kept wanting to take the unusual step of getting
15:49a kind of government federally issued gun. And the journal reports that despite his power and
15:55proximity to the president, this is just not done because at DHS, you have the people with the guns
16:01in those roles, not the executives also having guns. And a lawyer would not sign off on it. And then
16:09days later, that lawyer was put on an administrative leave. Lewandowski eventually persuaded other lawyers
16:16to sign off on some aspects of this. Apparently, he wanted a gun and a badge. They also apparently
16:21fired a pilot when they couldn't find their blanket. This was Lewandowski and Noem. Noem had to switch
16:29planes after a maintenance issue. The journal reports her blanket was not moved to the second plane.
16:35And a Coast Guard pilot, the journal reports, was fired over this, but then reinstated because,
16:40as you see there on the screen, no one else was actually available to fly them home.
16:45And as is often the case in these kind of backstabbing stories, even though the public
16:48accountability and transparency could be good, note at the end of what you see there,
16:52that was a quote, according to people familiar with what happened. So if it wasn't Noem and Lewandowski,
16:58it's a small number of other people at that high level plane situation, who apparently want the
17:05public to know what's going on at DHS. I'm joined by Molly Jong Fast, New York Times writer and MSNOW
17:11analyst, host of the Fast Politics Podcast, and Obama campaign veteran Che Comanduri.
17:17Che, as I mentioned, you see articles like this throughout administrations.
17:22Right. But the journal stands by its details and sources. And it really paints a picture
17:29of incompetence and pettiness at DHS, which is also mired in these other problems. And sooner or later,
17:36with enough security failures, killings of Americans, other problems, you would think that
17:43that there will be little tolerance if this is what they're actually spending their time on.
17:48Yeah, I would say that you don't really see anything like this in other administrations.
17:54I mean, yes, you see some mismanagement, some minor unfortunate petty corruption.
17:59But this is of a totally different scale. This is, you know, this is, you know, Trump is the reality
18:05star president. And this is like the real housewives of Washington, D.C. If that Washington Wall Street
18:11Journal article had included an anecdote about a glass of wine being thrown in somebody's face,
18:18it would not have been at all surprising. This whole thing is a soap opera. But I think for Trump
18:25and for the people around him, they kind of like the soap opera. You might remember with the episode
18:31with Elon Musk, you know, having somebody else who draws attention, who can be blamed for things,
18:36is extremely useful for Trump. Trump's approval ratings did much better when Elon Musk was there
18:43and people were blaming him for everything bad that was going on. And I do think that Kristi Noem
18:48is serving the same purpose at this time. Hmm. Yeah, that sort of a lightning rod thing.
18:55She was asked about the deportation programs. And Molly, the substance here, of course, is that
19:02whether whatever the reasons Trump didn't like the reaction to the killings in in Minnesota,
19:09and they have since left, but they've also put other people front of that in front of that. So
19:15here was her her response when asked about who's in charge in charge of the mass deportation campaigns,
19:23or is I'm still in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. That includes all 23 different
19:28agencies under our umbrella, including ICE and CBP, but also FEMA, TSA, Secret Service, the Coast Guard,
19:35many, many more.
19:39Molly?
19:41Yeah, I mean, look, Donald Trump has decided he doesn't want to fire anyone. And as for as long
19:47as that goes on, this is going to be the situation. But this article, and there's a lot of stuff
19:51in there
19:52that has, you know, that was sort of low key known about is pretty damning. And it is like real
19:59banana
19:59republic stuff. And if you think about how, you know, what I thought was sort of the through line,
20:04and it's a through line in a lot of the reporting about Lubendowski and Kristi Noem is that it seems
20:10they're very interested in her political future and sort of putting her, you know, the, you know,
20:17her, I mean, one of the anecdotes in there is that he texts someone say, you know,
20:22text Tony Fabrizio saying he wants to do ads for her. She needs more face time. Yeah. And
20:29anytime anyone goes to an airport, you can see that this woman wants to be more than just
20:34homeland security, right? Because she's got this big, you know, there are photos of her when you go
20:40through TSA, very done up. So clearly she has a lot of ambition. And it's a really,
20:46I think I don't, I sort of see this as a political, she's got a lot of political moves
20:52that she's trying to make, and they're very sort of ham handed and ham fisted.
