- 5 days ago
Deadline: White House - Season Episode 90
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
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
01:23events 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, but the county had not
01:48shown that its rights were callously disregarded either through the lack of probable cause or by the
01:54manner of the execution of the seizure, he said. Okay. That ruling clears the way for the Justice
02:01Department to move forward with this inquiry into Donald Trump's 2020 election loss to Joe Biden,
02:07a contest he lost in Georgia by about 12,000 votes. It is unlikely that this will end in Fulton
02:13County,
02:13though, as Donald Trump attempts to leverage his big lie to undermine free and fair elections all
02:19across the country. With the Trump Justice Department launching an investigation into the 2020 election
02:24in Arizona, and Donald Trump continuing to demand that Republicans help him take federal control of
02:30our elections. The warning signs that the courts will not save us from Donald Trump's attempts to
02:35undermine democracy is where we begin the hour with voting rights attorney and founder of democracy
02:40docket, Mark Elias. And with me at the table, NYU law professor, our legal analyst, Melissa Murray.
02:46Her new book is Beautiful, the U.S. Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide to the modern
02:51reader. It's out now, and we'll talk about it in a little bit. Mark Elias, I feel like
02:59in a very short period of time, a lot of damage has been done. And I know we talked every
03:05day 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 had
03:35that. Then we saw sort of a rush by Republican controlled legislatures to try to trample over the
03:46rights of black voters in the South, actually all voters in some of these states, because in the state
03:52of Louisiana, they're essentially tossing out 40,000 plus ballots in their zeal to draw a new map.
04:00And then the final thing, which is actually, you know, for me, was the hardest part, is watching the
04:07U.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
04:48illegal districts for another two years. Can you please allow the lower court's decisions to go
04:54into effect to 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
05:30and 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 rule book 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
06:44we have these decisions from the court basically changing the law in real time. And then you have
06:50what the administration is doing on the ground. Not in real time, right? In mid-election.
06:54Mid-election, just like on the ground. And then you're having these other changes that are meant
06:59to change what the election landscape looks like in real time on the ground when it actually happens,
07:04to make it impossible for free and fair elections to happen. I mean, Mark, what is the legal strategy
07:09when this emanates from a Supreme Court decision? I mean, the legal strategy on our side is really
07:14clear. I mean, the legal strategy on our side is that we need to double down and triple down
07:20on protecting voting rights with every tool available. And those tools are going to involve,
07:25for example, state courts under state laws and under state constitutions where the Supreme Court
07:30either can't touch them or can't easily touch them. It's going to mean bringing aggressive
07:35litigation in federal court because you know what? For every case that goes to the U.S. Supreme Court,
07:40there are eight or 10 other cases that don't go to the Supreme Court. And it's also going to mean
07:45speaking out in public and trying to encourage more, more courage from more actors in this space.
07:53You know, the number of law firms and frankly, Supreme Court advocates, the Supreme Court bar,
07:59who are quiet today, they are hiding today. They are not calling out what is going on. They are not
08:05criticizing what's happening in Fulton County. They are not criticizing what the Supreme Court did.
08:10And that is because they are afraid. They're afraid that they will alienate the conservative
08:15justices on the court. They're afraid that they will alienate Todd Blanche. They're afraid that their
08:21clients won't get favorable treatment in review of their business deals. And how many times, Nicole,
08:28have you and I talked about this? If we do not see more courage coming from more sectors,
08:34including the legal community, then we are going to be in real trouble because it is fine for Mark
08:39Elias and for Melissa to say what the Supreme Court did here is irregular. But where are those voices?
08:46Where are those people who know better in speaking out today? Well, I don't know if you're comfortable
08:54naming names or naming firms, but who in all that you think about that through a commercial break,
08:59but who has spoken out? I mean, what does the coalition to save what is left of voting rights in
09:05this
09:05country look like today, Mark? Look, I think that the people who are speaking out on the Supreme Court
09:10are basically people like Melissa. I had Leah Littman on a podcast last night. She spoke out.
