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The Rachel Maddow Show - Season 18 - Episode 06 EngSub
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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. Now,
01:18is his art collecting itself perhaps Navy-related? Like, is he into paintings of ships or famous
01:26naval battles of the 19th century? No, nothing like that. In fact, it's kind of a funny story.
01:33Around the time that Trump named John Phelan to be secretary of the Navy, the art world press
01:38kind of awkwardly tried to sum up John Phelan's tastes in art. They tried to describe for the
01:48non-art world public, who's just hearing about this guy for the first time, they tried to describe
01:53what John Phelan was known for in the art world. In case anybody was curious as to why Donald Trump
02:00might have landed on him, in particular, for the job of Navy secretary. A number of art world
02:06publications eventually sort of settled on what I guess is a representative quote, an existing quote
02:13from a former executive at Sotheby's describing the art tastes of Trump's new Navy secretary.
02:21She described his tastes as, quote, a celebration of the sexual side of life.
02:30The publication ArtNet published photos of some of his collection in situ at one of his homes,
02:36photos that I cannot show you on TV. Other art world publications described, for example,
02:45a 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
02:59interview with the artnewspaper.com, Trump's Navy secretary, John Phelan, his wife was asked by
03:08that publication, quote, what is the most surprising place you have displayed a work? And she answered,
03:14quote, in the living room of our Aspen home, we have a mirrored floor. It covers the entire space.
03:21It is amazing to see people's reactions at parties when they realize what you can see in the floor.
03:28Naughty and nice. End quote.
03:34That Aspen home with the mirrored floor, that is where John Phelan hosted a gazillion dollar
03:40fundraiser for candidate Donald Trump in August 2024. That fundraiser made news because it was one of
03:46the times Trump stated his made up claim that prisons in the Congo were releasing all their
03:52murderers in order to ship them to the United States. He told that tall tale at the house with
03:59the, quote, naughty surprise mirrored floor, whose owner Trump soon named to run the United States Navy,
04:06despite him having no connection to the Navy at all. Incidentally, that Aspen fundraiser was one
04:14that Trump flew to on an airplane that had previously belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, which itself made some
04:23headlines at the time. The campaign said at the time that that was just a coincidence.
04:29But, you know, in the course of time, Trump got reelected to the presidency in November of 2024.
04:34He really did name this guy, John Phelan, the rando sexual side of life art collector with a mirrored
04:42floor to run the United States Navy. And Congress really did force Trump's Justice Department to
04:49release at least some of the government's files on Trump's friend, the late convicted pedophile and
04:55child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. And perhaps inevitably among the revelations in the Epstein
05:02files was this headline, John Phelan, Trump's Navy secretary, listed in Epstein flight logs.
05:11John Phelan, the billionaire art collector whom President Donald Trump appointed to oversee the
05:15U.S. Navy, appears to have traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Jeffrey Epstein.
05:20The flight manifests list Epstein, Phelan, and a handful of other men, including Jean-Luc Brunel,
05:26a French model scout who was accused of rape during the 1990s and later of providing girls to Jeffrey
05:33Epstein. Brunel was found dead in his jail cell in France in 2022 after being charged in a related
05:40case. Authorities ruled it death by suicide. Epstein's aircraft was nicknamed the, quote,
05:45Lolita Express because, as some of Epstein's accusers have said, he frequently had young women and girls
05:52aboard the plane to entertain his guests. CNN was first to report on Navy Secretary John Phelan's
06:01flights with Jeffrey Epstein. They also published this flight log from the Epstein files where you
06:06can see the Navy secretary's name listed there. He's number nine on the flight manifest. Nobody has
06:13claimed there were definitely any young women on board this plane or girls on board this plane, but
06:19we don't know who the other six people are whose names are redacted from this flight manifest for
06:24whatever reason. Why were those people having their names redacted? MS now contacted the U.S. Navy
06:32about John Phelan's connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Phelan's time on board Epstein's plane. The Navy
06:40is offering no comment. But today was the first day that members of Congress were allowed under very strict
06:47conditions to physically go to the Justice Department where they were allowed to see
06:51unredacted versions of some Epstein documents. Judging by the reaction from members of Congress
06:58like Jamie Raskin, who took advantage of this opportunity today, members of Congress today seem
07:03just as frustrated as ever about what the Trump administration is doing and continues to do with
07:09all this Epstein related material. There were to be no redactions in order to spare people embarrassment
07:20or political disgrace. We didn't want there to be a cover up. And yet what I saw today was that
07:30there
07:30were lots of examples of people's names being redacted when they were not victims. And so we still haven't
07:41gotten from the DOJ their privilege log explaining why certain redactions were made. But I can tell you
07:48that I saw a whole bunch of them that seemed very suspicious and baffling to me. Donald Trump's name
