Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: In the days after the twenty twenty presidential election, CIA
Speaker 2: director Gina Haspell flies to Frankfurt, Germany on a secret
Speaker 2: mission to secure a computer servers that contain evidence that
Speaker 2: the election has been manipulated. These servers, owned by a
Speaker 2: bankrupt Spanish company called Scheitel, could prove that the election
Speaker 2: was ringed for Joe Biden. Haspel and a team of
Speaker 2: Special Forces troops to send on Frankfort to destroy the evidence,
Speaker 2: but in the reign, five troops and a CIA official
Speaker 2: are killed. Haspell herself is injured, flown to Guantanamo Bay
Speaker 2: and given a tribunal for treason. In two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez creates a voting system that could
Speaker 2: change votes in elections in any country using this advanced technology.
Speaker 2: One of the technology companies that uses it is called Smartmanic,
Speaker 2: which supplies voting equipment to a single US county In
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election, the scheme between smart Manneic and
Speaker 2: Hugo Chavez is a secret and successful effort to rig
Speaker 2: the election for Joe Biden, even though Chavez has been
Speaker 2: dead for seven years Pescara, Italy. A rogue employee at
Speaker 2: the defense and aerospace company Leonardo Spa hacks into military
Speaker 2: satellites to change the margin of victory in US States
Speaker 2: where Trump has beaten Biden. It's a variable coupe ata
Speaker 2: and it would go down as the most extraordinary effort
Speaker 2: in history to overturn a presidential election. Oh you know what,
Speaker 2: that one actually sounds pretty fun. Italian military satellites, Mama Mia,
Speaker 2: these sound great. Oh I'm forgetting one. How can I
Speaker 2: not mention the Hungarian vector. There's been so many bizarre
Speaker 2: stories going on through the media.
Speaker 3: You can have some pretty far fetched ideas on both sides,
Speaker 3: and what we're doing is simply proving or disproving as
Speaker 3: many of those as we can.
Speaker 2: Speaking of somebody on the outside, this feels like it's
Speaker 2: just feeding into territorial thinking.
Speaker 4: We're MythBusters.
Speaker 3: Great, Okay, we're doing things we think are foolish, but
Speaker 3: people believe it's real. If we validate the something they
Speaker 3: think might have happened didn't happen, then we're not throwing
Speaker 3: fuel on the fire.
Speaker 2: Are you looking into the Hungarian vector?
Speaker 4: I didn't know about that one. Hungary vector.
Speaker 2: It's a bullshit thing I just made up that sounds
Speaker 2: cool and a little bit spooky. This is Jordan Klepper
Speaker 2: Fingers the conspiracy, And yes, those twenty twenty election conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories do sound a lot more exciting when we put
Speaker 2: public domain, suspenseful music underneath them. You may have heard
Speaker 2: a few of those theories, partly because the White House
Speaker 2: and Republicans in Congress were publicizing them in the weeks
Speaker 2: after the election to convince Americans that the election was stolen,
Speaker 2: and it worked to an extent. Sixty one percent of
Speaker 2: Republicans still believe the election was stolen, according to a
Speaker 2: Mond Month University poll from September of this very year. Today,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk to someone who has had the
Speaker 2: most legal success against Trump's efforts in court to overturn
Speaker 2: the election, and we're also going to talk to a
Speaker 2: Supreme Court expert about the cases in front of the
Speaker 2: court now that could determine how future elections here are conducted.
Speaker 2: But before we get there, I really want to go
Speaker 2: back to the Italian military satellites. This is what became
Speaker 2: known as Italy Gate, and it's filled with more juicy
Speaker 2: content than a piping hotcl zone and the craziest part
Speaker 2: of this conspiracy theory is that Trump's chief of Staff
Speaker 2: Mark Meadows was emailing details of it to the Attorney General,
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Rosen to try to get him to do something
Speaker 2: or anything about it. I can't unpack Italy Gate alone.
Speaker 2: So let's introduce Eric Levy. He's a digital research analyst
Speaker 2: at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and a former investigative
Speaker 2: journalist who wrote extensively about the Italy Gate conspiracy theory,
Speaker 2: or as I like to call it, lasagna gazi. There's
Speaker 2: just there's gonna be a lot of these, Eric, So
Speaker 2: I hope you're ready. Thank you for being here. Let's
Speaker 2: start at the very beginning of this conspiracy theory, which
Speaker 2: comes from an organization called Nations in Action, a group
Speaker 2: apparently based in Sarasota, Florida, which published a press release
Speaker 2: titled senior IT expert at Global Defense contractor that testifies
Speaker 2: an Italian federal court. He had others switch votes throughout
Speaker 2: America in the US presidential race. Can you explain some
Speaker 2: of this for US?
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. So it emerged it's sort of in late
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, and it's still a little bit murky about
Speaker 4: where it came from. The Washington posted a really good
Speaker 4: article on it, but it possibly was. It had sort
Speaker 4: of origins an article in Italian media, and then an
Speaker 4: XCIA station chief named Bradley Johnson put out a video.
Speaker 4: But the ones who really pushed it forward. To answer
Speaker 4: your question were Maria's Zach from Nations in Action and
Speaker 4: a woman named Michelle Roosevelt Edwards.
Speaker 2: Let's start with, let's break down. Talk to me a
Speaker 2: little bit about Maria Strollo Zach. You've talked to her, correct.
Speaker 4: I talked to I called her number and an identical
Speaker 4: voice answered the phone who said it wasn't her.
Speaker 2: Uh So, yeah, theoretically, talk to somebody who may have
Speaker 2: been herself pretending to be somebody else.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm reporting, Like, that's why I hate phone
Speaker 4: calls and I like emails.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the era of zoom works for you because you
Speaker 2: see what that person looks like as opposed to distrusting.