09:15So we've got, you know, some some some really prominent people who are academics or podcasters
09:22who are willing to speak out. But, you know, like I just you know, you you can you can figure
09:26out for
09:26yourself who the who the most prominent Supreme Court advocates are. And you can Google and see
09:33if they've said anything in terms of the broader pro-democracy movement. Look, I mean, I think we've
09:37got the coalition of the willing. Right. We've got we've got lawyers like me and others in the private
09:43sector who are typically not at large law firms who are willing to do it. And we've got a lot
09:48of really
09:48great nonprofit organizations. Democracy Forward is a great organization I actually helped create years ago.
09:53They're they're fighting the fight. The ACLU is fighting the fight. There are a lot of good
09:58nonprofits out there. But, you know, there aren't a lot of private law firms we could list and say
10:02they they are in this fight. Well, I mean, it's a tragedy that we can name them. Right. So there's
10:09there's us. I saw Sherilyn Ifill on Jon Stewart Monday. Bruce Springsteen. Like the tragedy is that we
10:16can name them. What is happening? What what what has happened to the issue? I mean, is it another example
10:21of
10:21this thing that everyone took for granted? I think many people have taken for granted what
10:28it feels like to be in the crosshairs of the president of the United States. I think, you know,
10:32those law firms, you know, many of them stood up. Not all of them did. And like even more bent
10:37the
10:38knee, as we've talked about. And I don't think that they were thinking about what this looked like
10:43long term if the entire industry did this. But what it means and, you know, I've talked with you about
10:48this is when you allow the president's interpretation of law to stand, whether it's
10:53enunciated in an executive order that says DEI is now impermissible, even though no federal
10:58court has ever said that you're basically giving them license to do it. I mean, it is obeying in
11:03advance. And so this is kind of a break glass moment. Yeah. Black people are always the canary in the
11:09coal mine and voting rights like this is core stuff. I mean, the right to vote is exactly what the
11:16framers of the reconstruction amendments viewed as being able to hold this nation together to give
11:21people a way to make their voices heard. Everybody a way to make their voices heard in this political
11:27community of ours. And it's under attack. And the fact that more people in the legal profession who
11:31have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution won't say something about what's going on right now.
11:36It is a problem. It is shameful. What is the I mean, if you look at what's worked, Mark Elias,
11:43I mean, what's worked has been people in Minneapolis, in Chicago, in Los Angeles,
11:49seeing their neighbors attacked and then going out into the streets with bottled water and
11:54whistles. I mean, I say bottled water and like like when it comes to voting that isn't even allowed
11:59everywhere. I mean, what what is it feels like we're at another fulcrum moment. Right. And we've tried
12:05very hard in the second term not to light our hair on fire unless it is justified today.
12:12Everything both of you are saying suggests that we should, you know, have our hair on fire over
12:17this. And I I wonder what your instructions are to citizens in terms of how they make their feelings
12:26known about this and what can still be done to help it and address it.
12:30Yeah. And I want to make a point that that Melissa made because I may not have been clear.
12:33I left out, obviously, the traditional civil rights groups for a reason, which is that,
12:37of course, they are standing up because always black voters who are being targeted.
12:42Right. But my my question is not why aren't civil rights groups standing? I understand if they are.
12:46The question is, where are the rest of us? Like, where are the law firms that, you know,
12:50we're happy to get give awards and get awards and all of this, you know, when it all felt like
12:55really safe
12:55and easy. Like, where are those allies today when, frankly, you know, black voters are right now being
13:00systematically targeted in Louisiana and Alabama, in Tennessee, in South Carolina.
13:06And where are like people standing up now when it's when Joe Biden's not in the White House,
13:11you know, when when when when Donald Trump's in the White House. And so what I think ordinary
13:16citizens have to do is you have to realize that, you know, tyranny always starts with some group.
13:22Discrimination always starts with some group. Authoritarian always starts by scapegoating some
13:27group. And it is not lost on me and it should not be lost on anybody that the first state
13:33that
13:33was singled out by Eric Schmidt, the Republican senator from Missouri, who is a Republican
13:38former attorney general, was California. OK, he didn't actually say, let's let's single out Alabama.