07:55was redacted in a number of different places. And I saw one conversation between Epstein lawyers and Trump lawyers
08:14relating to the 2009 investigation, which had been redacted. And I don't see any particular reason that it should
08:22have been. Donald Trump's name is all over these files, all over it. I mean, thousands and thousands
08:28of times. One thing that came out in the release last month was a bunch of tips from through the
08:35tip
08:35line, including about President Trump and potentially with a 13 year old girl. Did you get to see any of
08:42the how those tips were investigated? Did you feel comfortable about them being dismissed? I saw nothing
08:47about that. But if you spend any real time with these files, you will see references to 17 year old
08:57girls, 16 year old girls, 14 year old girls, 11 year old girls, 10 year old girls. And I saw
09:02a reference
09:03today to a nine year old girl. So is a really gruesome and grim story. And I think in order
09:13to see our way
09:13through this and to try to make progress on criminal investigation and prosecution and some kind of
09:21social redemption from 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,
09:36Trump'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. 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,
10:00is there as well, flying on Epstein's plane with who knows who. But one of the people on board the
10:06plane 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
10:19administration that I just mentioned, but they're all still in place in the administration and in
10:25Republican politics, at least at this hour. One guy who did lose his job in this country is the
10:31chairman of Paul Weiss, which is a very fancy, very powerful, very rich New York law firm.
10:37That law firm and its previous chairman, Brad Karp, became very, very famous in the past year as,
10:45quote, the face of capitulation to Donald Trump in his return to the White House. Soon after Trump
10:51was sworn in for his second term, Trump, you'll recall, started threatening elite law firms with
10:57executive orders of dubious legal weight. Brad Karp's law firm, Paul Weiss, was one of the firms
11:05that was threatened. And Brad Karp was the guy who immediately rushed to the White House to try to
11:11appease Trump, to have a conversation with Trump about getting his firm off the hook. The conversation
11:16was described as beginning, quote, with a prolonged discussion of gulf. 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 cratered the reputation of the Paul Weiss
11:50law firm, probably for all time. It also set in motion a race to the bottom where more than a
11:57half dozen other large, powerful, rich law firms did exactly the same thing before some of them
12:03came to their senses and said, no, actually, what are we doing? We're going to go to court and
12:07challenge these executive orders, these executive orders with which Trump was threatening these law
12:12firms. All 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.
12:31They 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 like
13:03they'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 it's because the radioactive glow coming from Brad Karp's office is so warm it allows Paul
13:25Weiss to cut down on their heating bills in this cold, cold New York winter.
13:32But you know what? While we're on the subject of moral catastrophe and what to do about it,
13:37let's talk about the Trump prison camps. Because if you're Paul Weiss, or if you're Skadden,
13:45or you're Kirkland, or you're Latham and Watkins, or any of these other big law firms that followed Brad
13:51Karp down this road to perdition, right, that signed an appeasement deal with Trump,
13:57where you promised him that you'd make your law firm work for him for free if, please, please,
14:02he wouldn't be mean to you. If you're one of these firms who did that this time last year,
14:08and you've since realized that maybe that was the road to hell. If you're since realizing that you're
14:16gonna have to find some way out of that, you're looking to find your soul in the dark now to
14:21salvage something of your reputation so you don't just have to shut down and change your name and
14:26wipe all your resumes when this dark time is over and the reckoning comes, right? If you're Paul Weiss
14:31or one of these other firms who is trying to find your redemption arc, that is trying to find a
14:36way to
14:37redeem yourself and rinse your reputation a little bit, may I direct your attention to the Trump prison
14:44camps? Because that is the story of 2026. Because very quietly, Donald Trump in 2026 is trying to
14:52build himself a brand new archipelago of huge new prison camps in the United States. And what do you
14:59think he's going to do with them? The largest capacity federal prison in the United States right
15:03now holds about 4,000 people. Just for context, Trump is trying to build a new network of huge new
15:09prison camps that will each hold eight, nine, 10,000 people to two and a half times the largest
15:16size federal prison in the United States right now. But I mean, but at least in the case of existing
15:23federal prisons, they're at least for people who are convicted of federal crimes, right? These new
15:28huge prison camps that Trump wants to build, they're not for people convicted of crimes. They're for people
15:32picked up by his immigration agents, like by ICE. He is trying to build huge new capacity to hold more
15:40than 100,000 people in these prison camps, even if they haven't been convicted of or even charged with
15:46a crime. And with what they're doing with ICE already, the existing immigration prisons they've already
15:55got, even before they start building new ones, they're already the stuff of nightmares right now,
16:00right? I mean, the immigrant prison camp, they call it Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas.
