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The Rachel Maddow Show S18 Ep 06 EngSub latest. #RachelMaddow #MSNBC
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00:00Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Happy to have you here on MSNOW.
00:03So who is in charge of the U.S. Navy? Constitutionally speaking, as you know,
00:10we have civilian control of the Navy and of all the other branches of the armed services.
00:16So, you know, it's a civilian who's in charge of the U.S. Navy. Do you know who the civilian
00:20is who Trump put in charge of the Navy? One hint is that he's a man who never served in
00:29the Navy.
00:30Never served in the military at all. He has no known previous relationship of any kind
00:35with the Navy or with the U.S. military at all. Indeed, he was not known to have ever even
00:40shown
00:41any interest in the Navy or the U.S. military whatsoever before Donald Trump made him secretary
00:47of the Navy. Why did Donald Trump put this guy in charge of it? I don't know. What the guy
00:54does
00:55know a lot about, what at least he is known for in the world, is his art collection. His name
01:04is
01:04John Phelan, P-H-E-L-A-N, Phelan. That's him on the left with his wife. Mr. Phelan is
01:11an art collector
01:12and finance guy who Donald Trump put in charge of the United States Navy for some reason.
01:18Now, is his art collecting itself perhaps Navy related? Like, is he into paintings of ships
01:25or famous naval battles of the 19th century? No, nothing like that. In fact, it's kind of a
01:32funny story. Around the time that Trump named John Phelan to be secretary of the Navy,
01:36the art world press kind of awkwardly tried to sum up John Phelan's tastes in art. They just,
01:47they tried to describe for the non-art world public, who's just hearing about this guy for
01:51the first time, they tried to describe what John Phelan was known for in the art world in case
01:58anybody was curious as to why Donald Trump might have landed on him, in particular for the job of
02:03Navy secretary. A number of art world publications eventually sort of settled on what I guess is
02:11a representative quote, an existing quote from a former executive at Sotheby's describing the art
02:18tastes of Trump's new Navy secretary. She described his tastes as, quote, a celebration of the sexual
02:27side of life. Uh, the publication ArtNet published, um, photos of some of his collection in situ at one
02:35of his homes, photos that I cannot show you on TV. Um, other, other art world publications described,
02:44um, for example, a video art installation at one of his homes, which is just all Playboy centerfolds.
02:51There's also famously the floor at his like $38 million mansion in Aspen, Colorado. In an interview
03:00with the, um, art newspaper.com, Trump's Navy secretary, John Phelan, his, his wife was asked
03:07by that publication, quote, what is the most surprising place you have displayed a work?
03:12And she answered, quote, in the living room of our Aspen home, we have a mirrored floor. It covers the
03:20entire space. It is amazing to see people's reactions at parties when they realize what you
03:26can see in the floor. Naughty and nice. End quote. Um, that Aspen home with the mirrored floor,
03:37that is where, uh, John Phelan hosted a gazillion dollar fundraiser for candidate Donald Trump in
03:42August, 2024. That fundraiser made news because it was one of the times Trump stated his made up
03:48claim that prisons in the Congo were releasing all their murderers in order to ship them to the
03:54United States. Um, he told that tall tale at the house with the quote, naughty surprise mirrored floor
04:02whose owner Trump soon named to run the United States Navy, despite him having no connection to
04:09the Navy at all. Um, incidentally, that Aspen fundraiser, fundraiser was one that Trump flew to
04:15on an airplane that had previously belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, which itself made some headlines at
04:23the time. The campaign said at the time that that was just a coincidence, but you know, in the course
04:30of time, Trump got reelected to the presidency in November of 2024, he really did name this guy,
04:37John Phelan, the rando sexual side of life art collector with a mirrored floor to run the United
04:44States Navy. And Congress really did force Trump's justice department to release at least some of the
04:51government's files on Trump's friend, the late convicted pedophile and child sex trafficker,
04:56Jeffrey Epstein. And perhaps inevitably among the revelations in the Epstein files was this headline,
05:05John Phelan, Trump's Navy secretary listed in Epstein flight logs. John Phelan, the billionaire art
05:13collector whom president Donald Trump appointed to oversee the U S Navy appears to have traveled on
05:17at least two transatlantic flights with Jeffrey Epstein. The flight manifests list Epstein, Phelan,
05:23and a handful of other men, including Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model scout who was accused of
05:28rape during the 1990s and later of providing girls to Jeffrey Epstein. Brunel was found dead in his jail
05:36cell in France in 2022. After being charged in a related case, authorities ruled it death by suicide.