Speaker 2: But who is this person? Who is Maria Strolozak?
Speaker 4: So she's a conservative activist and an ex Georgia lobbyist
Speaker 4: who I guess was pretty successful and I think she
Speaker 4: ran for office a few times herself just on the
Speaker 4: local level, just at some point got very involved in
Speaker 4: this Italy Gate conspiracy and pushed it very far.
Speaker 2: I feel like, if you're in this world, you're talking
Speaker 2: about Italian satellites, those things flip and you're probably a character.
Speaker 2: Is she a character?
Speaker 4: I'm guessing it's interesting because when I watched the videos, like,
Speaker 4: she's clearly like a very intelligent person. That's what's also,
Speaker 4: like said, there's a little bit of a you know,
Speaker 4: you have this conspiracy theory obviously, which is which is false,
Speaker 4: but then you have a person who's like, you know,
Speaker 4: she's laying it out with confidence.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about Michelle Roosevelt Edwards.
Speaker 4: So she runs another organization called the Institute of Good Governance,
Speaker 4: and uh, she sort of worked closely with Maria zach
Speaker 4: On on Italy Gate. So the Washington Post had a
Speaker 4: big article that at some point in icelandic film crew
Speaker 4: went to interview Michelle Roosevelt Edwards. I don't know what
Speaker 4: that was for, but in the house, I guess there
Speaker 4: was some remember that movie The Game where there's like
Speaker 4: there was something weird in like the house, and she
Speaker 4: really like in Michael Douglas, it's like, no, like, this
Speaker 4: isn't a real house. That the film crew was in
Speaker 4: there and they're like, is this your house because it's
Speaker 4: something and she's like, yeah, it's my house. Anyway, it
Speaker 4: turns out that it wasn't her house. It was some
Speaker 4: other woman's mansion and she's just a realtor like in
Speaker 4: the area and it's not her house. And the poor
Speaker 4: woman her husband died. She didn't even know. She's like,
Speaker 4: why is this woman in my house?
Speaker 2: Was that woman in the house at the time, She's like, oh,
Speaker 2: dear lord, oh dear lord, who interviews in my leving.
Speaker 4: Room somewhere else or something? But it was like I
Speaker 4: felt I felt bad for her. No, it was like
Speaker 4: she was just using this house for like, I don't
Speaker 4: know business.
Speaker 2: You're telling me this person who'll put up an entire
Speaker 2: false front to show that she's more successful than she is,
Speaker 2: she's somehow connected to this whole Trump world. I don't
Speaker 2: buy it. I don't buy it. It just doesn't It
Speaker 2: doesn't sit well with me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's tough to beale. That was like a was
Speaker 4: that just that killed me?
Speaker 2: Okay? And I want I want to dig into sort
Speaker 2: of their roles within this but this this initial thought
Speaker 2: was sort of revolving around an employee, Arturo Delia.
Speaker 4: Correct, Yeah, there's I was thinking about this last night.
Speaker 4: This is the hardest thing about Italy Gate, is I mean,
Speaker 4: to state the obvious is like explaining it. The short
Speaker 4: version is Italian satellites based in Piscara, Italy, UH altered
Speaker 4: the votes, giving Joe Biden enough votes from Donald Trump
Speaker 4: to win. That's the short version.
Speaker 2: Of Italian satellites. They're the bad guys.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a lot of players in the CIA, former
Speaker 4: President Barack Obama, the hacker that you just referenced, and
Speaker 4: a lawyer who put out an Affidavid. There's like those four.
Speaker 2: Those are the four. And so the hacker he worked
Speaker 2: for something called Leonardo Spa.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he worked there. They said he left in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: which is another problem because he when he was indicted
Speaker 4: for a separate I think it was like data theft.
Speaker 4: He didn't even work at Leonardo.
Speaker 2: What is Leonardo Spa? I mean it sounds like a
Speaker 2: massage parlor and like a cheap one just outside Rome
Speaker 2: that like you you splurge because you're on vacation, but
Speaker 2: you don't have enough money. So you're sort of like,
Speaker 2: what's a cheaper one, like, come to Leonardo Spa. It's
Speaker 2: right next to Michelangelo nails.
Speaker 4: That was a very specific Uh.
Speaker 2: Not that this is a hypothetical. I've not had that experience.
Speaker 2: I imagine if you're pouring in Italy and just had
Speaker 2: had a hard time on a long plane because those
Speaker 2: seats there's not a lot of space, and you're a
Speaker 2: tall person, hypothetically you're gonna be looking for a Leonardo Spa.
Speaker 2: This is not that kind of spa exactly.
Speaker 4: No, it's a somewhat more boring military you know, like
Speaker 4: a military they make military equipment and satellites stuff like that,
Speaker 4: like a Boeing.
Speaker 2: Okay, so a'll bow and this is this Arturo Delia
Speaker 2: Delia does he actually work for Leonardo Spa.
Speaker 4: My understanding is at some point he did work there,
Speaker 4: but he was gone by twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Okay, And is there any information that says that he
Speaker 2: had access to these Italian satellites in a way that
Speaker 2: could alter it election?
Speaker 4: Zero?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: Zero?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, but so walk us through this. So
Speaker 2: the head of Nations in Action, this group, it's a
Speaker 2: person named Maria Strollo Zak, who you've spoken with in
Speaker 2: your reporting, what's she like?