13:44Let's single out Louisiana. Let's single out South Carolina. He chose California. And Harmeet Dillon,
13:48the head of the civil rights division, she said, we're on it. Now, why is that important?
13:53Because you and I talked at length that California redistricted on a partisan basis. They said it was
13:59on a partisan basis. The Supreme Court even said it was a partisan basis. The lower court said it was
14:04on a partisan basis. So why did Eric Schmidt single out California? Because he wants to delegitimize
14:09all black voters who elect their candidates of choice. He wants to delegitimize all black elected
14:17officials, all Latino elected officials. And we need to call this out. We all need to say
14:23that they are going to use this as an excuse, not just to redistrict in Alabama and Louisiana,
14:28but to try to spread in the same way they did, by the way, with the with the North Carolina
14:33and
14:33Harvard case. They used it not just around college admissions, but they used it to attack faculty
14:38decisions. And and and so we need ordinary citizens to recognize that this is not going to end
14:44with Louisiana. The fact that you may not live in Louisiana doesn't mean that it's not coming to
14:49your community. So everybody needs to stand up and call this out for what it is today.
14:54I've not heard you this angry in a long time. Just share with this how this scrambles your workload.
15:03Like, look, I mean, in the end, here's why I'm angry. In the end, Democrats are still going to take
15:09control the House. OK, like that's the good news. Right. In the end, I think Democrats still could
15:14win the Senate in the end, like politics will be politics. But the reason why I am so angry is
15:22because the Supreme Court of the United States chose to strike down a law that was passed in 1965,
15:29that that Congress was in dialogue with the court over in the 1970s and 1980s.
15:35And for the last 40 years, we have lived under a set of principles that all players have accepted
15:42as a as a fair level playing field. And then a group of white Louisianans decided to challenge
15:48a map. And the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the parties to argue a case that none of the parties
15:53wanted, which to argue, which was whether the Section two of the Voting Rights Act was was still in effect
15:58under the right test. And then the parties did it. And they chose to issue an opinion in the middle
16:03of
16:03May while 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 white voters
16:13have to do the same in Louisiana. That would be a constitutional crisis. And against all of that
16:19backdrop, have we learned nothing? I mean, have we learned nothing? Has the broader legal community
16:25not learned anything? Other than the civil rights groups, have people not learned that when you do
16:32this to black voters, it turns out bad for democracy for everybody? So, yeah, I'm angry. I'm angry because
16:39of the appalling silence that's going on right now around around this case and the aftermath.
16:47I want you to stay angry. I don't want you to go anywhere. I mean, I don't want you to
16:50really stay
16:50angry, but hold that thought. I have two things to tell our audience. We're going to get to Melissa's
16:55book. We're going to stay with Mark Elias, whether he stays angry or not, is up to him. But we
17:00also have
17:01something else that we're going to bring you on the other side of a break. There's breaking news from
17:04our colleague, Carol Lennig. She has brand new reporting following up on her blockbuster exclusive
17:09yesterday about Kash Patel and how he is now able to report today that he's in, quote, panic mode
17:16and has ordered polygraphs for dozens of people at the FBI as he looks for leakers on his own staff
17:21and tries to save his job. Carol will join us with that new exclusive reporting next.
17:26The White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
17:35There's some breaking news to tell you about. We are able to report that FBI
17:39director Kash Patel is in, quote, panic mode. We have that brand new reporting breaking moments
17:44ago from our colleagues, Carol Lennig and Ken Delaney. It's about the turmoil inside the FBI
17:49right now after a string of deeply embarrassing and rather alarming stories about Kash Patel and his
17:55tenure as the head of the country's top law enforcement agency. From that new reporting,
17:59quote, Kash Patel has ordered the polygraphing of more than two dozen former and current members of
18:05his security detail and other staff and has been described as in panic mode to save his job and
18:10find leakers among his team. That is according to two people briefed on the development.