20:57Yeah. And Jay, I mean, DHS hasn't historically been a leapfrog to running for president.
21:02I guess, I guess the question here with Kristi Noem is, will that dog hunt?
21:10Yeah, I can just do a spoiler alert right now. Kristi Noem will never be president. You can give
21:16her a quarter and have her call her parents and let them know she will not be president.
21:22This country will elect Kim Kardashian before it will ever elect Kristi Noem. I mean,
21:28Kim Kardashian is a much better reality star diva, to be honest, than Kristi Noem. I mean,
21:33you know, the missing blanket. I mean, the fact that you would fire a pilot over a missing blanket
21:39and then have to rehire this pilot because nobody else is going to fly you home is absolutely comical.
21:46I mean, if you did an SNL sketch about it, nobody would believe it. It's so ridiculous.
21:51So I don't. Right, exactly. We've got, is that, wait, is that a real dog in the background? Am I
21:57imagining things? That's you, Molly. I'm just saying it's. It's a small dog. Yeah,
22:04that's great. It's a small dog, but very vicious. Small dog, but vicious. I just,
22:08it might be fitting. It wasn't planned, but it might be fitting.
22:13Will you turn to the survivors? This is not about anybody that came before you. It is about you
22:19taking responsibility for your Department of Justice and the harm that it has done to the
22:26survivors who are standing right behind you and are waiting for you to turn to them and apologize
22:33for what your Department of Justice has done. Members, members get to ask the questions the
22:37witness get to answer in the way they want to answer the attorney. That's not accurate,
22:42Mr. Chairman. Because she doesn't like the answer. So, um, Mr. Chairman. Why didn't she ask Merrick
22:49Garland this twice when he sat in my chair? I will continue to answer. I'm not going to get in
22:57the
22:57gutter for her theatrics. The time belongs to the, the time belongs to the gentlelady. The gentlelady
23:02has 17 seconds. Thank you. You're not going to answer this question. So let me just say that.
23:07I'll direct it to you. What a massive cover-up. No, I'm answering a question.
23:10Mr. Chairman, will you restore her time? The witness is interrupted.
23:13I'm not going to get in the gutter with this woman. Stop the time. She's doing theatrics.
23:18You can see the intensity of the moment with the back and forth.
23:22The congresswoman saying this is what the survivors deserve and can you face them?
23:26The chair kind of off video. You couldn't see him trying to keep some sort of order,
23:30which happens a lot in these hearings. The survivors present and the attorney general arguing,
23:35basically, if you can infer from her answer, that she didn't think she owed only the survivors
23:39something, that this goes back farther, that there are other parts of the government and other prior
23:44administrations that also bear accountability. Fact check. True. Because this is bigger than just
23:51the last couple of years. Anyone who's followed the story knows that. And yet, even if it is true that
23:57other prior government officials also bear some blame, at least according to the lawmaker there
24:02and others who've looked at this, the question is why can't the attorney general step up now?
24:06She is the attorney general now. Survivors. Some were seen wearing shirts that say the truth is
24:15redacted, redacted, redacted. Epstein survivors are still waiting. Release the
24:19redacted files. This is a kind of visual cue that is recognizable from the hearing room to the internet,
24:26to the memes, because so many people across the spectrum have been outraged by the way this Trump
24:33DOJ has redacted. A Democrat who saw some of the unredacted files has said there were over a million
24:38mentions of Trump, which is far more than in the publicly released files, which mentioned Trump
24:44a far fewer number of times. And if some of the million mentions were duplicates, or as I mentioned,
24:49in fairness, references to a public person, Trump, a longtime celebrity and later a politician,
24:54there is still a huge gap in big questions. Here was Pam Bodley.
25:01I believe his name has appeared countless times in the documents that have been released. If I,
25:08if I could, if I could finish, I'm going to read you the stats. I just simply asked whether or
25:13not it was
25:14true that it was 1000 folks who were assigned that task. Were those reports accurate?
25:23There are more than 500 attorneys and reviewers. I cannot give you an exact number.
25:31That is the back and forth. Remember, Pam Bondi is the attorney general who said publicly and in writing,
25:37there were no more files of significance. There were no more files that were proper to release.