05:43Epstein's aircraft was nicknamed the quote Lolita Express because as some of Epstein's accusers have said,
05:50he frequently had young women and girls aboard the plane to entertain his guests.
05:57CNN was first to report on Navy secretary John Phelan's flights with Jeffrey Epstein.
06:03They also published this flight log from the Epstein files where you can see the Navy secretary's name
06:08listed there. He's number nine on the flight manifest. Nobody has claimed there were definitely any young
06:15women on board this plane or girls on board this plane, but we don't know who the other six people
06:21are whose names are redacted from this flight manifest for whatever reason. Why were those people having
06:27their names redacted? MS now contacted the U S Navy about John Phelan's connections to Jeffrey Epstein
06:35and Phelan's time on board Epstein's plane. The Navy is offering no comment, but today was the first day
06:44that members of Congress were allowed under very strict conditions to physically go to the Justice
06:49Department where they were allowed to see unredacted versions of some Epstein documents.
06:55Judging by the reaction from members of Congress like Jamie Raskin, who took advantage of this
07:00opportunity today. Um, members of Congress today seem just as frustrated as ever about what the Trump
07:06administration is doing and continues to do with all this Epstein related material.
07:13There were to be no redactions in order to spare people, uh, embarrassment or political disgrace.
07:22Um, we didn't want there to be a cover up. And yet what I saw today was that there were
07:30lots of examples
07:32of people's names, uh, being redacted when they were not victims. Um, and so we still haven't gotten
07:41from the DOJ, their privilege log explaining why certain redactions were made. But I can tell you that
07:48I saw a whole bunch of them that seemed, um, very suspicious and baffling to me. Donald Trump's name,
07:55uh, was redacted, uh, in a number of different places. And, um, I saw, uh, one, uh, conversation between,
08:09um, Epstein lawyers and, uh, Trump lawyers relating to the 2009 investigation.
08:18Uh, which had been redacted and I don't see any particular reason that it should have been.
08:23Donald Trump's name is all over these files, all over it. I mean, thousands and thousands of times.
08:28One thing, sorry. One thing that came out in the release last month was a bunch of tips from through
08:35the tip line, including about President Trump and, uh, potentially with a 13 year old girl. Did you get
08:41to see any of the, how those tips were investigated? Did you feel comfortable about them being dismissed?
08:46I saw nothing about that. Um, but if you spend any real time with these files,
08:52you will see references to, uh, 17 year old girls, 16 year old girls, 14 year old girls,
09:0011 year old girls, 10 year old girls. And I saw a reference today to a nine year old girl.
09:04So is a really gruesome and grim story. And, uh, I think in order to see our way through this
09:14and to
09:14try to make progress on criminal investigation and prosecution and some kind of social redemption
09:22from this whole nightmare, we need to listen to the survivors. A nine year old girl,
09:29president Trump is mentioned thousands of times in the files. As Congressman Raskin said there,
09:36um, Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick is also all over the files, including in the files,
09:41apparently trying to negotiate a trip to Epstein's Island, uh, the top Republican party donor in the
09:47country by far, Elon Musk. He's all over the files, including trying to get Epstein to invite him
09:52to what Musk called his quote wildest parties. And yes, the Navy secretary, John Phelan is there
10:00as well, flying on Epstein's plane with who knows who, but one of the people on board the plane was
10:06the French modeling scout guy who killed himself in jail when he was charged with Epstein related
10:12trafficking crimes. There's no criminal allegations against any of these men from the Trump administration
10:21that I just mentioned, but they're all still in place in the administration and in Republican
10:25politics, at least at this hour. One guy who did lose his job in this country is the chairman of
10:32Paul
10:32Weiss, which is a very fancy, very powerful, very rich New York law firm. That law firm and its
10:39previous now chairman, Brad Karp, um, became very, very famous in the past year as quote,
10:45the face of capitulation to Donald Trump in his return to the white house. Soon after Trump was
10:51sworn in for his second term, Trump you'll recall, uh, started threatening elite law firms with executive
10:57orders of dubious legal weight. Brad Karp's law firm, Paul Weiss was one of the firms that was threatened.