16:06They've had three people die there in the last few weeks. One of them was a man who they said
16:10was a
16:10suicide, but the county medical examiner, which got ahold of his body for an autopsy, said,
16:15no, no, no, it was not suicide. It was homicide. He was asphyxiated to death. And another one of those
16:21deaths, another so-called suicide, they are now not letting that county medical examiner see that body.
16:26They say they're instead going to send his body to the U.S. military to do the autopsy instead.
16:31They're shunting the autopsy on that one to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss,
16:36which 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,
16:54women 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 was
17:14arrested by Trump's immigration agents in December and they were sent to this Dilley prison camp in
17:20Texas. At Dilley, this little girl, this previously healthy little girl, contracted COVID and RSV and
17:26pneumonia. She was eventually rushed to a children's hospital in life-threatening respiratory distress.
17:32She was hospitalized at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio for 10 days, much of that time on oxygen.
17:39But then ICE demanded that she be sent back to Dilley from the hospital. They sent her back to the
17:46prison camp and then would not let her have the medication she was discharged with from the
17:52hospital. Homeland Security is denying that she ever received anything but the best medical care,
17:58but this all comes from a court case brought on her behalf by the Immigrant Rights Clinic at
18:03Columbia 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
18:24all
18:24over the country, right? For which there is a lot more need right now than there was even one year
18:28ago when
18:29Paul Weiss and Paul Weiss and all those other law firms instead started promising to not do anything
18:33to upset or oppose Trump and to instead donate their legal services to things Trump likes.
18:39The fact that the Dilley prison camp has nearly tripled in size since October is something that we know
18:45thanks to DetentionReports.com, which is an online database of all the known Trump immigrant prisons in
18:53the United States. In addition to DetentionReports.com, there's also another online tracker developed by a
19:00group called Project Saltbox. They show all the sites all over the country where Trump is trying 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
19:12behind this new online tracker for the new Trump prison camps in just a moment. It's a really useful thing.
19:20But again, if you're looking for ways to punch your moral dance card at the moment, if you're say Paul
19:27Weiss with your radioactive Epstein files chairman stuffed into the back office where you hope no one
19:33notices him, where your firm is literally described now as the face of capitulation, right? When you're
19:39trying to avoid a picture of your firm appearing in the history books and the chapters on the shameful
19:44cowardice of the once vaunted and powerful American legal profession in the face of the tiniest nudge
19:50from a tin pot dictator. If 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
20:50the 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
21:12be heard. Which, of course, is the basis of the writ of habeas corpus. They're not supposed to be able
21:19to
21:19lock you up in prison without putting your case before a court. In Massachusetts, one federal judge last
21:25week went so far as to order the Trump administration to advise every single person they arrested and
21:31locked up to 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
21:56that within 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
22:24thousands of men, women and children Trump is arresting all over the country and locking up
22:29literally without due process, without any access to the courts. And why is he doing that? Well,
22:35he's doing it in part to create an artificial need for tons more space in Trump prison camps.
22:41Which they are trying to build in huge numbers right now.
22:47Where else could big law help? Big law could also help in the fight to stop Trump building new prison
22:54camps. Put that project salt box tracker back up there. You see at the very top there, you see the
23:01map there. We'll get into that in a minute. But you see at the top, essentially the bottom line,
23:06seven warehouses that ICE has bought so far to become Trump prison camps, seven bought so far,
23:12five warehouses where the sale has been blocked by local opposition, 11 warehouses where it's up in
23:19the air. They are trying to buy warehouses to turn into big Trump prison camps. But the fight is still
23:25underway, still contingent, still yet to be determined. Hey, American big law, you looking for your lost
23:31reputation? Because right now the future size of Donald Trump's archipelago of massive black site
23:36prison camps is being determined by fights in tiny little towns, by individual local officials,
23:42by angry local residents and tiny no resource local activist groups that are trying one by one
23:50to stop the next Trump prison camp from being built in their town.