25:43We are here over 3 million files later, and she has been proven wrong about that by any standard.
25:51Take even people serving in the current government, Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
25:55It is only these files, which Trump and Bondi tried to hide, that have forced him to admit
26:03that he was lying when he said he cut off contact with Epstein. We were reporting on this before
26:07he even was forced to admit it. Many outlets, of course, as I've mentioned, and we
26:12credit and source them, have been reporting and pulling on these threads. He visited the
26:16Epstein Island in 2012. Epstein had already been by then a publicly convicted sex offender, which undercuts
26:21his prior claim. Attorney General Bondi, yes or no, has the Justice Department asked
26:30Secretary Lutnick about his ties to Epstein? Excuse me. Secretary Lutnick has addressed those
26:39ties himself. I'm asking you, has the Justice Department specifically asked Secretary Lutnick
26:46about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. He has addressed those ties himself.
26:54It's true. But when he first addressed those ties, he lied. And he held onto that lie for many years.
27:00And it's only this week, after the files were forcibly pushed out under the law,
27:06that he had to address it again and say he was lying and admit he visited. Bondi also was asked
27:11about Maxwell, who got that prison upgrade, which occurred after Bondi's number two,
27:17Todd Blanche, conducted a very unusual interview with Maxwell. You don't have to be an expert on
27:24any of this to wonder why someone who was serving for such heinous crimes would ever get a prison
27:30upgrade, especially right after that interview, which led many to ask whether it was causal or some
27:35sort of reward. The Bureau of Prisons, which is under the DOJ and transferred Maxwell, reports in the
27:42end to the Attorney General.
27:45Who ordered her to be transferred to the minimum security prison that she was ineligible for?
27:51Who signed off on the special privileges? Was it Mr. Blanche? Was it one of your other subordinates?
27:59So please, can you tell us who sent her there since you don't agree she should be there?
28:06I said I do not agree she should receive special treatment.
28:10She was transferred, I learned after the fact, to the same level facility. And that is a question
28:17for the Bureau of Prisons. I was not involved in that at all. The same level facility. I don't know
28:22why.
28:26Fact check, less than true. Dodgy at best. Because even if Bondi was not previously involved,
28:34she is the Attorney General. She remains involved by the nature of her job, unless, of course,
28:39there is some rare situation like you are formally recused from some part of BOP or DOJ. That's not the
28:45case. So she's involved right now. If she thinks this was the wrong transfer, if she thinks it looks
28:50like or constitutes any kind of reward or special treatment for this convicted sex offender,
28:55she can move her back. So it's not enough to say you didn't know back then. Otherwise,
29:01people can also ask whether they believe all this, right? We've reported on people lying.
29:05Bondi's been caught with misstatements about the very Epstein matter before. This is not some random
29:09thing. This is the DOJ's job to oversee, detain, punish people in the Bureau of Prisons. That's
29:17what the entire federal prison system is. Now, this was not specific to just that moment. Across
29:23the hearing, we saw Bondi, who may still be fighting for her job, given the many problems
29:28she's faced around the Epstein files and her own misstatements, trying a sort of Trumpian effort
29:33to dodge, to deflect, to bring up unrelated issues, to say things that she thinks are positive for the
29:38Trump administration but aren't really responsive to the questions, and at times just hurling insults.
29:45How many of Epstein's co-conspirators have you indicted? How many perpetrators are you even
29:51investigating?
29:59First, you showed it. I find it. How many have you indicted? Excuse me. I'm going to answer the
30:04question. Answer my question. No, I'm going to answer the question the way I want to answer the
30:09question. You're the actresses are ridiculous. You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our
30:13watch. Not on our time. No way. And I told you about that, Attorney General, before you started.
30:19You don't tell me anything. Oh, I did tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate.
30:23You're not even a lawyer. If you're not privileged, don't yell at me. I want the record to reflect that,
30:28you know, with this anti-Semitic culture right now, she voted against a resolution contem- condemning-
30:35Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Do you want to go there, Attorney General? Or do you want to go there?
30:42Are you serious talking about anti-Semitism to a woman who lost her grandfather in the Holocaust?