11:06And Brad Karp was the guy who immediately rushed to the white house to try to appease Trump,
11:12to have a conversation with Trump about getting his firm off the hook. The conversation was described
11:17as being beginning quote with a prolonged discussion of golf. Um, and that may be where it started,
11:24but where it ended was with Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss promising that his elite law firm,
11:29Paul Weiss would donate $40 million worth of free legal services to Donald Trump's pet projects
11:37as a way of trying to appease Trump. So he wouldn't be mean to the firm anymore.
11:42And that bootlicking act by the chairman of Paul Weiss, um, cratered the reputation of the Paul
11:50Weiss law firm probably for all time. Um, it also set in motion a race to the bottom where more
11:56than
11:56a half dozen other large, powerful, rich law firms did exactly the same thing before some of them came
12:03to their senses and said, no, actually, what are we doing? We're going to go to court and challenge
12:07these executive orders, these executive orders with which Trump was threatening these law firms,
12:12all four firms that stood up and challenged Trump in court, won those cases and got the executive
12:17orders struck down. But like I said, following Paul Weiss's lead, there were a bunch of them that
12:24didn't go that route. Paul Weiss and its chairman, Brad Karp didn't bother to challenge Trump at all.
12:30They just raced to the White House, signed themselves over to him. Thank you, sir. May I have another?
12:37Well, Paul Weiss chairman, Brad Karp, who did that is now no longer the chairman of Paul Weiss.
12:43There was no criminal allegation against him, but Brad Karp has now been ousted at Paul Weiss because
12:49of his appearances in the Epstein files, including his apparent strategizing with Epstein about efforts
12:56to discredit Epstein's victims. I should tell you that he puts the word victims in scare quotes,
13:02like they're not really victims of Epstein who had come forward to say what Epstein had done to them.
13:09Incredibly, Paul Weiss still has not fired Brad Karp. They've removed him as chairman,
13:14and I think they want a lot of credit for doing so, but they're keeping him on at the firm.
13:19Maybe
13:19it's because the radioactive glow coming from Brad Karp's office is so warm it allows Paul Weiss to cut
13:26down on their heating bills in this cold, cold New York winter. But you know what? While we're on the
13:33subject of moral catastrophe and what to do about it, let's talk about the Trump prison camps.
13:40Because if you're Paul Weiss or if you're Skadden or you're Kirkland or you're Latham and Watkins
13:47or any of these other big law firms that followed Brad Karp down this road to perdition, right,
13:53that signed an appeasement deal with Trump where you promised him that you'd make your law firm work
13:59for him for free if, please, please, he wouldn't be mean to you. If you're one of these firms who
14:05did
14:05that this time last year and you've since realized that maybe that was the road to hell. If you're
14:14since realizing that you're going to have to find some way out of that, you're looking to find your
14:20soul in the dark now to salvage something of your reputation so you don't just have to shut down and
14:24change your name and wipe all your resumes when this dark time is over and the reckoning comes,
14:29right? If you're Paul Weiss or one of these other firms who is trying to find your redemption arc,
14:35that is trying to find a way to redeem yourself and rinse your reputation a little bit,
14:41may I direct your attention to the Trump prison camps? Because that is the story of 2026.
14:48Because very quietly, Donald Trump in 2026 is trying to build himself a brand new archipelago of huge
14:56new prison camps in the United States. And what do you think he's going to do with them?
15:00The largest capacity federal prison in the United States right now holds about 4,000 people.
15:05Just for context, Trump is trying to build a new network of huge new prison camps that will each hold
15:11eight, nine, 10,000 people. Two, two and a half times the largest size federal prison in the United
15:18States right now. But I mean, but at least in the case of existing federal prisons, they're at least
15:24for people who are convicted of federal crimes, right? These new huge prison camps that Trump wants to
15:29build, they're not for people convicted of crimes. They're for people picked up by his immigration agents,
15:35like by ICE. He is trying to build huge new capacity to hold more than 100,000 people in
15:42these prison camps, even if they haven't been convicted of or even charged with a crime.
15:50And with what they're doing with ICE already, the existing immigration prisons they've already got,
15:55even before they start building new ones, they're already the stuff of nightmares right now, right?
16:01I mean, the immigrant prison camp, they call it Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. They've had
16:07three people die there in the last few weeks. One of them was a man who they said was a
16:10suicide,
16:11but the county medical examiner, which got a hold of his body for an autopsy, said,
16:15no, no, no, it was not suicide. It was homicide. He was asphyxiated to death.