Speaker 4: Well? And to be clear, I was telling your producer
Speaker 4: that was that was a funny story because when I
Speaker 4: called Maria Zach for comment, obviously being a phone, I
Speaker 4: can't I don't know for a fact that I can
Speaker 4: say that the personal answered sounded exactly like her but
Speaker 4: told me very quickly it was not her and actually
Speaker 4: said it was her secretary and could she the phrases
Speaker 4: could she return? And I I was telling mad I
Speaker 4: was like, it's this is a cell phone. But anyway,
Speaker 4: I was like, you know.
Speaker 2: Sir, of course wit so did you did that person
Speaker 2: then pretend to hang up, put on a gruff voice
Speaker 2: and then attempt to then answer the phone.
Speaker 4: It was the same voice, but they were just like,
Speaker 4: you know, can she return? And I was like, you know,
Speaker 4: when you're a reporter, like it's things like that happen.
Speaker 4: So yeah, sure, of course, no comment.
Speaker 2: Just to be if you're also like a public figure
Speaker 2: and somebody calls you and you pretend to be your
Speaker 2: own assistant just because you think it gives you status,
Speaker 2: that doesn't make you weird. That's just a savvy media
Speaker 2: person thing. To do. And if my parents or my
Speaker 2: friends think that's a desperate attempt or that I'm not
Speaker 2: in a good place, well that's more on them. Can
Speaker 2: you verify that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what jumped out of me? I'll always remember that.
Speaker 4: That was how quick it was. It was very I mean,
Speaker 4: you know you're comedian, you're an improviser. It was real quick.
Speaker 4: There was no plause like like that had happened before.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's you know.
Speaker 2: That's I mean, that's an interesting way of looking at
Speaker 2: it as opposed to just somebody who's quick on the
Speaker 2: on the go. All right, so you had a quick
Speaker 2: interaction with this Maria Strollo, Zach. But again to what
Speaker 2: what what?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: What is our understanding of this story? So she is
Speaker 2: head of Nations and Action. What is Nations in Action?
Speaker 4: If you go on their web page, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of sort of conspiracy theories, and I think they say
Speaker 4: that their statement is, you know, good government bringing transparency.
Speaker 4: Obviously whether that's true is up.
Speaker 2: To to be determined. And so, but she was able
Speaker 2: to get this conspiracy in this idea in front of
Speaker 2: important people. Can you walk us through some of that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So she she used to be a lobbyist in
Speaker 4: Georgia's So she's got like close relationships with as I
Speaker 4: reported on Congress from Barry Laudermilk.
Speaker 2: One of the one of the top five in all
Speaker 2: of Congress. Like, if you were going to, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're going to articulate what it feels like to
Speaker 2: hear a Southern Republican roll on louder Milk, feels right,
Speaker 2: it feels feels obnoxious and white, which is kind of Spotify.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's he's an interesting guy. I think I think
Speaker 4: they were, he and his staff. I think we're getting
Speaker 4: pretty tired of my emails. After a while they stopped,
Speaker 4: they didn't ever respond to me, but then they added
Speaker 4: me to their mailing list.
Speaker 2: So that's how you shut somebody up. Just give them
Speaker 2: the spam.
Speaker 4: She got it to him, She got it to Devin Nunez,
Speaker 4: the staff. I mean she You know what I was
Speaker 4: thinking about last night, Like the ordinary person has so
Speaker 4: much trouble reaching their elected officials, and yet this person
Speaker 4: pushing a complete, uh you know, conspiracy theory that's not true,
Speaker 4: is able to reach very high up people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she claims she gave documents to louder Milk. Do
Speaker 2: we know what was in those documents?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, did you. I know, you guys
Speaker 4: are probably always working. Did you get a chance to
Speaker 4: see the affid? Davidt that this is all based.
Speaker 2: Around no tell us tell us about it.
Speaker 4: So the whole thing is that she delivered an aphid David. Basically,
Speaker 4: what it is is it's a photograph of an actual document,
Speaker 4: which right away is a little you know, unusual. It's
Speaker 4: not the document, it's it's a lawyer stating that this
Speaker 4: hacker that you mentioned in the beginning sat in front
Speaker 4: of him and told his story. That's what it is.
Speaker 4: No one's been able there is a lawyer that matches
Speaker 4: this name, but no one's been able to actually show that,
Speaker 4: like really that he that it was that lawyer. So
Speaker 4: it's not clear if this thing is even real.
Speaker 2: You can't even verify that that conversation took place.
Speaker 4: No, and the document, you know, I can't say I'm
Speaker 4: an expert on court documents in Italy, but there's no
Speaker 4: numbers on it, like it's just it looks like someone
Speaker 4: like wrote it on Microsoft Word.
Speaker 2: And she's also Maria Zach was doing an interview about
Speaker 2: a Italy gate from the back of a car in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. On January six. What's going on there?
Speaker 5: This happened. It's very real.
Speaker 2: The President is right, foreign interference did occur and people
Speaker 2: need to be prosecuted in our country. Who actually participated?
Speaker 4: That was the show called America Can We Talk? And
Speaker 4: that's a very strange interview, just because, as you said,
Speaker 4: it's taking place while our capital is being attacked. But
Speaker 4: there's no mention of it till the end. They're like,
Speaker 4: I think Maria's acts is something like, well, if they're
Speaker 4: able to, you know, get this under control, we can
Speaker 4: you know, get this affidavit to more people. It's like,
Speaker 4: whoa like? You know, it's very strange.
Speaker 2: So there's there's a lot of interesting red flags and
Speaker 2: characters within this. But after all these conversations, meetings talking
Speaker 2: to Congressman louder Milk, how high did this go? Like
Speaker 2: who in government was actually taking this theory seriously?