30:49Really? Really? And on it went. If you see clips like that, you may understand why the news isn't
30:59going to run huge parts of that hearing, because some of it, at just the level of being able to
31:04listen to it, became heated, if not at times nonsensical. So that's enough of the hearing
31:11for this moment. I want to make sure we keep an eye on what we're learning. There were references today,
31:15and we played some of them to the question asked. What about the other co-conspirators?
31:19And there were references to Lutnik and others exposed by these files. Those things matter more
31:23than the fireworks. I want to show you what we've gleaned from the files around the time the DOJ had
31:30Epstein as an indicted defendant, because they had their inner circle identified. Only one of these
31:36individuals, as everybody just about knows by now, Maxwell, has been convicted. Others, as you see here,
31:42were pursued to some degree. Brunel indicted abroad, later died. Khan subpoenaed. Indyke subpoenaed.
31:50His assistant, Groff, seen as a potential co-conspirator, according to the DOJ at the time,
31:56never indicted. And Beller, you see there. What you're looking on your screen is from the files. This
32:02is not some external observation. This is what we now learn the DOJ was pursuing at the time. And the
32:10point raised in the hearing today, and by many others, is how few of these people have actually
32:15been pursued. Is that because this is as far as the facts went? That would be okay. Or is it
32:20because
32:21they were interfered with or somehow stopped by the many power games and corruption that are also
32:26redolent in the files? Now, because the names appear in the files does not mean any of them have
32:31committed any criminal wrongdoing. But that is the start of the threads we're pulling on. Here, you have a
32:38much wider group of names. With the same caution, the fact that they're pursued or reviewed does not
32:43mean evidence of criminal wrongdoing. And this is a partial list. But I want to show you this tonight.
32:48We've made this, again, based on the files. Upper left, you see Lutnick. The testimony that he's
32:53given about Epstein Island only came this week. Musk has been subpoenaed for this. The files showed
32:59more information about him interacting with Epstein than he'd admitted. Acosta, you may recall,
33:04ousted from the first Trump term over that sweetheart deal with Epstein. Clinton now subpoenaed
33:10and big debates over what the Congress may or may not learn there. You go through the rest of this
33:15list. These are not all household names, but they do show that both before the full file release and now
33:22as we continue to go through it, there are consequences, investigative pursuits, information
33:29continuing to come out. That matters as much or more than the fire in the hearings and some of
33:35the politics surrounding it. Because there is a process, however long delayed, to try to get to the
33:41bottom of the information and the accountability for the people in these files. And as you see,
33:47so many of them turn out to be rich, powerful, well-connected men. Professor Murray is here.
33:56We're going to get into this when we return.
34:01We're following that absolutely fiery hearing with Attorney General Bondi today in the Congress.
34:06And amid the fireworks, there are still important investigative questions. We have seen from the
34:12new files for the first time what the DOJ was looking at. Here it is. The first time that they
34:18actually had Epstein in a sex trafficking case. These were the inner circle figures they identified.
34:23Some of that was questioned along with the fireworks today. I want to bring in Professor Melissa Murray,
34:29your thoughts on the heat and the light today. Well, Ari, you said it was fiery. I would say it
34:36was
34:36bonkers. I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like this, certainly from a sitting
34:41attorney general. There were times when it felt a little bit more like a housewives reunion than
34:46congressional testimony. So leaving aside the questions of accountability that were genuinely
34:53left aside by the attorney general, it was a kind of shocking display of disrespect to Congress as a
35:01coordinate branch of government, an assertion of the president as someone to whom the Congress should
35:07be obedient to, to whom Pam Bondi is clearly very loyal to. And for the American people,
35:14there was no transparency. There was no accountability here. This was not an opportunity
35:18for the public to learn what happened. This is grandstanding in its best form.
35:23Yeah. I mean, on her side, and yet the chart I'm showing is what we also learned from the files
35:30that we
35:34have up here that shows you basically, as Nadler and others were asking today,
35:40whatever happened to these leads? The wider chart I want to show comes, as you rightly point out,
35:47despite the conduct of the DOJ and the attorney general. And I'm not here to tell everyone what
35:53the proper amount of accountability is, but I can report more accountability over time as more files
35:59have come out. Upper right, Larry Summers, who's been in a Democratic administration, paid some
36:06consequence. The lower bar is a lot of financial elites and others. Lower left, Brad Karp, a top
36:12lawyer, ousted from one part of his position to Paul Weiss. And these are early days of the many
36:17millions of files. I guess that's the question tonight. How do you contrast that slow push the
36:22survivors have made for some accountability with the way the DOJ and Bondi continue to conduct themselves?