18:15Kash Patel has walled himself off from some senior bureau leaders this week in the wake of multiple
18:20media reports that raised red flags about his leadership. What's more, Patel has reportedly avoided
18:26meeting with operational leaders at the FBI this week, raising fears that Patel is out of the loop on
18:32important investigations and threats. A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment about the polygraph
18:38test, but he denied that Kash Patel was walled off from senior staff at the FBI. I want to bring
18:44in
18:44senior investigative reporter Carol Lennig, who's bylined on that. Mark and Melissa are still here.
18:49Carol 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
19:08point before, 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?
19:22You know, as we reported at MSNOW a couple of, I can't remember if it was two days ago or
19:28a day,
19:29but it was basically a finding that Patel had ordered this investigation into the leaks or the
19:36sources to an Atlantic magazine piece that described how FBI agents were super, super worried about the
19:44leadership of the bureau because of Patel allegedly engaging in drinking to excess on a pretty regular
19:51basis and having to reschedule meetings in the mornings after these quote-unquote alcohol-fueled
19:58events. We also then learned, because once you report one story, more people want to tell you more
20:05about other 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
20:26to them, 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
20:40threats and investigations that the bureau director needs to be briefed on and needs some input on. Of
20:48course, there are some decision points that he must be involved in, and this is worrying them. I agree that
20:54we should emphasize that the FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said that Cash is having meetings with
21:02senior leaders, but he wasn't extremely specific about those he's not meeting with.
21:09I'm going to do something I don't always do. I would like to read the piece. It is new since
21:13I've been on the air, but I think it's important for our viewers to hear what you're reporting right
21:18now exclusively. FBI Director Cash Patel has ordered the polygraphing of more than two dozen former and
21:24current members of his security detail, and other staff has been described as in panic mode to save his
21:29job and find leakers among his team. That's according to two people briefed on that development. Patel has
21:35walled himself off, as we've been discussing, from some senior bureau leaders this week in the wake
21:40of multiple media reports that raised red flags about his leadership. That's according to three
21:45people familiar with his recent actions. Two of the people told MSNOW that the director ordered the
21:51polygraphing this week of the former and current security detail members, as well as several
21:56information technology staff. I want to stop here and just, you know, we don't focus in on this,
22:01but this is a hallmark of the Atlantic reporting as well. This is deeply sourced. Every line has
22:06a 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
22:24intend to highlight, but think about what it must be like to work in the FBI or in law enforcement.
22:31And as we have described in our reporting, to feel that the bureau is in danger because of who is
22:37directing it. And think about what it must be like to see colleagues and hear colleagues are being
22:42polygraphed or maybe even former colleagues or friends, people who've been fired, and then still be
22:49willing to talk to me and to Ken. So I'm grateful to the sources who continue to share information
22:58with us and actually to other reporters as well. I mean, come to us first, but yeah, I mean, I
23:04think
23:04it's pretty impressive. I think it's just really pretty impressive that people feel this information
23:12needs to get out and take some risks to do so. The corroboration is important. I thought the Atlantic's
23:19corroboration was really impressive as well, a very deeply reported piece of work. I wasn't involved
23:24in it, 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
23:54before. 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 or staff
24:08who have access to sensitive details about his decisions have communicated with reporters, according to the
24:13people who asked to speak anonymously due to threat of retribution. Now, there is nothing sensitive in
24:23in his travels. He actually posts a lot on social media. He had cameras in the locker room when he
24:30traveled to the Milan Olympics and guzzled beer in front of them. What is it? Is it fear that gets
24:37them to
24:37even carry out an investigation into at least two reporters, allegedly, Ms. Fitzpatrick and the New
24:45York Times reporter who wrote about his girlfriend? Yeah. So as we reported in the case of the investigation
24:54opened into the Atlantic reporter, sorry, I lost my voice there for a second. Agents and sources told
25:03my colleague Ken Delaney in, you know, pretty sympathetic tone that, you know, we're damned if
25:09we do, we're damned if we don't, if we don't open this probe. And I'm paraphrasing a little here. If
25:14we
25:14don't open this probe, the agents are fearful they're going to be fired. In the case of the New York
25:19Times
25:20reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, a former colleague of mine and a great reporter, it appears from the New York
25:26Times very good reporting that that was a case where agents were asked to investigate and were able to
25:34sort of tamp that down by saying the investigation was not warranted. Apparently, we've moved past
25:39that place in a very few number of weeks. And if you'll grant me the liberty, Nicole, I want to
25:45emphasize one other thing about polygraphing. In the course of reporting this story today, I learned
25:51something new that I'd never heard before, which was that Cash did, Cash Patel, the director engaged in
26:00another mass polygraphing event when there was a report that he had requested a gun. And apparently,
26:07an agent had mentioned this on a call with other agents, and that made him sort of subject number one
26:14or suspect number one. I actually don't know the name of that agent, but it led to the polygraphing
26:21of dozens of agents to try to figure out who had revealed information from this call.
