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00:03This is serious. This is gravely serious for people. People fought, died, were tortured for
00:09the right to vote. And so the world needs to be watching this because what is happening today
00:16will happen to the rest of the country. Hi there, everyone. It's now 5 o'clock in
00:21New York. Protesters in Tennessee today speaking out as the state legislators there advance a map
00:28to carve the state's only majority African American district into three majority white
00:32and Republican pieces of districts. It took just over a week for states to take up the
00:38Supreme Court's invitation to launch an all-out assault on majority black districts after the
00:43nation's highest court gave them free reign to unleash race-based gerrymanders all across the
00:49country. Our friends at Democracy Docket report that South Carolina is not too far behind Tennessee
00:54with South Carolina Republicans preparing to eliminate that state's only Democratic district,
01:00which has been held by longtime Congressman Jim Clyburn. It is just the latest in a series of
01:06warning signs that our courts may not be enough to protect us against a conservative onslaught
01:11against democracy. Late yesterday, a judge ruled against Fulton County, Georgia in its efforts to
01:16get the ballots that Donald Trump's FBI seized earlier this year returned. The judge described the
01:22events surrounding the Bureau's January raid on an election warehouse in Fulton County, where Atlanta
01:28is located as, quote, in many ways unprecedented and called some aspects of the investigation,
01:34including its reliance on previously debunked conspiracy theories, quote, troubling. The judge wrote,
01:41quote, the seizure in this case was certainly not perfect, the Trump-appointed judge,
01:46but the county had not shown that its rights were callously disregarded either through the lack of
01:52probable cause or by the manner of the execution of the seizure, he said. Okay. That ruling clears the
02:00way for the Justice Department to move forward with this inquiry into Donald Trump's 2020 election loss
02:05to Joe Biden, a contest he lost in Georgia by about 12,000 votes. It is unlikely that this will
02:12end in
02:12Fulton County, though, as Donald Trump attempts to leverage his big lie to undermine free and fair
02:18elections all across the country. With the Trump Justice Department launching an investigation into
02:23the 2020 election in Arizona, and Donald Trump continuing to demand that Republicans help him
02:29take federal control of our elections, the warning signs that the courts will not save us from Donald
02:34Trump's attempts to undermine democracy is where we begin the hour with voting rights attorney and
02:39founder of democracy docket, Mark Elias. And with me at the table, NYU law professor, our legal analyst,
02:45Melissa Murray. Her new book is Beautiful, the U.S. Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide
02:50to the modern reader. It's out now, and we'll talk about it in a little bit. Mark Elias, I feel
02:56like
02:59in a very short period of time, a lot of damage has been done. And I know we talked every
03:04day last week,
03:06and I felt like we were sort of holding the line on the pro-democracy side. And in the wake
03:11of the
03:11Supreme Court's decision, it feels like it's gone the other direction. Tell me what's actually
03:16happening. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think that there are three things that happened
03:22in the last week. The first is the Clay decision itself, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights
03:28Act. I think this is actually the most damaging decision to voting rights in my lifetime. So we
03:35had that. Then we saw sort of a rush by Republican-controlled legislatures to try to trample over
03:46the rights of Black voters in the South, actually all voters in some of these states, because in the
03:52state of Louisiana, they're essentially tossing out 40,000-plus ballots in their zeal to draw a new
04:00map. And then the final thing, which is actually, you know, for me, was the hardest part, is watching
04:06the U.S. Supreme Court then see the chaos unfolding and expediting the issuance of a piece of paper that
04:15normally doesn't get a lot of attention called the mandate. This is the thing that actually allows
04:19those opinions to be acted upon to be to go into force. And normally it takes 32 days for that
04:24to
04:24be issued. But they expedited it because they were asked by Louisiana to be allowed to do more damage
04:31more quickly. And the Supreme Court went along with that. And that is in stark contrast, as Melissa will
04:38tell you, in stark contrast to how they have treated this in the past, when we and others have gone
04:43to
04:43the Supreme Court and said, look, Black voters are at risk here of having unconstitutional or illegal
04:49districts for another two years. Can you please allow the lower court's decisions to go into effect
04:54to remedy that? And we've been told, no, you know, you can't rush these things.
04:58Melissa, your thoughts on where we find ourselves today?