Speaker 4: That's a great question. Seriously, I mean in terms of
Speaker 4: as you said yourself, Meadows, I guess would be the
Speaker 4: highest ranking person to get it. But taking it seriously,
Speaker 4: you know a lot of work with conspiracy theorists. You
Speaker 4: wonder who's an opportunist who's not.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's an interesting question, you say, like
Speaker 2: taking it seriously. We don't exactly know what people actually thought,
Speaker 2: but I would argue that part of the whole game
Speaker 2: plan here was just so doubt so the fact that
Speaker 2: there were different threads for people to hold on to
Speaker 2: to grasp. Clearly, Donald Trump is somebody who was just
Speaker 2: flooding the marketplace with any thought out there, so that
Speaker 2: it's getting in people's heads. It's like, who had awareness
Speaker 2: of it? We're talking Meadows, Meadows knew about this, which
Speaker 2: means Trump had awareness of this. How did this thing
Speaker 2: get into more mainstream culture?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Zach too. She says she delivered or she
Speaker 4: told Trump about this at mar Al Lago in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: I can't confirm that, but she said that a number
Speaker 4: of times. Really, so, I guess to answer your question,
Speaker 4: if that's true, then that reached Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Now what all this is happening? Is it fair to
Speaker 2: say that we didn't know how much of the voter
Speaker 2: fraud conspiracy theory would stick. These stories were so outlandish
Speaker 2: that it didn't seem possible that millions of people would
Speaker 2: believe them, And yet even today, the majority of Republicans
Speaker 2: say they don't think the twenty twenty election was legitimate.
Speaker 2: Does that encourage Republican lawmakers to push more conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: knowing there probably won't be consequences and then doing so
Speaker 2: probably will at least help them in some way.
Speaker 4: Consequences are like obviously incredibly important. Like when there are
Speaker 4: no consequences, we're given a wide latitude to speak and
Speaker 4: that's a good thing. But as you know, some of
Speaker 4: these conspiracies are incredibly harmful. So I don't know. In
Speaker 4: cases like I don't know, let's say in Alex Jones,
Speaker 4: when people are actually held accountable makes a huge difference.
Speaker 4: Some of them stop tomorrow and you never hear from
Speaker 4: them again.
Speaker 2: What do you think it was about Italy Gate that
Speaker 2: made it so sticky and interesting to people?
Speaker 4: So there's a conference call I think it was on
Speaker 4: January fourth, twenty twenty one. It's between Maria zach and supporters.
Speaker 4: So it's right before the attack on the Capitol. It's
Speaker 4: like forty five minutes long, and it's just she lays
Speaker 4: out Italy Gate and then it's weird, like all these
Speaker 4: random people are popping in, like like I said, like
Speaker 4: Marlon Maples pops in and just like it's just she's
Speaker 4: the only everyone else is just a first name, so
Speaker 4: you don't even know really who they are.
Speaker 2: What's Marl the Maple's doing there?
Speaker 4: I don't know, like a supporter, I guess, very strange.
Speaker 2: And all of this was sort of to just hip
Speaker 2: everybody to the Italy gate theory so that they had
Speaker 2: it in their back pocket.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't want to say that. She comes
Speaker 4: right in and but there's some hints of to continue
Speaker 4: this work, we will need funding, like a private plane
Speaker 4: has talked about at one point.
Speaker 2: So oh, she's she's she's asking for a private plane.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it might have been one of the
Speaker 4: other people, but there's definitely more than one hint therapy
Speaker 4: it like we need, you know, money.
Speaker 2: This sounds like a timeshare situation. She gets everybody on
Speaker 2: a conference call. Let me tell you about this fascinating
Speaker 2: Italy situation. If you give me your attention and enough
Speaker 2: money for a private plan, I have something that is
Speaker 2: going to take your breadth away. And Pop's Marlon Mapoles
Speaker 2: was like, ooh, tell me more. It's like thanks, Marlo.
Speaker 2: Marla has been on this for quite some time. Her
Speaker 2: and her family our big Italy Gate supporters, and you
Speaker 2: two could be an Italy Gate supporter for just a
Speaker 2: mere two thousand dollars. We can give you the correct
Speaker 2: mindset to keep you happy from this day forward.
Speaker 4: This is the last seven years kind of feel like
Speaker 4: a time shared. Like do you ever feel like that,
Speaker 4: like you're just trapped?
Speaker 2: I yes, I do feel like I've given over a
Speaker 2: portion of my life to live in a different reality
Speaker 2: every year. And you look at it, You're like, I
Speaker 2: think this is a bad investment. I think the timeshare
Speaker 2: is giving into all of this bullshit that we're talking about.
Speaker 2: It just it sucks away so much time that I
Speaker 2: could be using for something else. It's not a time
Speaker 2: I'm sure. Maybe that's maybe what we're describing as a
Speaker 2: time suck. We've all invested in a time suck that
Speaker 2: we will never get back. We can all agree is
Speaker 2: a really bad investment.
Speaker 4: It's wild. I mean, this is the conspiracy theory that
Speaker 4: like I think I was telling your producer, Like even
Speaker 4: other conspiracy theorists are like like, like, that's how far
Speaker 4: this one is out there?
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, what does this Italy Gate conspiracy rake in
Speaker 2: terms of all the conspiracies related to the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 4: I would say, in terms of the ones that are
Speaker 4: like the wildest, this has to be at the top.
Speaker 4: I can't think of I know you guys have been
Speaker 4: doing this for a while on your podcast. If there's
Speaker 4: another one, I can't think of one.
Speaker 2: You got Hugo Chavez so dead. Hugo Chavez is a
Speaker 2: fun one. It's definitely takes a stretch of imagination, but
Speaker 2: there's intrigue, there's sexiness to this. I'd have to put
Speaker 2: it up there as well.