26:28Let me just ask you to explain the normal use of the polygraphing. I mean, a polygraph
26:35is a tool that the FBI sometimes uses at an entry point, but it is not. It is not like
26:42re-upping your
26:45IT creds. Like it is not a tool that any agent is subjected to in a leak investigation by their
26:52own
26:52organization. Just speak about how outside the norm, how sort of North Korea adjacent this practice is
26:59at the FBI as an ongoing management tool from its leader.
27:04You know, if there were, I want to be sort of sober about this. If there were a leak
27:09of classified information at the Justice Department or at the FBI, and I know of cases like this about
27:18which I was reporting at the time, there would be great concern about bringing in the circle of people
27:27who had access to this information and asking them in an interview, did you communicate with
27:34a reporter about this? It would not on first blush be a polygraph. But you know, there is a presumption
27:42inside the government in the Justice Department and the FBI that no one is going to lie when asked that
27:49question. No one. And I don't know what the circumstances are today, but I know about cases
27:56I wrote about at the time. And there is a view that if you're brought into that room and you've
28:01talked to a reporter, you are going to own up to it. A polygraph is exceptionally rare, but really,
28:09really rare in the leak of information, as you describe, that is not classified. That is about what is
28:16the director doing? What is the director ordering in the case of an investigation of looking at the
28:21contacts and sources of a reporter engaged in normal news gathering? It is not in any way something
28:28that's been used when information is just simply unflattering to a senior leader. There was a reporting,
28:37Carol, about him looking everywhere for a woman's FBI jacket that fit him better for the images. And
28:45there's the well-publicized image of him guzzling beer in Milan. There's the Atlantic reporting about
28:51him drinking too much. And there are these accounts of him using the FBI to investigate
29:01people around his own 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, drinking guzzling beer, tossing alcohol in the air after he had told us, or rather his
29:39spokesperson had told us he was going to Milan for security meetings and a business trip.
29:46His on-the-record statement to me was that this was a business trip and that hockey was not the
29:53purpose of him going to Milan. The president was livid about this and shared some of his frustration with
30:00his aides and with Kash Patel directly. But there have been many instances when Trump and senior
30:07White House aides have been discussing the bad press that Patel has generated with his stewardship of
30:14FBI resources, his use of a government jet, his creation of a security detail for his girlfriend,
30:22his decision to travel on a government jet for a date night, to see his girlfriend perform the national
30:29anthem. All of these things that are reported by MSNOW and that you can see in the story that I
30:36wrote
30:36today. All right. We're going to keep going through that with you. We're going to bring Mark and Melissa
30:42in on this. We have to sneak in a short break to pay some bills before we do all that.
30:46But don'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 Ennick 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 Ennick had the
31:13other blockbuster piece of reporting on this story. So she's at a clip of about one a day.