05:02Mark is exactly right. This is a three-pronged attack on democracy. First, it came from the court with
05:07the Kelly decision. Now we are seeing the state legislatures move with incredible alacrity to
05:13get to their preferred outcome, which is the consolidation of Republican power in their
05:18states. And they're given a major assist from this court, which, as Mark says, has thrown away
05:23its past protocols and have basically eliminated that 32-day delay that typically accompanies a ruling
05:29and has allowed this to go into effect right away. Justice Jackson had very sharp words
05:34for her colleagues who put this into place. Justice Alito, who wrote the majority opinion in
05:39Calais, called her claims or critiques baseless and insulting. They're not baseless and they're
05:46not insulting. This is a court that's basically thrown out the rulebook in order to allow the
05:50Republican Party to consolidate its advantage across the South and to effectively disenfranchise
05:55voters as Louisiana is doing. 42,000 votes were already cast in that primary election. And now Governor
06:01Landry is trying to stop everything, call a new election. On top of that, you have what's going
06:07on in Fulton County, where we already saw that raid a few weeks ago on the ballots from the 2020
06:14election. Now we're seeing the administration asking for a subpoena with all of the names of
06:20the poll workers and election workers who worked during that period. That's meant to destroy and break
06:26the infrastructure of democracy. Our democracy works mostly because of volunteers who get up
06:31every morning on election day and go out and give their time. If you think you're going to be the
06:37subject of a government subpoena from the president of the United States, you're going to think twice
06:40about doing that kind of volunteer work. It is meant to break the infrastructure. So we have these
06:45decisions from the court basically changing the law in real time. And then you have what the
06:50administration is doing on the ground. Not in real time, right? In mid-election. Mid-election, just like
06:55on the ground. And then you're having these other changes that are meant to change what the election
07:00landscape looks like in real time on the ground when it actually happens, to make it impossible for free
07:06and fair elections to happen. I mean, Mark, what is the legal strategy when this emanates from a Supreme
07:11Court decision? I mean, the legal strategy on our side is really clear. I mean, the legal strategy on our
07:16side is that we need to double down and triple down on protecting voting rights with every tool
07:22available. And those tools are going to involve, for example, state courts under state laws and under
07:28state constitutions where the Supreme Court either can't touch them or can't easily touch them. It's
07:33going to mean bringing aggressive litigation in federal court because you know what? For every case
07:38that goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, there are eight or 10 other cases that don't go to the
07:43Supreme
07:43Court. And it's also going to mean speaking out in public and trying to encourage more courage from
07:51more actors in this space. You know, the number of law firms and frankly, Supreme Court advocates,
07:58the Supreme Court bar who are quiet today, they are hiding today. They are not calling out what is
08:04going on. They are not criticizing what's happening in Fulton County. They are not criticizing what the
08:09Supreme Court did. And that is because they are afraid. They're afraid that they will alienate the
08:15conservative justices on the court. They're afraid that they will alienate Todd Blanche. They're afraid
08:20that their clients won't get favorable treatment in review of their business deals. And how many times,
08:28Nicole, and you have you and I talked about this. If we do not see more courage coming from more
08:33sectors,
08:34including the legal community, then we are going to be in real trouble because it is fine for
08:39Mark Elias and for Melissa to say what the Supreme Court did here is irregular. But where are those
08:45voices? Where are those people on the who know better in speaking out today? Well, I don't know
08:54if you're comfortable naming names or naming firms, but who in all that you think about that through a
08:58commercial break, but who has spoken out? I mean, what does the coalition to save what is left of voting
09:04rights in this country look like today, Mark? Look, I think that the people who are speaking out
09:09on the Supreme Court are basically people like Melissa. I had Leah Littman on a podcast last night.
09:15She spoke out. So we've got, you know, some some some really prominent people who are academics or
09:21podcasters who are willing to speak out. But, you know, like I just you know, you you can you can
09:25figure out for yourself who the who the most prominent Supreme Court advocates are. And you can Google
09:32and see if they've said anything in terms of the broader pro-democracy movement. Look, I mean,
09:36I think we've got the coalition of the willing. Right. We've got we've got lawyers like me and others
09:42in the private sector who are typically not at large law firms who are willing to do it.
09:47And we've got a lot of really great nonprofit organizations. Democracy Forward is a great
09:51organization. I actually helped create years ago. They're they're fighting the fight. The ACLU is
09:56fighting the fight. There are a lot of good nonprofits out there. But, you know, there aren't a lot of
10:01private law firms we could list and say they are in this fight. Well, I mean, it's a tragedy that
10:08we
10:08can name them. Right. So there's there's us. I saw Sherilyn Ifill on Jon Stewart Monday. Bruce
10:13Springsteen. Like the tragedy is that we can name them. What is happening? What what what has happened
10:20to the issue? I mean, is it another example of this thing that everyone took for granted?