16:19And another one of those deaths, another so-called suicide, they are now not letting that county medical
16:25examiner see that body. They say they're instead going to send his body to the US military to do the
16:31autopsy instead. They're shunting the autopsy on that one to the William Beaumont Army Medical
16:35Center at Fort Bliss, which conveniently does not release its autopsy reports to the public.
16:42At Camp East Montana, we also have new reports that they have at least two cases of tuberculosis
16:48at that facility as well. Elsewhere in Texas, in Dilley, Texas, where they're holding men,
16:53women and children. They have nearly tripled the number of people at that facility just since
16:59October. And at that facility in Dilley, Texas, there are now reported measles cases as well.
17:07NBC News has just reported on an 18-month-old girl named Amalia who was healthy when her family
17:14was arrested by Trump's immigration agents in December and they were sent to this Dilley prison
17:19camp in Texas at Dilley. This little girl, this previously healthy little girl, contracted COVID
17:24and RSV and pneumonia. She was eventually rushed to a children's hospital in life-threatening respiratory
17:31distress. She was hospitalized at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio for 10 days,
17:36much of that time on oxygen. But then ICE demanded that she be sent back to Dilley from the hospital.
17:44They sent her back to the prison camp and then would not let her have the medication she was
17:50discharged with from the hospital. Homeland Security is denying that she ever received anything but the
17:57best medical care. But this all comes from a court case brought on her behalf by the Immigrant Rights
18:02Clinic at Columbia Law School, a law school immigrant rights clinic, which filed the petition seeking her
18:08release and indeed succeeded in getting her released on Friday. That's exactly the kind of work that is
18:17exactly the kind of legal work that firms like Paul Weiss and other big law firms used to help with
18:23all over the
18:24country, right? For which there is a lot more need right now than there was even one year ago when
18:29Paul Weiss and
18:29all those other law firms instead started promising to not do anything to upset or oppose Trump and to instead
18:35donate their
18:35legal services to things Trump likes. The fact that the Dilley prison camp has nearly tripled in size since
18:43October is something that we know thanks to DetentionReports.com, which is an online database of all the known Trump
18:52immigrant prisons in the United States. In addition to DetentionReports.com, there's also another online tracker
18:59developed by a group called Project Salt Box. They show all the sites all over the country where Trump is
19:05trying to buy
19:06warehouse sites to use to build his new immigrant prison camps. We're going to be talking with one of the
19:12people behind this
19:13new online tracker for the new Trump prison camps in just a moment. It's a really useful thing. But again,
19:21if you're looking for
19:22ways to punch your moral dance card at the moment, if you're, say, Paul Weiss, with your radioactive Epstein
19:29Files chairman stuffed into the back office where you hope no one notices him, where your firm is literally
19:35described now as the face of capitulation, right? When you're trying to avoid a picture of your firm
19:41appearing in the history books and the chapters on the shameful cowardice of the once vaunted and powerful
19:47American legal profession in the face of the tiniest nudge from a tin pot dictator,
19:53if you are Paul Weiss or you're another firm that's in that boat,
19:58you have the opportunity to have a very big and very important 2026. Because the very contingent
20:05as yet undecided fight over whether or not America is going to let Donald Trump build a huge new
20:10constellation of black site prison camps in this country, that is a fight that needs legal firepower,
20:18that needs pro bono lawyers donating their time. There's representing people who are already in
20:26the existing camps, a record number of people being held right now in what we know are atrocious
20:32conditions. There's also representing people with habeas corpus petitions, right? Non-lawyers
20:39hearing that phrase don't know what I'm talking about, but lawyers instantly know what that is,
20:45right? The administration defying court orders was supposed to be such a bright red line for
20:49the vaunted American legal profession. Well, where is the administration defying court orders every
20:55day? Courts all over the country from Minneapolis to Massachusetts say that federal court orders are
21:01being violated every day over and over and over again, specifically when it comes to the Trump
21:06administration arresting people and locking them up indefinitely without any chance to go to court to
21:11be heard. Which of course is the basis of the writ of habeas corpus. They're not supposed to be able
21:19to lock you up in prison without putting your case before a court. In Massachusetts, one federal judge
21:25last week went so far as to order the Trump administration to advise every single person they arrested and locked
21:31up,
21:31to advise them in writing and in multiple languages, that every single person the Trump administration
21:37is locking up has the right to petition a federal court to review their case and potentially set them free.