31:18And lucky for me, the interval is almost exactly 24 hours. But I've learned to listen to what
31:24Carol Ennick isn't saying. And what she isn't saying explicitly is that all the calls are coming
31:32from inside the house. Because the country's in some deep, you know what, without a competent,
31:38present FBI director. And whatever you think of this person, his focus is not on the security
31:44of the country. It is on polygraphing 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 the
31:56FBI director. Like, he was an 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
32:05a book with a list of enemies. You know, Kash Patel was mostly known before becoming FBI director
32:11as just 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
32:35from inside the House, and I obviously don't know, I don't have any of the sources that, you know,
32:40that you all have. But I suspect that among the calls coming from inside the House or from the White
32:45House 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
32:56much. So, you know, I don't know. But I suspect that Donald Trump is not happy. And Kash Patel's
33:01days are probably not long for being FBI director. I think it's also we look for I will say I
33:12grope for
33:12mile markers to try to communicate how low we have sunken. And the fact that we are together covering
33:21like the fourth story about the clear instability of the director of the FBI, like this isn't some
33:29two bit like political consultants stuffed away at the RNC. This is like the flippant director of the FBI.
33:36If 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.
33:55Yeah.
33:56Like, can you imagine if Pam Bondi did that? Yeah, she would have not even.
34:00Kristi 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
34:12embarrassing 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 going
34:25forward, he's not the only one in this administration that seems to be wholly ill-equipped for the position
34:33that they hold, right? So for an administration that continually rails about DEI and insists
34:40on merit over everything, this is really nasty work. I mean, like, this isn't, I mean, like,
34:47when I think of merit, this is not what I imagine. And I imagine this isn't what most of the
34:53American
34:53people imagine, certainly not for the FBI director. I mean, we are only 25 years away from 9-11,
34:59where the FBI and failures of intelligence literally brought us to the point where we had the most
35:06serious attack on American soil. What happens now when the head of the FBI is more concerned about
35:13what people are saying about him, about his girlfriend, and polygraphing people inside the
35:19office rather than letting this division do its work? Yeah. I mean, Carol Lennigan, in some ways,
35:25talking about his personal paranoia, about coverage of his personal conduct, takes away from the purges
35:34that the offices, the very people that protect the homeland and Americans and our allies from the
35:41threat of Iran, the reassignment of the most experienced agents to immigration and deportation.
35:48I mean, the gutting of the FBI, whether Kash Patel goes today or tomorrow or in another year,
35:53is his legacy along with his Kash Patel branded with the S being a dollar sign I read in the
36:00Atlantic
36:00on 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
36:22inside the 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 thank
37:34them. Mark Elias, thank you for starting us off today. We'll have to pick up where we left off,
37:38my friend, because there was so much more to say. When we come back, though, we're going to talk about
37:42Melissa's beautiful new book. We'll do that after a very short break, more important in this news cycle
37:47than any other.
37:52We're back with Melissa, who, among all of her jobs and accomplishments, is now also the author
37:57of the new book, The U.S. Constitution, A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide to the Modern
38:01Reader. This is beautiful. Give me your why, and then I want to read a little bit from it.
38:06So do you remember when Twitter was awesome?
38:08Yes, I was talking about that yesterday. Twitter used to be great, and I was in the Twitter streets
38:13all the time. And once I was there, there was someone who was on Twitter, very well-known,
38:16well-known to me from my youth, who was going on about what Joe Biden needed to do. And so
38:20he had this
38:20list of things Joe Biden needed to do, and I was reading the list with great interest,
38:24and I realized probably half the things Joe Biden couldn't do because the president isn't
38:28authorized to do those things. They either belong to Congress or to mayors or whoever.
38:32And so I was like, I don't think this person's ever read the Constitution. I think I said this
38:36to my husband. He's like, I don't think anybody's really read the Constitution. And it was like,
38:40really? And that hadn't occurred to me. But then I asked my students, because I make them read the
38:45Constitution. This is the first time you've read the Constitution. For a lot of them, it was in my
38:49class. And so it struck me that this is a document that was purposefully written, and written to be
38:55relatively short, because the framers wanted the people to read it, to engage with it, to grapple
39:00with it, to debate it. And here we are in this moment where we're always asking, can they do that?