10:24I think many people have taken for granted what it feels like to be in the crosshairs of the
10:30president of the United States. I think, you know, those law firms, you know, many of them stood up.
10:35Not all of them did. And like even more bent the knee, as we've talked about. And I don't think
10:41that they were thinking about what this looked like long term. The entire industry did this. But what it
10:46means and, you know, I've talked with you about this is when you allow the president's interpretation
10:51of law to stand, whether it's enunciated in an executive order that says DEI is now impermissible,
10:57even though no federal court has ever said that you're basically giving them license to do it.
11:02I mean, it is obeying in advance. So this is kind of a break glass moment. Yeah. Black people are
11:07always the canary in the coal mine and voting rights like this is core stuff. I mean, the right to
11:14vote
11:14is exactly what the framers of the reconstruction amendments viewed as being able to hold this nation
11:20together to give people a way to make their voices heard. Everybody a way to make their voices heard
11:25in this political community of ours. And it's under attack. And the fact that more people in the legal
11:31profession who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution won't say something about what's going on
11:36right now. It is a problem. It is shameful. What is the I mean, if you look at what's worked,
11:42Mark Elias, I mean,
11:43what's worked has been people in Minneapolis, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, seeing their neighbors
11:50attacked and then going out into the streets with bottled water and whistles. I mean, I say bottled
11:56water and like like when it comes to voting, that isn't even allowed everywhere. I mean, what what is
12:01it feels like we're at another fulcrum moment. Right. And we've tried very hard in the second term
12:08not to light our hair on fire unless it is justified today. Everything both of you are
12:13saying suggests that we should, you know, have our hair on fire over this. And I I wonder what
12:19your instructions are to citizens in terms of how they make their feelings known about this and what
12:27can still be done to help it and address it. Yeah. And I want to make a point that that
12:31Melissa made
12:32because I may not have been clear. I left out, obviously, the traditional civil rights groups for a
12:36reason, which is that, of course, they are standing up because always black voters who are being
12:41targeted. Right. But my my question is not why aren't civil rights groups? I understand if they
12:46are. The question is, where are the rest of us? Like, where are the law firms that, you know,
12:50we're happy to give awards and get awards and all of this, you know, when it all felt like really
12:55safe
12:55and easy? Like, where are those allies today when, frankly, you know, black voters are right now being
13:00systematically targeted in Louisiana, in Alabama, in Tennessee, in South Carolina? And where are
13:07like people standing up now when it's when Joe Biden's not in the White House, you know, when
13:11when when when Donald Trump's in the White House? And so what I think ordinary citizens have to do
13:17is you have to realize that, you know, tyranny always starts with some group. Discrimination always
13:23starts with some group. Authoritarian always starts by scapegoating some group. And it is not lost on
13:29me. And it should not be lost on anybody that the first state that was singled out by Eric Schmidt,
13:35the Republican senator from Missouri, who is a Republican former attorney general, was California.
13:41OK, he didn't actually say, let's let's single out Alabama. Let's single out Louisiana. Let's
13:45single out South Carolina. He chose California. And Harmeet Dillon, the head of the civil rights
13:49division, she said we're on it. Now, why is that important? Because you and I talked at length that
13:55California redistricted on a partisan basis. They said it was on a partisan basis. The Supreme Court
14:01even said it was a partisan basis. The lower court said it was on a partisan basis. So why did
14:05Eric
14:05Schmidt single out California? Because he wants to delegitimize all black voters who elect their
14:12candidates of choice. He wants to delegitimize all black elected officials, all Latino elected officials.
14:19And we need to call this out. We all need to say that they are going to use this as
14:25an excuse,
14:25not just to redistrict in Alabama and Louisiana, but to try to spread in the same way they did,
14:31by the way, with the with the North Carolina and Harvard case. They used it not just around
14:35college admissions, but they used it to attack faculty decisions. And and and so we need ordinary
14:41citizens to recognize that this is not going to end with Louisiana. The fact that you may not live in
14:47Louisiana doesn't mean that it's not coming to your community. So everybody needs to stand up
14:51and call this out for what it is today. I've not heard you this angry in a long time.
14:58Just share with this how this scrambles your workload. Like, look, I mean, in the end,
15:05here's why I'm angry. In the end, Democrats are still going to take control of the House.
15:10OK, like that's the good news. Right. In the end, I think Democrats still could win the Senate
15:15in the end, like politics will be politics. But the reason why I am so angry is because the Supreme
15:23Court of the United States chose to strike down a law that was passed in 1965, that that Congress was
15:31in dialogue with the court over in the 1970s and 1980s. And for the last 40 years, we have lived
15:38under
15:38a set of principles that all players have accepted as a as a fair level playing field.