Speaker 4: It's also like the little details that kill me, Like
Speaker 4: the data. It wasn't enough that it was the Italian
Speaker 4: satellites they routed through Germany. It's like like why, Like
Speaker 4: that's what I don't understand, Like, but it's just fascinating.
Speaker 2: There's somebody on the ground or in the air in
Speaker 2: Germany that was getting this information or or or working
Speaker 2: through the satellites through Germany.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're saying like at some point they never got
Speaker 4: into the sort of like how the the stuff was transmitted,
Speaker 4: but it was from the satellites and went through I
Speaker 4: think some servers in Germany and then I guess back
Speaker 4: to the US.
Speaker 2: So they're theoretically, if this were real, not only are
Speaker 2: there folks in Italy who are culpable, but there are
Speaker 2: folks in Germany as well, which is what always kind
Speaker 2: of blows my mind with a lot of these conspiracy theories,
Speaker 2: because they they hype the idea behind it involves so
Speaker 2: many people that even afterwards, you'd expect. One thing we're
Speaker 2: really bad at is keeping secrets, especially if it's a
Speaker 2: multinational effort to overturn results in very specific states.
Speaker 4: And then it just disappears into the void, which is
Speaker 4: sort of a I think people should consider a major
Speaker 4: I don't know if red flag is the right word,
Speaker 4: but if you believe so strongly in something you believe
Speaker 4: has happened, and then thirty seconds later when it doesn't,
Speaker 4: you know, when it's gone, You're just onto the next thing.
Speaker 4: It kind of questions like credibility, sure, you know.
Speaker 2: I think we lost that a long time ago. Well,
Speaker 2: Eric LaVey, thank you for unfolding this conspiracy theory, like
Speaker 2: carefully needing a perfect pizza pie.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a short break. When we come back.
Speaker 2: We would talk to Pennsylvania Attorney General and Governor elect
Speaker 2: Josh Shapiro. We'll be right back. In the days after
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election, Pennsylvania became the focus of Republican
Speaker 2: efforts to overturn the results. They ramped up their attacks
Speaker 2: on the legitimacy of mail in ballots and claimed that
Speaker 2: ballots would arrive after election day and be mixed with
Speaker 2: ballots that arrived before election day. Anticipating a possible Supreme
Speaker 2: Court showdown, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro began separating those
Speaker 2: post election day ballots and became a high profile example
Speaker 2: of a Democrat fighting back against the voter fraud conspiracy theater,
Speaker 2: and as the Trump team became litigious before and after
Speaker 2: election day, Shapiro beat Trump more than forty times in court.
Speaker 2: In last month's midterm, Shapiro won the race for governor
Speaker 2: of Pennsylvania, defeating one of the country's most prominent voter
Speaker 2: fraud conspiracy theorist, Doug Mastriano. And Josh Shapiro is with
Speaker 2: us today to talk about the exciting world of voter fraud.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Good to be with you, Jordan, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Me, of course, and we were debating a current governor
Speaker 2: elect soon to be governor, Josh Shapiro. That's most of it, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And look, I only require our four children to
Speaker 6: use all of the titles when they address me. You
Speaker 6: can call me whatever you want, well, not whatever you want,
Speaker 6: but you can call me one of those titles.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, Do you also throw in the
Speaker 2: beat Trump forty times in court, moniker or There's probably
Speaker 2: a lot of people will also have that in their
Speaker 2: name as well. The guy's been to court many, many times.
Speaker 6: I don't know about that, but listen, we went to
Speaker 6: court forty three times against the former president and his enablers,
Speaker 6: and we beat him every time. We protected the right
Speaker 6: to vote. We had a free and fair, safe and
Speaker 6: secure election here in Pennsylvania back in twenty twenty, again
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty one, and most recently in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6: The will of the people was respected each time.
Speaker 2: When you've been at the center of these claims over
Speaker 2: voter fraud for over two years now, even though you
Speaker 2: did win the race for governor, it appears as if
Speaker 2: the state is moving forward. Does it still alarm you
Speaker 2: how many voters, obviously many of them Republican, appear to
Speaker 2: have bought into these conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 6: But Jordan, I don't blame the voters, and hear me
Speaker 6: on this. I blame the leaders who've been lying to
Speaker 6: them for the better part of the last two and
Speaker 6: a half years about voting by mail, about this phony
Speaker 6: election fraud of leaders who you trust, who you put
Speaker 6: into positions of authority, and then they lie to you
Speaker 6: over and over and over again. It's hard to blame
Speaker 6: the public. I blame the leaders. And the good news
Speaker 6: is we're defeating those leaders who pushed the big live
Speaker 6: from the former president to his chief enabler here in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 6: who I just beat in the governor's race, And hopefully
Speaker 6: now what we can do is continue to speak truth
Speaker 6: to the good people of Pennsylvania, to the American people,
Speaker 6: and help them understand reality from the fiction that the
Speaker 6: former president pushed and get us back to having a
Speaker 6: healthier democracy.
Speaker 2: Well, I went to one of the rallies your opponent
Speaker 2: held right there at the state Capitol and talked to
Speaker 2: some of the tens of people who showed up.
Speaker 1: I think about twelve people showed up that day, and after.
Speaker 2: A minimal amount of fanfare, Mastriano appeared, and he was freaking.
Speaker 4: Hilarious going after the pillow. Guy, are you serious? Give
Speaker 4: me a break? Beat Scotty, beat me up. No sign
Speaker 4: of intelligent life anywhere.
Speaker 2: Boom. But even with the coveted Trump endorsement, the crowd
Speaker 2: was tiny. Was it small because of Masteriano's far right
Speaker 2: policies and election denihalism? Nope, this is Facebook.