23:54And they could use some help. And they're doing a good job fighting it in all sorts of ways. And
24:00it's
24:00the least partisan thing you can possibly imagine. I mean, one proposed Trump prison camp in Bahalia,
24:05Mississippi appears to be canceled now after local protests and after Mississippi Republican Senator Roger
24:12Wicker expressed his objections to it. One proposed Trump prison camp in Oklahoma City appears to be
24:17canceled now after local protests and after local officials leaned on the private company that was
24:23going to sell that warehouse there to ICE that they ought not do that. In surprise, Arizona, after a
24:29Rockefeller Group warehouse was bought by ICE, there's been a ton of local protests there. Even MAGA
24:34Republican Congressman Paul Gosar has been among those expressing concerns about that warehouse becoming a
24:40prison camp in his home state. In Chester, New York, the fight is on over a warehouse owned by an
24:45entity
24:45associated with Carl Icahn. Locals are protesting there, including tonight. Local officials say the
24:52local sewer system, among other things, cannot handle anything like the size of that prison camp that Trump
24:58wants to put there in New York. In San Antonio, Texas, after Oakmont Industrial Group reportedly sold its
25:04warehouse to ICE, among the local Texas officials expressing their outrage and their determined
25:09opposition is the top elected official in Bexar County, Texas, Judge Peter Sakai, whose family was
25:15incarcerated in prison camps during World War II for the crime of being Japanese American.
25:22He says that is what led him to public service. He says he is absolutely opposed to there being a
25:27new
25:28ICE prison camp in Bexar County in San Antonio. In El Paso, Texas, the nonpartisan city council there
25:34unanimously approved an action plan to try to find a legal way to block another one of Trump's planned
25:40prison camps in Clint, Texas. Plenty of local opposition, plenty of protests, plenty of bipartisan
25:48outrage. And you know what they could use? They could use some big time legal firepower on their side.
25:55In Orlando, Florida, it's a firm called HLI Partners that's being pressured for potentially
26:01brokering a sale to ICE for a prison camp in Orlando. In New Hampshire, a member of Republican
26:06Governor Kelly Ayotte's cabinet resigned today in scandal after Governor Ayotte, again a Republican,
26:13said she didn't know that ICE was planning on building one of these prison camps in Merrimack,
26:17New Hampshire. And this cabinet official's agency apparently did know, but nobody told the governor.
26:22And so now that cabinet official is out. In Social Circle, Georgia, even a Republican congressman
26:27like Mike Collins is saying no to a prison camp in Social Circle that would potentially
26:32triple the local population there. That's a town of 5,000 people. They want a Trump prison camp there
26:36that would hold up to 10,000 people. We're going to talk with Democratic U.S. Senator John Ossoff about
26:42that and more in just a few minutes. Whether it is the Epstein moral disaster,
26:52or the capitulating to a would-be dictator moral disaster, or any of the other moral disasters of
26:592025, of the first year of Donald Trump being back in office. This year, 2026, the second year of Trump
27:07being back in office, shows that his approval has never been lower. His party's electoral prospects
27:12have never been more dismal. The clarity with which the country views him and his administration
27:17and his intentions has never been more clear. Trump has never been less powerful. The agenda
27:23he's pursuing has never been more evident and more unpopular. What this means, if you're a wuss,
27:28what this means if you were wrong in 2025, in the first year of Donald Trump being back in office,
27:36well, it means that 2026 is good news for you. 2026 is the easiest chance you'll ever have to rectify
27:43what you did wrong to get on the right side of this thing. Now or never.
27:52They're called Project Salt Box. They're based in Baltimore, Maryland, and their name comes from the
27:57bright 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 the
28:08winter to melt the ice from their streets and sidewalks. Salt boxes used to clear ice.
28:17Project 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.
28:33As I mentioned in the previous segment, you can see in plain language right there at the top,
28:37in red, warehouses bought by ice, seven. In green, warehouses canceled by local opposition.
28:43In orange, the fight, warehouses for sale, 11. Project Salt Box has all those sites and their status
28:51labeled on an interactive map. You can zoom in on any state, any part of the country, hover over any
28:57site
28:57to see the details. So, for instance, you can zoom in on the great state of Georgia. If you hover
29:01over
29:01this one red dot, it tells you a warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia, has been bought by ICE with
29:06plans to imprison 8,500 people there. That's more than twice the size of the largest federal prison
29:13in the United States today. If you move your cursor over to the yellow dot, that's a warehouse in
29:18Flowery Branch, Georgia. The Trump administration wants to lock up an additional 1,500 people there,
29:23but they haven't yet managed to buy that warehouse there. That one is still for lease.