15:44And then a group of white Louisianans decided to challenge a map. And the U.S. Supreme Court
15:50ordered the parties to argue a case that none of the parties wanted, which to argue, which was
15:54whether the Section two of the Voting Rights Act was was still in effect under the right test.
15:59And then the parties did it. And they chose to issue an opinion in the middle of May
16:04while primaries were going on. And then the U.S. Supreme Court thought, you know what?
16:08Sure. We let black voters wait two years and vote under illegal maps. But God forbid these
16:12white voters have to do the same in Louisiana. That would be a constitutional crisis.
16:17And against all of that backdrop, have we learned nothing? I mean, have we learned nothing?
16:24Has the broader legal community not learned anything? Have the have the other than the civil
16:29rights groups have people not learned that when you do this to black voters, it turns out bad for
16:36democracy for everybody? So, yeah, I'm angry. I'm angry because of the appalling silence that's going
16:41on right now around around this case and the aftermath. I want you to stay angry. I don't want you
16:49to go
16:49anywhere. I mean, I don't want you to really stay angry, but hold that thought. I have two things to
16:53tell our audience. We're going to get to Melissa's book. We're going to stay with Mark Elias,
16:58whether he stays angry or not, is up to him. But we also have something else that we're going to
17:02bring you on the other side of a break. There's breaking news from our colleague, Carol Lennig.
17:05She has brand new reporting following up on her blockbuster exclusive yesterday about Kash Patel
17:11and how he is now able to report today that he's in, quote, panic mode and has ordered polygraphs
17:17for dozens of people at the FBI as he looks for leakers on his own staff and tries to save
17:23his job.
17:23Carol will join us with that new exclusive reporting next. Deadline White House continues after
17:27a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
17:34There's some breaking news to tell you about. We are able to report that FBI Director Kash Patel is
17:40in, quote, panic mode. We have that brand new reporting breaking moments ago from our colleagues
17:45Carol Lennig and Ken Delanian. It's about the turmoil inside the FBI right now after a string of
17:50deeply embarrassing and rather alarming stories about Kash Patel and his tenure as the head of the
17:56country's top law enforcement agency. From that new reporting, quote, Kash Patel has ordered the
18:01polygraphing of more than two dozen former and current members of his security detail and other
18:06staff and has been described as in panic mode to save his job and find leakers among his team.
18:12That is, according to two people briefed on the development. Kash Patel has walled himself off from
18:17some senior bureau leaders this week in the wake of multiple media reports that raised red flags about
18:23his leadership. What's more, Patel has reportedly avoided meeting with operational leaders at the FBI
18:28this week, raising fears that Patel is out of the loop on important investigations and threats.
18:34A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment about the polygraph test,
18:38but he denied that Kash Patel was walled off from senior staff at the FBI.
18:43I want to bring in senior investigative reporter, Carol Lennig, who's bylined on that. Mark and
18:47Melissa are still here. Carol Lennig, it doesn't sound like someone who's been defamed, does it?
18:55Well, I'm not a lawyer. I just play one on TV, but as a reporter, Nicole,
19:02you know, this is a person hunting for leakers pretty actively. And I think you've raised this point
19:08before, which is a smart one. How do you claim you're defamed, but also hunt for people who
19:16released information that you believe maybe is sensitive or is somehow protected? You know, as we
19:23reported at MSNOW a couple of, I can't remember if it was two days ago or a day, but it
19:29was basically a
19:30finding that Patel had ordered this investigation into the leaks or the sources to an Atlantic magazine
19:38piece that described how FBI agents were super, super worried about the leadership of the Bureau
19:45because of Patel allegedly engaging in drinking to excess on a pretty regular basis and having to
19:53reschedule meetings in the mornings after these quote unquote alcohol fueled events.
19:58We also then learned, because once you report one story, more people want to tell you more about
20:05other things that disturb them. We learned that Patel has ordered the polygraph of all of these
20:12agents, a very large group who used to travel with him and who travel with him now to try to
20:18find out
20:19who may be talking to reporters. This is sending a real chill through the FBI, but even more worrisome to
20:26them, Nicole, is the way in which Patel has not agreed to meet with lots and lots of other
20:33operational leaders in the Bureau. This worries people because there's a regular sort of line of threats and
20:41investigations that the Bureau director needs to be briefed on and needs some input on. Of course, there are some
20:49decision points that he must be involved in. And this is worrying them. I agree that we should emphasize that
20:56the FBI
20:57spokesperson, Ben Williamson, said that Cash is having meetings with senior leaders, but he wasn't extremely specific about
21:05those he's not meeting with.