Speaker 1: Suppressing convative speech.
Speaker 2: The reason that aren't people here because Facebook is silencing
Speaker 2: these silencing Yes, it was a low turnout. I felt
Speaker 2: like it seemed as if you had a good shot
Speaker 2: of winning that race. I want to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about Masteriano though, because he may have spread more
Speaker 2: election related conspiracy theories than any other candidates. Let's go
Speaker 2: through a couple of these. He was claiming the voting
Speaker 2: machines glitched in Michigan and switched six thousand Biden votes,
Speaker 2: so we're also responsible for one hundred thousand vote dumps
Speaker 2: that were all for Biden. In the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: sharing a Gateway pundit post of suspected fraud issues that
Speaker 2: included a way for people to search for dead people
Speaker 2: who voted using something called the Social Security death master
Speaker 2: file to catch you he was claiming dominion voting machines
Speaker 2: were built intentionally to rig the election for Democrats, and
Speaker 2: claiming that Act seventy seven of Pennsylvania law that allows
Speaker 2: no excuse voting by mail was illegally passed and was
Speaker 2: responsible for Biden's win. Can you walk us through some
Speaker 2: of these and tell us how you push back against.
Speaker 6: Them, Well, by calling them what they were, complete and
Speaker 6: utter bullshit, that's what they were. He was lying to
Speaker 6: the good people in Pennsylvania and his conduct to try
Speaker 6: to overthrow the last election. Remember, he was part of
Speaker 6: the violent mob that stormed up to the Capitol on
Speaker 6: January sixth, and he went there that day. And this
Speaker 6: is real important, Jordan. He went there that day not
Speaker 6: just to hear a speech from the former president or
Speaker 6: be part of some peaceful protest. He went there that
Speaker 6: day with a singular purpose. That's why they were all there,
Speaker 6: and that was to deny people's votes from county. Because remember,
Speaker 6: when you vote here in Pennsylvania. It's true in other states,
Speaker 6: but let me focus on Pennsylvania. You vote for the
Speaker 6: presidential race in Pennsylvania, your vote gets tallied by your
Speaker 6: local county Board of Elections gets certified by the governor
Speaker 6: and the Secretary of State in Pennsylvania. But then in
Speaker 6: order for your vote to finally count, it has to
Speaker 6: be read across the desk in the US House of Representatives.
Speaker 6: That's what they were there to do on January sixth,
Speaker 6: and he was there as part of the violent mob
Speaker 6: to stop them from doing. Then he comes back home
Speaker 6: to Pennsylvania launches a campaign for governor, and Jordan he
Speaker 6: says in his campaign that he was going to use
Speaker 6: his power as governor to be able to review all
Speaker 6: the voting machines, make corrections as he calls them, and
Speaker 6: then he would pick the winner. That's not how our
Speaker 6: democracy works. That is not how our republic has survived
Speaker 6: over the last two hundred and forty six years. And
Speaker 6: so it was important for us to beat him, to
Speaker 6: just obviously win the election, but also to protect our democracy,
Speaker 6: to protect the will of the people, and to make
Speaker 6: it clear to foe that spewing conspiracy theories, being part
Speaker 6: of a violent mob pledging to overturn the next election
Speaker 6: is not the way things work in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Were in this country, well, I was surprised many of
Speaker 2: the people I talked to that day, were also there
Speaker 2: at January sixth. It was almost a mini reunion. You
Speaker 2: have been aggressive at pushing back and it made headlines
Speaker 2: for that. Do you think that your victory is a
Speaker 2: sign that voters are energized by candidates who push back
Speaker 2: aggressively against election deniers.
Speaker 6: You got to fight back against it, and look, we've
Speaker 6: done it in big ways in small I mean, I've
Speaker 6: been to the hunt clubs in rural communities in Pennsylvania
Speaker 6: and confronted folks directly, and they'll say to me, they
Speaker 6: were saying to me, you know, the election twenty twenty
Speaker 6: was stolen, So so what evidence do you have of that.
Speaker 6: Let's just have a conversation. Well, there was massive voter fraud,
Speaker 6: and I say, you know, I'm I'm the attorney general.
Speaker 6: It's my job to prosecute election fraud, along with some
Speaker 6: district attorneys as well. And we had about a handful
Speaker 6: of cases of election fraud in twenty twenty, by the way,
Speaker 6: where each of those individuals who were prosecuted, we're trying
Speaker 6: to cast one extra single vote for their candidate for president,
Speaker 6: by the way, for Donald Trump, now for Joe Biden.
Speaker 6: But even if they were trying to do that for
Speaker 6: Joe Biden. It wasn't going to affect the outcome of
Speaker 6: the election. It was not this widespread voter fraud, and
Speaker 6: they were prosecuted for it. And so I confront folks
Speaker 6: with truth and try to force them to think about
Speaker 6: the reality of what they are saying. In addition to that,
Speaker 6: it was critically important for us here in Pennsylvania, in Arizona,
Speaker 6: in Michigan in other places to defeat those people who
Speaker 6: continue to spread the lies. Now, I said on election
Speaker 6: night when I won Jordan that this is the beginning
Speaker 6: of our work. Just because we beat these election deniers
Speaker 6: doesn't mean that it's rid from our system. We have
Speaker 6: to now do the hard work that folks have been
Speaker 6: doing for the last two hundred and forty six years
Speaker 6: in this nation, right our ancestors and their ancestors, to
Speaker 6: perfect our union, to speak truth, to make sure that
Speaker 6: the will of the people is respected. So I think
Speaker 6: we've done step one defeating those extremists. But now we've
Speaker 6: got to do the hard work of perfecting our union,
Speaker 6: and that tesk now falls.