29:28You can also zoom in on Virginia and hover over that green dot there, which will tell you
29:33that a warehouse sale in Ashland, Virginia, that sale was canceled when the owner decided
29:38not to sell to ICE after getting enormous pressure from locals and others to cancel that deal.
29:46So much of the best work being done on this is being done by independent researchers
29:50and citizen journalists. There's that man in Minneapolis who's single-handedly tracking
29:56daily deportation flights from the Minneapolis airport. There's the folks at DetentionReports.com,
30:02which has a really useful interactive map of hundreds of existing immigration prisons
30:07where ICE is holding people. And there's Project Salt Box's ICE warehouse purchase tracker,
30:13keeping tabs specifically on new sites the Trump administration is buying or trying to buy.
30:20It's a map, in effect, of the moral future of this country and the question of whether or not
30:25Donald Trump will have a network of prison camps, some are calling them concentration camps,
30:30to 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.
30:39Thanks, Rachel. Appreciate it.
30:40Did I get anything wrong in the way that I described that?
30:42No, 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
31:03a lot of the work already that we were trying. How hard has it been to get this information?
31:08Up until now, it's been pretty easy. A lot of this information has just been
31:12existing in the public domain on websites like USA Spending or SAM.gov, which are sort of the
31:18federal government's clearing houses for contracts and bid solicitations. Very easy to find that
31:23information there. Recently, it's become a little more difficult as Homeland Security
31:28has begun using Department of Defense contracts under a program called Wexmactitis,
31:34the worldwide expeditionary multi-award contract, Territorial Integrity of the United States.
31:39It's a mouthful. And essentially, it's just a way for ICE to use DOD contracts to make purchases
31:45specifically for things like detention warehouses and soft-sided camps like Camp East Montana.
31:51Would they be, I don't know if you can tell, if they're moving to Defense Department contracting
31:57protocols and resources, are they doing that in order to shield those contracts from the public,
32:05or 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 vendors for
32:26worldwide contingencies. Now, the United States is considered a worldwide contingency area of
32:31responsibility. So by having these contractors available to the Department of Homeland Security,
32:38they can access pre-vetted contractors and they don't have to publicly bid for, you know,
32:44the lowest bidder as would normally happen in a procurement cycle. They can just tap into what
32:48the DOD already has and use that pool of resources to build out their sites.
32:53The war comes home. I know you served 20 years in the US Air Force.
32:58I did, yes. You came out of that, it's clear, with some particular skills that have turned out to
33:03serve you very well in this contract. Can you talk a little bit about just how you got into this
33:07work
33:07tracking these warehouse purchases? Absolutely, yeah. So I was sitting home one day and I, you know,
33:13was on social media in our local Baltimore subreddit and someone had posted a thread asking for help,
33:19kind of discerning some contracts that they had found. Turned out to be another Army veteran that had
33:24recently gotten out of the military and was trying to find something constructive to do to understand
33:30what was happening, you know, here in the United States with the ICE expansion. This would have been
33:34September of last year. And just coming from that military background, knowing contracting is the
33:41way that all of these things happen, that underneath every operation or underneath every contingency,
33:46there are hundreds of contracts and many, you know, millions of dollars worth of contract support
33:50that makes them happen. So we thought or, you know, they thought by looking at these contracts, we might
33:55get a better understanding of whether or not a metro surge midway blitz style operation might be coming to
34:01Baltimore. And I was skeptical. I did not believe that the contracts would tell us that much. She sent us,
34:08you know, she sent me a list of about 20 contracts to look through and Saturday night became Monday morning.
34:14And
34:14what we found were some pretty alarming trends, you know, since the passing of the One Big Beautiful
34:20Bill Act and the authorization of, you know, $69, $75 billion worth of money for DHS. ICE was buying
34:27things in our own backyard, such as meals ready to eat for six months worth of detention in Baltimore,
34:33Maryland. Our field office is on the sixth floor of a building downtown that can maybe hold 50 people.
34:40We didn't understand that the math behind why they would need that much resourcing trucks and
34:44mobile cell site simulators, which is a truck that they can drive around and turn on and intercept
34:49cell 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.