21:08I'm going to do something I don't always do. I would like to read the piece. It is it is
21:13new since I've been
21:14on the air. But I think it's important for our viewers to to hear what you're reporting right now exclusively.
21:20FBI Director Cash Patel has ordered the polygraphing of more than two dozen former and current members of his security
21:25detail. And other staff has been described as in panic mode to save his job and find leakers among his
21:31team.
21:31That's according to two people briefed on that development. Patel has walled himself off, as we've been
21:37discussing, from some senior Bureau leaders this week in the wake of multiple media reports that raised red flags
21:43about his leadership. That's according to three people familiar with his recent actions. Two of the people
21:48told MSNOW that the director ordered the polygraphing this week of the former and current security detail
21:54members, as well as several information technology staff. I want to stop here and just, you know, we don't focus
22:01in on this, but this is a hallmark of the Atlantic reporting as well. This is deeply sourced. Every
22:06line has a minimum of two, in some instances, three sources. Just talk about that level of corroboration.
22:18You know, it's nice of you to ask, because I think this highlights something you may not intend to
22:24highlight, but think about what it must be like to work in the FBI or in law enforcement. And as
22:32we have
22:33described in our reporting, to feel that the Bureau is in danger because of who is directing it. And think
22:39about what it must be like to see colleagues and hear colleagues are being polygraphed or maybe even
22:44former colleagues or friends, people who've been fired, and then still be willing to talk to me and to Ken.
22:53And so I'm grateful to the sources who continue to share information with us and actually to other
23:00reporters as well. I mean, come to us first, but yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty impressive.
23:06I think it's just really pretty impressive that people feel this information needs to get out and
23:13take some risks to do so. The corroboration is important. I thought the Atlantic's corroboration
23:19was really impressive as well, a very deeply reported piece of work. I wasn't involved in
23:24it, obviously, but they spent a lot of time and energy and confirmed to their solid view of the
23:32threshold. They confirmed something that a lot of reporters, including me, had been hearing about
23:39for a while and trying to confirm this idea that he had to be rousted in the morning by agents
23:45who were
23:46concerned that he might be quite ill or worse as a result of alcohol that he had drunk the night
23:53before. I want to read a little bit more from the reporting. The FBI director demanded the polygraph
24:02examinations to determine if any members of the team that accompanies him on all his travels
24:07or staff who have access to sensitive details about his decisions have communicated with reporters,
24:13according to the people, who asked to speak anonymously due to threat of retribution.
24:18Now, there is nothing sensitive in his travels. He actually posts a lot on social media. He had
24:27cameras in the locker room when he traveled to the Milan Olympics and guzzled beer in front of them.
24:34What is it? Is it fear that gets them to even carry out an investigation into at least two reporters,
24:42allegedly, Ms. Fitzpatrick and the New York Times reporter who wrote about his girlfriend?
24:49Yeah. So as we reported in the case of the investigation opened into the Atlantic reporter,
24:56sorry, I lost my voice there for a second. Agents and sources told my colleague Ken Delaney in a pretty
25:06sympathetic tone that, you know, we're damned if we do, we're damned if we don't, if we don't open
25:11this probe. And I'm paraphrasing a little here. If we don't open this probe, the agents are fearful
25:16they're going to be fired. In the case of the New York Times reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, a former
25:22colleague of mine and a great reporter, it appears from the New York Times very good reporting that
25:29that was a case where agents were asked to investigate and were able to sort of tamp that
25:35down by saying the investigation was not warranted. Apparently, we've moved past that place in a very
25:41few number of weeks. And if you'll grant me the liberty, Nicole, I want to emphasize one other thing
25:46about polygraphing. In the course of reporting this story today, I learned something new that I'd never
25:53heard before, which was that Cash did, Cash Patel, the director engaged in another mass polygraphing
26:01event when there was a report that he had requested a gun. And apparently an agent had mentioned this on
26:09a call with other agents and that made him sort of subject number one or suspect number one. I actually
26:17don't know the name of that agent, but it led to the polygraphing of dozens of agents to try to
26:23figure
26:23out who had revealed information from this call. Let me just ask you to do, to explain the normal use
26:33of
26:33the polygraphing. I mean, a polygraph is a tool that the FBI sometimes uses at an entry point,
26:39but it is not. It is not like a, you know, like re-upping your IT creds. Like it is
26:46not
26:47a tool that any agent is subjected to in a leak investigation by their own organization. Just speak
26:53about how outside the norm, how sort of North Korea adjacent this practice is at the FBI as an ongoing
27:01management tool from its leader. You know, if there were, I want to be sort of sober about this.