36:29Well, I mean, this is not the first time we've seen something like this, Ari. In the wake of January
36:356th,
36:36we saw state bar associations moving with greater alacrity to hold the individuals who were associated
36:43with the attack on the Capitol. For example, Rudy Giuliani was disbarred. That's where we got
36:48the majority of accountability. We saw a really slow effort to bring cases, whether they were civil
36:54cases or criminal cases in the courts. Lots of reasons for that, obviously. In the case of the
36:59president and a criminal case, the Supreme Court was a real lag on that. But this is not unusual
37:08in a circumstance like this, where you have a deeply politicized Department of Justice and a
37:14president that is controlling quite a lot of it to see the accountability coming from private
37:19institutions who are beholden to other interests, not just the president. And whether it's corporate
37:24interests or shareholders, they have other things they have to account for. And that makes them move
37:29perhaps more quickly than the wheels of justice.
37:34As we end the week, are we still talking about Bad Bunny? Or in politics, are we still talking about
37:40the way people are talking about Bad Bunny? I have what you might call good news. Not just that the
37:46show was great and diverse and inclusive. I discussed some of that earlier in the week.
37:49And not just that we can still share nice things in this country and not have them all subsumed by
37:56politics. But that the whole failed MAGA meltdown over Bad Bunny performing for a part of the Super
38:05Bowl, right, for those 12 minutes in the halftime show, actually illustrates their failure to try to
38:11control culture in this current era. Now, MAGA voices were offended by many things that they don't like
38:20in the culture, whether it's Spanish or their long-running complaints about all kinds of
38:25other things that use the same playbook they tried to use here. The halftime show
38:31spiked Bad Bunny's listeners. He was already the number one artist in the world on streaming last
38:36year. And the Super Bowl brought him even more listeners and big ratings. Then Republicans said
38:42they're even more outrage. And some following, again, the Trump playbook said the FCC should get involved
38:48because, again, nothing better than a big government anti-free speech agenda brought to you by the
38:54Republican Party. But if this all sounds familiar, even as they lost, there was such a great point
39:01made by Jon Stewart where he connected this more broadly to the Republican Party's problems. Take a look.
39:10When did the right become such
39:15these people who control every branch of government are so triggered by someone singing in Spanish for 20
39:26minutes, they needed to create their own safe space alternative halftime show where Trad Bunny over
39:32here is singing songs about how he can't even enjoy sitting in a truck and drinking beer because he knows
39:38that somewhere out there there's a trans person.
39:43Trad Bunny is, of course, a little turn on traditional
39:50and an echo of Bad Bunny. And so what you look at here is not just what they want you
39:57to focus on,
39:58which is debating this genre or that. And by definition, you're going to have different
40:03musicians play the halftime show and the different fans are going to like the music. It's really almost
40:07beneath discussing. But that the wider problem is this MAGA mood wants everyone to get as upset and
40:16outraged as they are about things not going their way, which is the exact snowflake type critique that
40:23they have hurled at so many other people. Stewart noting that this type of political fragility comes
40:30while they represent a president who has all of these problems, posted these racist memes,
40:35won't apologize for it. And these policies that we're living through still affect everyone's real lives.
40:42It's actually pathetic. The gap between the power you all wield and the victimhood you all claim
40:58is the real offense. If you didn't actually have the power to do so much damage in our country,
41:03I think we all dismiss it as a weak and pathetic pity party.
41:11A pity party. John Stewart does not hold back. He stitches it all together and reminds us
41:17that people who are literally exercising the power over how you live and how you're policed and who gets
41:23shot and killed also want to have an entire meltdown when they don't get their way because
41:29maybe their music or their ideas aren't actually popular in the free market of ideas.
41:38Thanks for joining us on the Beat Weekend and you can always find us weeknights,
41:416 p.m. Eastern for The Beat right here on MS Now.
Comments