21:44The judge ordered that the Trump administration needs to give every single person they lock up
21:50written notice of their right to a habeas corpus petition in a federal court. And then she ordered that
21:56within three hours of anybody being given that notice, they need to be given access to a telephone,
22:02quote, to call an attorney. Whereupon perhaps they could call Paul Weiss. Perhaps big law,
22:12which has a lot to make up for now, perhaps big law could dig down deep and try to find
22:18its soul
22:18somewhere amid the tidal wave of habeas corpus petitions that ought to be filed by all these thousands of
22:25men, women and children. Trump is arresting all over the country and locking up literally without due
22:30process, without any access to the courts. And why is he doing that? Well, he's doing it in part to
22:36create an artificial need for tons more space in Trump prison camps, which they are trying to build
22:43in huge numbers right now. Where else could big law help? Big law could also help in the fight to
22:52stop
22:52Trump building new prison camps. Put that project salt box tracker back up there.
22:59You see at the very top there, you see the map there. We'll get into that in a minute. But
23:02you
23:02see at the top, essentially the bottom line, seven warehouses that ICE has bought so far to become
23:09Trump prison camps. Seven bought so far. Five warehouses where the sale has been blocked by local
23:15opposition. Eleven warehouses, or it's up in the air, they are trying to buy warehouses to turn
23:22into big Trump prison camps. But the fight is still underway, still contingent, still yet to be
23:28determined. Hey, American big law, you looking for your lost reputation? Because right now the future
23:33size of Donald Trump's archipelago of massive black site prison camps is being determined by fights in
23:40tiny little towns, by individual local officials, by angry local residents, and tiny no-resource local
23:46activist groups that are trying one by one to stop the next Trump prison camp from being built in their
23:53town. And they could use some help. And they're doing a good job fighting it in all sorts of ways,
24:00and it's the least partisan thing you can possibly imagine. I mean, one proposed Trump prison camp in
24:05Haley, Mississippi appears to be canceled now after local protests and after Mississippi Republican
24:11Senator Roger Wicker expressed his objections to it. One proposed Trump prison camp in Oklahoma City
24:16appears to be canceled now after local protests and after local officials leaned on the private
24:22company that was going to sell that warehouse there to ICE that they ought not do that. In surprise,
24:27Arizona, after a Rockefeller Group warehouse was bought by ICE, there's been a ton of local protests
24:33there. Even MAGA Republican Congressman Paul Gosar has been among those expressing concerns about
24:38that warehouse becoming a prison camp in his home state. In Chester, New York, the fight is on over
24:43a warehouse owned by an entity associated with Carl Icahn. Locals are protesting there, including tonight.
24:51Local officials say the local sewer system, among other things, cannot handle anything like the size of
24:56that prison camp that Trump wants to put there in New York. In San Antonio, Texas, after Oakmont
25:02Industrial Group reportedly sold its warehouse to ICE, among the local Texas officials expressing their
25:08outrage and their determined opposition is the top elected official in Bexar County, Texas, Judge Peter
25:14Sakai, whose family was incarcerated in prison camps during World War II for the crime of being Japanese
25:20American. He says that is what led him to public service. He says he is absolutely opposed to there
25:27being a new ICE prison camp in Bexar County in San Antonio. In El Paso, Texas, the nonpartisan city council
25:34there
25:34unanimously approved an action plan to try to find a legal way to block another one of Trump's planned prison
25:40camps in Clint, Texas. Plenty of local opposition, plenty of protests, plenty of bipartisan outrage. And you know what they
25:49could use? They could use some big time legal firepower on their side. In Orlando, Florida, it's a firm called
25:57HLI Partners
25:59that's being pressured for potentially brokering a sale to ICE for a prison camp in Orlando. In New Hampshire, a
26:05member
26:05of Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte's cabinet resigned today in scandal after Governor Ayotte, again a Republican, said she didn't
26:13know that ICE was planning on building one of these prison camps in Merrimack, New Hampshire. And this cabinet
26:18official's agency apparently did know, but nobody told the governor. And so now that cabinet official
26:23is out. In Social Circle Georgia, even a Republican congressman like Mike Collins is saying no to a prison
26:29camp in Social Circle that would potentially triple the local population there. That's a town of 5,000
26:34people. They want a Trump prison camp there that would hold up to 10,000 people. We're going to talk
26:40with
26:40Democratic U.S. Senator John Ossoff about that and more in just a few minutes.