27:08If there were a leak of classified information at the justice department or at the FBI, and I know of
27:16cases like this about which I was reporting at the time, there would be great concern about bringing in
27:25the circle of people who had access to this information and asking them in an interview,
27:32did you communicate with a reporter about this? It would not on first blush be a polygraph.
27:39But, you know, there is a presumption inside the government in the justice department and the FBI
27:45that no one is going to lie when asked that question. No one. And I don't know what the
27:53circumstances are today, but I know about cases I wrote about at the time. And there is a view that
27:59if you're brought into that room and you've talked to a reporter, you are going to own up to it.
28:04A polygraph is exceptionally rare, but really, really rare in the leak of information, as you
28:12described, that is not classified. That is about what is the director doing? What is the director ordering
28:18in the case of an investigation of looking at the contacts and sources of a reporter engaged in
28:24normal news gathering? It is not in any way something that's been used when information is
28:31just simply unflattering to a senior leader. There was a reporting, Carol, about him looking
28:38everywhere for a woman's FBI jacket and some that fit him better for the images. And there's the
28:45well-publicized image of him guzzling beer in Milan. There's the Atlantic reporting about him
28:51drinking too much. And there are these accounts of him using the FBI to investigate people around his
29:02own personal press profile. How much is too much for Donald Trump?
29:11You know, I hate to do this, but I would rather not answer that question because that is very much
29:18the subject of active reporting. We have written in this story that Donald Trump's been incredibly
29:25frustrated, probably the most frustrated when we were reporting about the videos showing Kash Patel
29:33drinking, guzzling beer, tossing alcohol in the air after he had told us, or rather his spokesperson
29:39told us he was going to Milan for security meetings and a business trip. That his on-the-record
29:47statement to me was that this was a business trip and that hockey was not the purpose of him going
29:54to
29:54Milan. The president was livid about this and shared some of his frustration with his aides and with
30:02Kash Patel directly. But there have been many instances when Trump and senior White House aides
30:08have been discussing the bad press that Patel has generated with his stewardship of FBI resources,
30:16his use of a government jet, his creation of a security detail for his girlfriend, his decision to
30:23travel on a government jet for a date night, to see his girlfriend perform the national anthem.
30:31All of these things that are reported by MSNOW and that you can see in the story that I wrote
30:36today.
30:37All right, we're going to keep going through that with you. We're going to bring Mark and Melissa in
30:42on this. We have to sneak in a short break to pay some bills before we do all that, but
30:46don't go
30:46anywhere. We'll all be right back.
30:51We are all back covering the breaking news, more breaking news from my colleagues,
30:56Carol Lennick and Ken Delanian with the headline, Kash Patel ordered polygraphs of more than two dozen
31:01members of his team. Sources tell MSNOW as we've been discussing. This is another deeply sourced piece
31:08of reporting. I mean, Mark Elias, what I learned, and it was yesterday that Carol Lennick had the other
31:13blockbuster piece of reporting on this story. So she's at a clip of about one a day. And lucky for
31:19me, the interval is almost exactly 24 hours. But I've learned to listen to what Carol Lennick isn't
31:25saying. And what she isn't saying explicitly is that all the calls are coming from inside the house
31:33because the country's in some deep, you know what, without a competent, present FBI director.
31:39And whatever you think of this person, his focus is not on the security of the country. It is on
31:47polygraphing FBI personnel to see who leaked unflattering things about him.
31:52Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, let's remember, Kash Patel was never qualified to be
31:56the FBI director. Like he was a odd choice from the beginning. He had written a children's book
32:01that praised Donald Trump as a king. He was a character in the children's book. He had put out a
32:05book with a list of enemies. You know, Kash Patel was mostly known before becoming FBI director as
32:11just someone who was sort of one part conspiracy theorist and one part Trump sycophant. And that
32:18was his credentials for becoming the FBI director. And since then, he has become an embarrassment to
32:24Donald Trump. So this is not someone who, you know, could do this job probably even if he had his
32:30full
32:30attention on it. But as you point out, he doesn't. But I suspect that when you say the calls are
32:34coming
32:34from inside the House, and I obviously don't know, I don't have any of the sources that, you know,
32:39that you all have. But I suspect that among the calls coming from inside the House are from the
32:45White House that just want the distractions gone. And Donald Trump has a pretty low tolerance for
32:51distractions when it comes to things that look bad for him. And he doesn't like alcohol particularly
32:55much. So, you know, I don't know. But I suspect that Donald Trump is not happy. And Kash Patel's days
33:02are probably not long for being FBI director. I think it's also we look for, I will say,
33:12I grope for mile markers to try to communicate how low we have sunken. And the fact that we are
33:19together covering like the fourth story about the clear instability of the director of the FBI,
33:28like this isn't some two-bit like political consultant stuffed away at the RNC. This is
33:33like the flippant director of the FBI. If Kash Patel had a uterus, he would have been gone by now.