Speaker 1: To me as the next governor of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: How complete do you think step one truly is because
Speaker 2: I do looking at those the major election deniers, the
Speaker 2: races in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania. Here's swing states where the
Speaker 2: people in control of verifying those ballots could have very
Speaker 2: well gone to election deniers. Those big places, they were defeated.
Speaker 2: But there's still a lot of people who are election
Speaker 2: deniers who are in position of power in America, a
Speaker 2: lot of very close races where perhaps election deniers were defeated,
Speaker 2: but it didn't. When I looked at this, I didn't
Speaker 2: exactly see the idea of election denialism expunging from the
Speaker 2: American narrative. But perhaps stepping back for a little bit,
Speaker 2: is there a fear that Democrats are a little too
Speaker 2: confident in the pushback of election denialism after this election, Well, let.
Speaker 6: Me say, I'm not confident that it's over at all.
Speaker 6: So don't you know, certainly don't put me in that category.
Speaker 6: I'm in the category where we had a good day
Speaker 6: on Tuesday, November eighth in defeating those extremists, those election deniers,
Speaker 6: but we have so much more work to do now.
Speaker 6: I believe that these election deniers are Masterriano in particularly,
Speaker 6: just profoundly and pathetically weak people.
Speaker 1: And let me explain what I mean by that.
Speaker 6: They know it's bullshit, but yet they say it over
Speaker 6: and over again because they're willing to sell out our
Speaker 6: democracy and our country for some short term political gain,
Speaker 6: for some short term attention, maybe some love from the
Speaker 6: former president. That's why they do it. That's the definition
Speaker 6: of weak if you're willing to sell out your nation
Speaker 6: and our values on behalf of your own short term goals. Well,
Speaker 6: now we've denied many of them that short term goal,
Speaker 6: and hopefully in defeating them the way we have it
Speaker 6: forces that next batch of candidates to go along and say, JESU,
Speaker 6: is that really the path I want to take to
Speaker 6: be successful? It doesn't make them any stronger. It just
Speaker 6: speaks to how again, how kind of spineless so many
Speaker 6: of these folks are, and letting them know they're not
Speaker 6: going to be rewarded for the lie. And so I
Speaker 6: think hopefully this will have an effect on the politics
Speaker 6: as we go forward. We also need to work on
Speaker 6: ridding our system of these weak folks and getting some
Speaker 6: people with backbones back in it. And by the way, Jeordan,
Speaker 6: even folks who might disagree with me on some policy
Speaker 6: that's okay, But we got to get back to the
Speaker 6: point where we have strong, capable people in positions of
Speaker 6: public trust who argue about tax policy and healthcare policy
Speaker 6: and educational policy and all the things that we should
Speaker 6: be arguing about, the healthy fights we're supposed to have.
Speaker 6: But we've got to continue the battle against these weak
Speaker 6: people in defeating them in their elections and defeating them
Speaker 6: in their political aims.
Speaker 2: Did you have any Democrats from other states reach out
Speaker 2: to you to ask advice on confronting this election denihalism.
Speaker 6: I did a lot of them, folks running for governor
Speaker 6: and other offices, and I spoke. Obviously, I'll keep those
Speaker 6: conversations in private, but I did speak to them about
Speaker 6: the need to take the fight on directly, to not
Speaker 6: give an inch on this. You know, when they say
Speaker 6: that something was stolen, challenged them on it. Put the
Speaker 6: facts out there. Make sure that you're going directly to
Speaker 6: the good people in my case of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: With the facts. Do not let any of that nonsense stand.
Speaker 2: Okay, Looking forward, well, where we are right now, Trump
Speaker 2: is running again, Elon Musk is green lighting misinformation all
Speaker 2: over Twitter. We know that voter fraud conspiracies. They're gonna
Speaker 2: get worse in twenty twenty four. What are tangible steps
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party can take to fight and to push back?
Speaker 2: Knowing the world we're in right now, you.
Speaker 6: Know, try to meet people where they are. That's why
Speaker 6: I'm talking to you today. I mean, you've been out
Speaker 6: front on the importance of combating election denialism. You have
Speaker 6: exposed a lot of these folks and the lies they
Speaker 6: tell by you know, mocking them and showing not the
Speaker 6: humor in it, because obviously this is incredibly serious, but
Speaker 6: showing people this in a way that they can comprehend
Speaker 6: it if they don't read, you know, from page of
Speaker 6: the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. Not to
Speaker 6: say that your listeners don't read the New York Times,
Speaker 6: but the point.
Speaker 2: At least read the headlines. Good at reading the headlines.
Speaker 1: But like, you know, you got to meet people where
Speaker 1: they are.
Speaker 6: You got to communicate to them, You got to show
Speaker 6: them the difference between fiction and reality. And then I
Speaker 6: have responsibility now as a governor to hold myself up
Speaker 6: to that high standard and to continue to speak truth
Speaker 6: and continue, you know, to communicate me people where they are,
Speaker 6: whether we're talking to them on TikTok on your podcast
Speaker 6: anywhere We've got to meet people where they are and
Speaker 6: continue to share the truth.
Speaker 2: You say you went to hunt clubs, You went to
Speaker 2: places where people had questions about the election. I get
Speaker 2: the question all the time, do you ever change people's minds? Boy,
Speaker 2: that's a unicorn. I can't say I'm watching people change
Speaker 2: their minds about information when you were at those places.
Speaker 2: Being confronted with outside facts doesn't always is often met
Speaker 2: with resistance and a doubling down of the things they
Speaker 2: think they believe. They feel challenged in a way that
Speaker 2: I have not found conducive to reaching a new understanding.