26:46Whether it is the Epstein moral disaster or the capitulating to a would-be dictator moral disaster
26:56or any of the other moral disasters of 2025, of the first year of Donald Trump being back in office.
27:04This year, 2026, the second year of Trump being back in office, shows that his approval has never
27:10been lower. His party's electoral prospects have never been more dismal. The clarity with which
27:15the country views him and his administration and his intentions has never been more clear.
27:20Trump has never been less powerful. The agenda he's pursuing has never been more evident and more
27:25unpopular. What this means, if you're a wuss, what this means if you were wrong in 2025,
27:31in the first year of Donald Trump being back in office, well, it means that 2026 is good news for
27:38you. 2026 is the easiest chance you'll ever have to rectify what you did wrong, to get on the right
27:45side of this thing. Now or never.
27:52They're called Project Salt Box. They're based in Baltimore, Maryland, and their name comes from
27:56the bright yellow wooden boxes on street corners around Baltimore, as seen here on the charming
28:02Instagram account, Baltimore Salt Box. They're boxes of road salt for people in Baltimore to use during
28:08the winter to melt the ice from their streets and sidewalks. Salt boxes used to clear ice.
28:16Project Salt Box is also focused on ice, as in Trump's immigration agents. Project Salt Box has
28:23been tracking the government's buying spree for its new archipelago of huge legal black site
28:29immigration prisons all over America. As I mentioned in the previous segment, you can see in plain
28:35language right there at the top. In red, warehouses bought by ice, seven. In green, warehouses canceled
28:42by local opposition. In orange, the fight, warehouses for sale, 11. Project Salt Box has all those sites
28:50and their status labeled on an interactive map. You can zoom in on any state, any part of the country,
28:56hover over any site to see the details. So for instance, you can zoom in on the great state of
29:00Georgia. If you hover over this one red dot, it tells you a warehouse in social circle Georgia has been
29:05bought by ice with plans to imprison 8,500 people there. That's more than twice the size of the
29:12largest federal prison in the United States today. If you move your cursor over to the yellow dot,
29:17that's a warehouse in Flowery Branch, Georgia. The Trump administration wants to lock up an
29:21additional 1,500 people there, but they haven't yet managed to buy that warehouse there. That one is
29:27still for lease. You can also zoom in on Virginia and hover that hover over that green dot there,
29:32which will tell you that a warehouse sale in Ashland, Virginia, that sale was canceled when
29:38the owner decided not to sell to ICE after getting enormous pressure from locals and others to cancel
29:44that deal. So much of the best work being done on this is being done by independent researchers and
29:50citizen journalists. There's that man in Minneapolis who's single-handedly tracking daily deportation
29:57flights from the Minneapolis airport. There's the folks at DetentionReports.com, which has a really
30:03useful interactive map of hundreds of existing immigration prisons where ICE is holding people.
30:09And there's Project Salt Boxes, ICE warehouse purchase tracker, keeping tabs specifically on new
30:16sites the Trump administration is buying or trying to buy. It's a map, in effect, of the moral future of
30:23this country. And the question of whether or not Donald Trump will have a network of prison camps,
30:28some are calling them concentration camps, to do what he wants to for the rest of his term.
30:33Joining us now is Mike Riston. He is co-founder of Project Salt Box. Mr. Riston, thank you so much
30:38for being here. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Rachel. Appreciate it. Did I get anything wrong in
30:41the way that I described that? No, that's all pretty much as we understand it, for sure.
30:44I got to say, we've been doing a lot of work, just the staff of the show and me putting
30:49stuff
30:49together, trying to get our arms around this Trump prison camp idea, how big an operation it is.
30:55They're being very quiet about it. It's just sort of popping up all over the country.
30:59We felt a lot of gratitude when we discovered that you had done a lot of the work already that
31:04we
31:04were trying. How hard has it been to get this information? So up till now, it's been pretty
31:09easy. A lot of this information has just been existing in the public domain on websites like USA
31:14Spending or SAM.gov, which are sort of the federal government's clearing houses for contracts and
31:21bid solicitations. And so very easy to find that information there. Recently, it's become a little
31:26more difficult as Homeland Security has begun using Department of Defense contracts under a program
31:33called Wexmactitis, the worldwide expeditionary multi-award contract, territorial integrity of the
31:38United States. It's a mouthful. And essentially, it's just a way for ICE to use DOD contracts to
31:44make purchases specifically for things like detention warehouses and soft-sided camps like Camp East
31:50Montana. Would they be, I don't know if you can tell, if they're moving to Defense Department
31:56contracting protocols and resources, are they doing that in order to shield those contracts from the
32:05public? Or are they doing that because that affords them access to sites they wouldn't otherwise have?