35:05We have lawyers. We have dog walkers. We have, you know, everybody from every walk of life that
35:11can bring their own unique set of skills into the mix and contribute in some way to either make the
35:17data meaningful or help other people that don't understand the data understand it better to bring
35:22it down to a level that everyone can understand. Well, at MSNOW, we're going to post a link to what
35:28you guys have posted at Project Saltbox, your database. I know it's a lot of material there,
35:33but people all over the country are wondering whether or not one of these prison camps is coming
35:37to their state, to their community, and what they can do to try to oppose it. And the best
35:44resource that I have found anywhere, in addition to local reporting on these things, in some cases,
35:48which has been very, very good, is this database that you've created at Project Saltbox. It's a real
35:54contribution. It's really constructive. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Mike Riston and the group
35:58is called Project Saltbox. At our website at MSNOW, we will post a link to that database. You can find
36:04out about these potential locations and the contracts involved in setting up these camps,
36:09which may be near you. All right. More news ahead. Stay with us.
36:17When the Trump administration sent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to raid
36:22Georgia's election offices and take ballots from Fulton County, I don't exactly know what the Trump
36:29administration thought was going to happen, but I doubt they were expecting this.
36:34And 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.
36:54Your 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.
37:36Are you ready to vote, Atlanta?
37:41Georgia, U.S. Senator John Ossoff speaking before a crowd of voters in Atlanta this weekend.
37:47Those voters clearly fired up about the Trump administration raiding their election offices,
37:52seizing like 700 boxes of ballots, boxes and boxes of real original ballots that were removed with no
38:00documented chain of custody, 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
38:11used in court to justify its raid on that Georgia election facility. Those documents are ordered to be
38:17released tomorrow, which should make for a fascinating news day. Ahead of that deadline,
38:23ProPublica has revealed that lawyers for the Trump administration ahead of this raid apparently were
38:28interviewing, among others, a crank conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly tried and failed
38:34to prove that the 2020 election in Fulton County was fraudulent. He also reportedly has his own
38:41criminal record after he, quote, pled guilty to a misdemeanor voyeurism charge and was subsequently
38:46ordered by a jury to pay 3.25 million dollars in damages after secretly filming guests in his own home
38:54bathroom. For his part, the man told ProPublica that that matter had no bearing on his election-related
39:01research. Quote, that has nothing to do with this, he said. That was 20 years ago. All right then.
39:08So the Trump administration has until tomorrow to release the basis for their search warrant of that
39:13Georgia election center amid reporting that they relied on cuckoo for cocoa puff sources in terms of their
39:21theories justifying the search. ProPublica reports that at least part of the basis for that search
39:27may have come from an election denier who once pled guilty to secretly filming people in his own home
39:31bathroom. As if Georgia voters didn't have enough to be outraged about right now, Georgia Senator
39:37John 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 federal
39:52raids on election sites in battleground states, all in service of his obsession with overturning the 2020
40:00election and laying the groundwork for whatever they're plotting this year. Joining us now is
40:05Democratic U.S. Senator John Ossoff. He's on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. He's also running for
40:10reelection this year in the great state of Georgia. Senator, it's nice to see you. Thank you for being
40:13here. Hey, Rachel. Thank you. How does Georgia feel about that raid on the Fulton County Election
40:18Office? As I mentioned in the speech, you know, this apparent abuse of federal law enforcement power
40:27to indulge 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, deeply chilling,
40:41deeply menacing, and also a huge political mistake for this administration. Because in Georgia,
40:47where now for the second time in six years, Georgia voters have the weight of the republic's future
40:54on our shoulders, we are just that much more determined to do our part
41:01to right the ship. This election is pivotal. If we do not restore checks and balances in these
41:07midterm elections, we will not recognize our republic at the end of this presidential term.
41:13We may lose our republic. And that is why I'm asking people to help me in this, the most pivotal
41:20United States Senate election in the country, to log on to electjohn.com, electjon.com. This is something
41:27you can do right now to help us fight back and to help us defend voting rights in Georgia that
41:32are under attack.
41:33Fulton County officials are suing, trying to block what the Trump administration is doing here.
41:38We are expecting a court to order the Trump administration tomorrow to release the background
41:44information that they gave the court effectively to allow this search to be done in the first place.
41:49What are you expecting from those from those documents?
41:54Remains to be seen. There's been reporting indicating they may have been relying upon
41:59debunked 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
42:54Georgia, sir. I know this is a very, very busy time for you. Thank you for your time tonight.
42:57Thank you for being here. Thank you, Rachel. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us.
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