33:41Full stop. Full stop. But you don't think that Pam Bondi could have been like, let me see the picture.
33:47See if you could like imagine Pam Bondi like pouring beer all over herself in the locker room.
33:52The Dow. The Dow. Yeah. Like Pam Bondi did that. Yeah. She would have not even.
33:59Kristi Noem. I mean, like, I can't believe justice for Kristi Noem, justice for Pam Bondi.
34:06This would not have happened, right? He wouldn't have been allowed this long leash to continue
34:13embarrassing himself and embarrassing the office that he holds. One of the things that is so striking,
34:19though, is that not only has he diminished the employment prospects of podcasters everywhere
34:25going forward, he's not the only one in this administration that seems to be wholly ill-equipped
34:32for the position that they hold, right? So for an administration that continually rails
34:37about DEI and insists on merit over everything, this is really nasty work. I mean, like this isn't,
34:47I mean, like when I think of merit, this is not what I imagine. And I imagine this isn't what
34:51most of the American people imagine, certainly not for the FBI director. I mean, we are only
34:5625 years away from 9-11 where the FBI and failures of intelligence literally brought us to the point
35:05where we had the most serious attack on American soil. What happens now when the head of the FBI is
35:12more concerned about what people are saying about him, about his girlfriend, and polygraphing people
35:19inside the office rather than letting this division do its work?
35:23Yeah. I mean, Carol Lennigan, in some ways, talking about his personal paranoia, about coverage of his
35:30personal conduct, takes away from the purges of the offices, the very people that protect the homeland
35:38and Americans and our allies from the threat of Iran, the reassignment of the most experienced agents
35:46to immigration and deportation. I mean, the gutting of the FBI, whether Kash Patel goes today or tomorrow
35:52or in another year, is his legacy along with his Kash Patel branded with the S being a dollar sign
35:59I
35:59read in the Atlantic on bottles of bourbon. I mean, it's sort of the terrifying to the ludicrous.
36:07Well, the one thing that we have going for us as a country, according to many of the sources I've
36:14known for a long time inside law enforcement, is there are still talented, experienced people inside
36:22the building trying to hold it together. I mean, they're distressed, they're demoralized,
36:29their ability to speak freely to power is chilled like never before. And you know how dangerous that
36:37is in a national security situation. If you're not able to tell the director, hey, I don't think
36:44this is a good idea, the way you're handling this because of X, Y, Z, and I have experience that
36:50you
36:51don't, that that's very scary. But the one thing we have going for us is that expertise is still that
36:57patriotism, that desire to protect the country from a whole host of threats, foreign and domestic,
37:03is still there. It is depleted, it is demoralized, but they're still working and hats off to them.
37:13Your description of the agents that are there gave me the feels, gave me the chills. I can't
37:19imagine how excruciating those jobs are. They're excruciating when everyone's rowing in the same
37:23direction to protect the country, when everyone has the same goals. But when you don't feel that
37:29you're aligned with your leader in that mission, I can't even imagine. Caroline, thank you and
37:33thank them. Mark Elias, thank you for starting us off today. We'll have to pick up where we left
37:37off, my friend, because there was so much more to say. When we come back, though, we're going to
37:42talk about Melissa's beautiful new book. We'll do that after a very short break, more important in
37:46this news cycle than any other. We're back with Melissa, who among all of her jobs and accomplishments
37:55is now also the author of the new book, The U.S. Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated
38:00guide to the modern reader. This is beautiful. Give me your why, and then I'm going to read a
38:05little bit from it. So do you remember when Twitter was awesome? Yes, I was talking about
38:09that yesterday. Twitter used to be great, and I was in the Twitter streets all the time. And once I
38:14was there, there was someone who was on Twitter very well-known, well-known to me from my youth,
38:17who was going on about what Joe Biden needed to do. And so he had this list of things Joe
38:21Biden
38:21needed to do. And I was reading the list with great interest, and I realized probably half the things
38:26Joe Biden couldn't do because the president isn't authorized to do those things. They either belong
38:30to Congress or to mayors or whoever. And so I was like, I don't think this person's ever read
38:34the Constitution. I think I said this to my husband. He's like, I don't think anybody's
38:37really read the Constitution. And I was like, really? And that hadn't occurred to me. But then I
38:43asked my students, because I make them read the Constitution, and this is the first time you've
38:47read the Constitution. For a lot of them, it was in my class. And so it struck me that this
38:52is a
38:52document that was purposefully written and written to be relatively short because the framers wanted
38:58the people to read it, to engage with it, to grapple with it, to debate it. And here we are
39:02in this
39:03moment where we're always asking, can they do that? Is that constitutional? And yet none of us know
39:07because none of us have read the Constitution. So I put the Constitution in here. I didn't write it.