32:10I actually think it has a lot to do with the latter. It allows them to access contracts,
32:15contract vehicles and vendors that are pre-vetted by the Department of Defense by a command in
32:20Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, the Navy Supply Command, which is responsible for providing
32:25vendors for worldwide contingencies. Now, the United States is considered a worldwide contingency
32:31area of responsibility. So by having these contracts, these contractors available to
32:36the Department of Homeland Security, they can access pre-vetted contractors and they don't have to
32:42publicly bid for, you know, the lowest bidder as would normally happen in a procurement cycle.
32:47They can just tap into what the DOD already has and use that pool of resources to build out their
32:53sites.
32:53The war comes home. I know you served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force.
32:58I did. Yes. You came out of that, it's clear, with some particular skills that have turned out
33:03to serve you very well in this contract. Can you talk a little bit about just how you got into
33:07this
33:07work tracking these warehouse purchases? Absolutely. Yeah. So I was sitting home one
33:12day and I was on social media in our local Baltimore subreddit and someone had posted a
33:18thread asking for help kind of discerning some contracts that they had found. Turned out to be
33:22another Army veteran that had recently gotten out of the military and was trying to find something
33:27constructive to do to understand what was happening, you know, here in the United States
33:33with the ICE expansion. This would have been September of last year.
33:37And just coming from that military background, knowing contracting is the way that all of these
33:42things happen, that underneath every operation or underneath every contingency, there are hundreds
33:47of contracts and many, you know, millions of dollars worth of contract support that makes them happen.
33:51So we thought or, you know, they thought by looking at these contracts, we might get a better
33:55understanding of whether or not a metro surge midway blitz style operation might be coming to Baltimore.
34:02And I was skeptical. I did not believe that the contracts would tell us that much.
34:07She sent us, you know, she sent me a list of about 20 contracts to look through and
34:12Saturday night became Monday morning. And what we found were some pretty alarming trends,
34:18you know, since the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the authorization of,
34:22you know, 69, 75 billion dollars worth of money for DHS, ICE was buying things in our own backyard,
34:29such as meals ready to eat for six months worth of detention in Baltimore, Maryland.
34:33Our field office is on the sixth floor of a building downtown that can maybe hold 50 people.
34:39We didn't understand the math behind why they would need that much resourcing.
34:43Trucks and mobile cell site simulators, which is a truck that they could drive around and turn on
34:48and intercept cell signals to locate persons of interest. That's military technology. I mean,
34:53law enforcement uses it too, but its roots are in military technology. And so we started pouring
34:58through these contracts and, you know, a group of two became a much larger group. And we have a diverse
35:02background. We have contract federal procurement specialists that are on our team. We have lawyers,
35:07we have dog walkers, we have, you know, everybody from every walk of life that can bring their own
35:12unique set of skills into the mix and contribute in some way to either make the data meaningful
35:18or help other people that don't understand the data understand it better to bring it down to a level
35:23that everyone can understand. Well, at MSNOW, we're going to post a link to what you guys have posted
35:29at Project Saltbox, your database. I know it's a lot of material there, but people all over the country
35:34are wondering whether or not one of these prison camps is coming to their state, to their community,
35:38and what they can do to try to oppose it. And the best resource that I have found anywhere,
35:46in addition to local reporting on these things, in some cases, which has been very, very good,
35:50is this database that you've created at Project Saltbox. It's a real contribution. It's really
35:55constructive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Mike Riston and the group is called
35:58Project Saltbox. At our website at MSNOW, we will post a link to that database. You can find out
36:04about these potential locations and the contracts involved in setting up these camps, which may be
36:10near you. All right. More news ahead. Stay with us. When the Trump administration sent Director of
36:19National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to raid Georgia's election offices and take ballots from Fulton County,
36:27I don't exactly know what the Trump administration thought was going to happen, but I doubt they were
36:31expecting this. And like a scene out of some banana republic, Tulsi Gabbard, the country's spy chief,
36:43comes to Fulton County, Georgia, to oversee the seizure of ballots.
36:53Your ballots. Your ballots. But they made a big mistake.
37:00They came to Fulton County, Georgia. They came to the political and spiritual heart of the civil rights
37:08movement. They came to the doorstep of John Lewis's congressional district.