39:05Is that constitutional? And yet none of us know, because none of us have read the Constitution. So
39:09I put the Constitution in here. I didn't write it. James Madison wrote it. He's the father of the
39:14Constitution. You'd probably be very surprised to find me as his collaborator. But here we are.
39:20But I did these commentaries. So every section of the Constitution, every article starts with what
39:26this article does, an origin story to explain why it's there, and then clause by clause explanations.
39:32And they're not for law professors. They're not for lawyers. They're for ordinary people who,
39:36in this break glass moment, need to get reengaged with the document that scaffolds our government
39:42and indirectly our lives. I mean, I was thinking of the political sort of overlay of all of this as
39:49I flip through it. And increasingly, you've got Republicans making the argument that the Republican
39:54president violates the Constitution. Yeah. Just talk about how, you know, this thing that used to
39:59be so precious to Republicans is now something that Trump basically put in the shredder.
40:03Well, I think you need to understand what the framers are trying to do about the Constitution. So
40:07when they sat down to write this, they were going through it. They were literally weighed down by
40:13trauma, the trauma of the colonial period where they had literally the British crown and the British
40:17Parliament on their necks. And then the trauma of breaking with Britain and trying to fight this war
40:22against the greatest global superpower that the world had ever seen while they were operating this
40:28government that was held together by scotch tape and friendship bracelets. I mean, it was just like a
40:32horrible experience. And so they had this intuition. We need to have a government that's strong enough
40:38that works, but not so strong that it can become tyrannical. And so this idea of limited government,
40:45government that's efficient, but government that's not so efficient that you can just literally blow over
40:50all of the people. That's what we want. So they wanted to strike this really delicate balance. And,
40:55you know, Republicans 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 do
41:10everything. I mean, some of this is like dividing power between the three branches of the federal
41:14government and then dividing it again between the federal government and the states. And the idea was
41:19that if you did that, you would preserve the people. And then they actually gave the people rights
41:24with the Bill of Rights, the reconstruction amendments, renegotiate that because they recognize that the
41:29states, as much as the federal government can run roughshod over the people. And, you know, now they
41:34have this whole question of like, where are the people here? Like they started this document with
41:38we, the people. And I think that's the question on everyone's minds right now. Where are we in this
41:43government? And I think this is the answer. You beautifully dedicated to your parents and your
41:48kids. Yes. This world is yours or? Well, to my parents, because my parents were immigrants. And in a
41:53moment where we say a lot of things about immigrants, I want people to be reminded that
41:58immigrants contribute a lot to this country. And they believe fervently in the promise of this
42:01country. And for my kids who are the grandchildren of immigrants and the grandchildren of people who
42:06were 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.
42:14We'll start coming through together. Definitely. This is our summer project.
42:16Our summer pod. Let's do it. Let's do it. The book is The U.S. Constitution,
42:20a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader. Melissa Murray, thank you for spending the
42:25whole hour with us. There's even more breaking news to tell you about, and it's the blow to
42:29Donald Trump's signature economic agenda. We'll have that for you after a very short break. Don't go
42:33anywhere. All right. We're drinking from a breaking news fire hose today, and there's more this time on
42:43the centerpiece of Donald Trump's economic policy, taxes on global imports, and a major victory for
42:48small businesses. The court of international trade has just ruled that Donald Trump's 10 percent global
42:54tariffs are illegal and has permanently blocked him from implementing them in the way he did.
42:59After the Supreme Court struck down Trump's more sweeping tariffs, he turned to section 122 tariffs
43:05that allow the president to impose a tax of up to 15 percent for 150 days in order to remedy,
43:12quote,
43:12large and serious balance of payments deficits, I'll say. The court today, however, found that that
43:18section does not authorize Trump to impose these tariffs under current economic conditions. The
43:23ruling will go into effect in five days. It also ordered for all tariffs implemented under section 122
43:29to be refunded. One more break. We'll be right back.
Comments