39:12James Madison wrote it. He is the father of the Constitution. He'd probably be very surprised to
39:16find me as his collaborator. But here we are. But I did these commentaries. So every section of the
39:24Constitution, every article starts with what this article does, an origin story to explain why it's
39:30there, and then clause by clause explanations. And they're not for law professors. They're not for
39:34lawyers. They're for ordinary people who, in this break glass moment, need to get reengaged with the
39:40document that scaffolds our government and indirectly our lives.
39:44I mean, I was thinking of the political sort of overlay of all of this as I flipped through it.
39:49And increasingly, you've got Republicans making the argument that the Republican
39:54president violates the Constitution. Yeah.
39:56Just talk about how, you know, this thing that used to be so precious to Republicans is now something
40:02that Trump basically put in the shredder. Well, I think you need to understand what the framers
40:05are trying to do about the Constitution. So when they sat down to write this, they were going through
40:10it. They were literally weighed down by trauma, the trauma of the colonial period where they had
40:15literally the British crown and the British parliament on their necks. And then the trauma
40:19of breaking with Britain and trying to fight this war against the greatest global superpower that the
40:24world had ever seen while they were operating this government that was held together by scotch tape
40:30and friendship bracelets. I mean, it was just like a horrible experience. And so they had this
40:34intuition. We need to have a government that's strong enough that works, but not so strong that
40:40it can become tyrannical. And so this idea of limited government, government that's efficient,
40:46but government that's not so efficient that you can just literally blow over all of the people.
40:51That's what we want. So they wanted to strike this really delicate balance. And, you know,
40:56Republicans used to talk about that all the time, this idea of limited government,
41:00smaller government. And I think when they said smaller, they really meant limited, like
41:04a government with restraint that only did the stuff we like. Well, or just like that couldn't
41:10do everything. I mean, some of this is like dividing power between the three branches of
41:14the federal government and then dividing it again between the federal government and the states.
41:18And the idea was that if you did that, you would preserve the people. And then they actually gave
41:23the people rights with the bill of rights, the reconstruction amendments, renegotiate that because they
41:28recognize that the states, as much as the federal government can run roughshod over the people.
41:32And, you know, now they have this whole question of like, where are the people here? Like they
41:37started this document with we, the people. And I think that's the question on everyone's minds right
41:42now. Where are we in this government? And I think this is the answer. You beautifully dedicated to
41:47your parents and your kids. Yes. This world is yours or well to my parents, because my parents were
41:52immigrants. And in a moment where we say a lot of things about immigrants, I want people to be
41:57reminded that immigrants contribute a lot to this country and they believe fervently in the promise
42:01of this country. And for my kids, who are the grandchildren of immigrants and the grandchildren of
42:06people who were themselves were the grandchildren of enslaved people, this land is their land too.
42:10It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll start a book club. We'll start coming through
42:14together. This is our summer project. Summer pod. Let's do it. Let's do it. The book is the U.S.
42:20Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader. Melissa Murray, thank you for
42:25spending the whole hour with us. There's even more breaking news to tell you about,
42:28and it's the blow to Donald Trump's signature economic agenda. We'll have that for you after
42:32a very short break. Don't go anywhere. All right, we're drinking from a breaking news fire hose today,
42:41and there's more this time on the centerpiece of Donald Trump's economic policy, taxes on global
42:46imports and a major victory for small businesses. The Court of International Trade has just ruled
42:52that Donald Trump's 10 percent global tariffs are illegal and has permanently blocked him from
42:57implementing them in the way he did. After the Supreme Court struck down Trump's more sweeping
43:02tariffs, he turned to Section 122 tariffs that allow the president to impose a tax of up to 15 percent
43:08for 150 days in order to remedy, quote, large and serious balance of payments deficits, I'll say.
43:16The court today, however, found that that section does not authorize Trump to impose these tariffs
43:21under current economic conditions. The ruling will go into effect in five days. It also ordered for
43:26all tariffs implemented under Section 122 to be refunded. One more break. We'll be right back.
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