37:27And as a result, we are going to mobilize the biggest and most unstoppable turnout in state history.
37:40Georgia U.S. Senator John Ossoff speaking before a crowd of voters in Atlanta this weekend. Those
37:47voters clearly fired up about the Trump administration raiding their election offices, seizing like 700
37:53boxes of ballots, boxes and boxes of real original ballots that were removed with no documented chain of
38:01custody, meaning who knows what they're going to do to them or how we'll ever know.
38:06Yesterday, a federal judge ordered that the Trump administration has to release the documents it used
38:11in court to justify its raid on that Georgia election facility. Those documents are ordered to be released
38:18tomorrow, which should make for a fascinating news day. Ahead of that deadline, ProPublica has revealed
38:24that lawyers for the Trump administration ahead of this raid apparently were interviewing, among others,
38:30a crank conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly tried and failed to prove that the 2020 election in Fulton
38:37County was fraudulent. He also reportedly has his own criminal record after he, quote, pled guilty to a
38:44misdemeanor voyeurism charge and was subsequently ordered by a jury to pay $3.25 million in damages
38:50after secretly filming guests in his own home bathroom. For his part, the man told ProPublica that that
38:59matter had no bearing on his election-related research. Quote, that has nothing to do with this,
39:04he said. That was 20 years ago. All right, then. So the Trump administration has until tomorrow to release
39:11the basis for their search warrant of that Georgia election center amid reporting that they relied on
39:18cuckoo for cocoa puff sources in terms of their theories justifying the search. ProPublica reports
39:25that at least part of the basis for that search may have come from an election denier who once pled
39:29guilty
39:29to secretly filming people in his own home bathroom. As if Georgia voters didn't have enough to be outraged
39:35about right now, Georgia Senator John Ossoff joins us live here next. Stay with us.
39:45Pulse said the president asked her to go, which means the president is personally managing
39:52federal raids on election sites in battleground states, all in service of his obsession with
39:59overturning the 2020 election and laying the groundwork for whatever they're plotting this year.
40:04Joining us now is Democratic U.S. Senator John Ossoff. He's on the Intelligence Committee in the
40:08Senate. He's also running for reelection this year in the great state of Georgia. Senator,
40:12it's nice to see you. Thank you for being here. Hey, Rachel. Thank you.
40:15How does Georgia feel about that raid on the Fulton County Election Office?
40:20As I mentioned in the speech, you know, this apparent abuse of federal law enforcement power to
40:27indulge the president's obsession with overturning the 2020 election and to lay the groundwork for
40:34whatever mischief they're planning in a few months, I think is obviously deeply disturbing,
40:40deeply chilling, deeply menacing, and also a huge political mistake for this administration.
40:45Because in Georgia, where now for the second time in six years, Georgia voters have the weight of the
40:53republic's future on our shoulders, we are just that much more determined to do our part to right
41:02the ship. This election is pivotal. If we do not restore checks and balances in these midterm elections,
41:09we will not recognize our republic at the end of this presidential term. We may lose our republic.
41:15And that is why I'm asking people to help me in this, the most pivotal United States Senate election
41:21in the country, to log on to electjohn.com, electjon.com. This is something you can do right now
41:28to help us fight back and to help us defend voting rights in Georgia that are under attack.
41:33Fulton County officials are suing, trying to block what the Trump administration is doing here. We are
41:38expecting a court to order the Trump administration tomorrow to release the background information that
41:44they gave the court effectively to allow this search to be done in the first place. What are you
41:49expecting from those documents? Remains to be seen. There's been reporting indicating they may have
41:57been relying upon debunked conspiracy theories. We'll find out tomorrow. I think the bottom line is this.
42:05We would be naive not to expect dirty tricks. This man tried to steal the presidency when he lost it
42:14the first time. And that's why we are going to mount an unprecedented effort to get out the vote
42:20and to defend the voting rights. But in Georgia and in every major battleground state and key
42:26congressional district, the best insurance against dirty tricks is landslide margins of victory. So I
42:34hope everybody out there across the nation is feeling the passion that we have to feel right now
42:40to do our part at this pivotal moment in American history and power a landslide victory in these
42:46midterm elections and rebuke these unprecedented abuses of power. Senator John Ossoff, Democrat of
42:53Georgia, sir. I know this is a very, very busy time for you. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank
42:57you for
42:57being here. Thank you, Rachel. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us.
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