Speaker 2: Did you actually see that in those moments in those
Speaker 2: hunt clubs with people who were confronting you and you're
Speaker 2: pushing back?
Speaker 6: Sometimes I did directly, But what I was really going
Speaker 6: after was was not to embarrass anyone in front of
Speaker 6: their peers, or force someone to have to look at
Speaker 6: me in front of their peers and say, you're right,
Speaker 6: I'm wrong. What I've thought for the last year, you know,
Speaker 6: is incorrect. What I really wanted was when they left there,
Speaker 6: to be thinking about it and to process it and
Speaker 6: to maybe make a change in their thinking, or their politics,
Speaker 6: or the way they might vote. And Jordan, I got
Speaker 6: some pretty good evidence that we made a whole lot
Speaker 6: of people think because I won this governor's race by
Speaker 6: a big margin. We won by about fifteen points, but
Speaker 6: I got more votes than anyone in the history of
Speaker 6: Pennsylvania running for governor. And the reason I'm telling you
Speaker 6: that is not to pat myself on the back, but
Speaker 6: because it would be impossible to win with the number
Speaker 6: of votes we did in the margin we did with
Speaker 6: only Democrats. We got a whole lot of Republicans and
Speaker 6: independents cross party lines to support us, a whole lot
Speaker 6: of people who clearly rethought their politics after twenty sixteen
Speaker 6: and even twenty twenty and said, you know what, we're
Speaker 6: going to go with this guy. We're we're going to
Speaker 6: go against the election denier. We're going to believe this truth,
Speaker 6: and hopefully we're going to all be able to continue
Speaker 6: to come together to repair our politics.
Speaker 2: Well after such a clear hubble brag such as that,
Speaker 2: chill about that. Now, you did a pretty good job.
Speaker 2: That's what You're a savvy politician. Even the bragging does
Speaker 2: come across somehow as as humble and informative. That's that's
Speaker 2: well played.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: Your high profile and your success here has upped some
Speaker 2: of the speculation where people have seen you in the
Speaker 2: light of somebody who could be a Democratic nominee for president.
Speaker 2: Do you want to use the Jordan Klepper Fingers the
Speaker 2: Conspiracy podcast as a platform that you confirm loving hearing
Speaker 2: that speculation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now, man, Look, I'm just so excited to be governor.
Speaker 6: I haven't even been sworn in yet. I got a
Speaker 6: lot of work to do. That's all I want to do.
Speaker 6: That's all my wife and kids want me to do,
Speaker 6: and that's all I am going to do.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, well, thank you for talking to me. Governor Elect.
Speaker 2: Josh Shapiro will be right back. We're back, and we're
Speaker 2: talking election fraud. It's obviously something I hear over and
Speaker 2: over on the campaign trail. But unlike some of the
Speaker 2: other conspiracy theories we've covered on this podcast, this one
Speaker 2: has some serious implications on the future of our democracy.
Speaker 2: This about the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a
Speaker 2: case called More versus Harper, and it could fundamentally change
Speaker 2: how elections are conducted. To break this down with me,
Speaker 2: I am Supreme Court expert, author of Lady Justice, Women,
Speaker 2: The Law and the Battle to Save America and host
Speaker 2: of the Slate podcast Amicus Dhalia Lithwick. Welcome to the podcast. Hi,
Speaker 2: Jordan Dahlia. I have to call it the fact, and
Speaker 2: you're well aware that you are wearing not one but
Speaker 2: two headphones today. Is there a conspiracy in this? Do
Speaker 2: you want me to do a secondary podcast on your
Speaker 2: hyper attention or are you just a super big Jordan
Speaker 2: Klepper finger's a conspiracy fan.
Speaker 7: I mean, I can repurpose the joke I made the
Speaker 7: first time you tease me where I said that if
Speaker 7: Rudi you can wear two watches, I can wear two headphones.
Speaker 7: But I you know, I'm a Belton Suspenders guy.
Speaker 5: I went to law.
Speaker 7: School and we learned to be very, very, very compulsive.
Speaker 7: So that's my story.
Speaker 5: I'm sticking to it.
Speaker 2: You're a Belton Suspenders guy. What does that mean? That
Speaker 2: means it's is that an overabundance of caution or fear
Speaker 2: that your parts could at any moment fall like what
Speaker 2: is again? This is what we do on this podcast.
Speaker 2: We really get into the nitty gritty, but this is
Speaker 2: a move out of fear respect true story.
Speaker 7: I heard the expression at one point very early in
Speaker 7: my career covering oral arguments at the court, and I was.
Speaker 5: Like, what the hell does this mean?
Speaker 7: And all these lawyers were like, it just means being careful, idiot.
Speaker 7: So I think not to suggest that you're not knowing
Speaker 7: this term implies anything, but it was. I learned the
Speaker 7: hard way that apparently everyone but me knew that Belton
Speaker 7: suspenders is just kind of shorthand for lawyerly over cautiousness maybe,
Speaker 7: and also fear that your pencil full. Dow.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, it's interesting, isn't like you.
Speaker 2: It's it's all about spin. It's either caution or its fear.
Speaker 2: But but I see how the attorneys do it. It's
Speaker 2: a it's a deductive sound, and I appreciate you taking
Speaker 2: that certain suspenders action. To listen to this. I want
Speaker 2: to talk about, you know, the potential collapse of democracy.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a hobby of mine, and I want
Speaker 2: to discuss this more. V Harper, Can we talk about
Speaker 2: that case itself and what that might mean for elections?
Speaker 5: Sure it is.
Speaker 7: It's hard to say this crisply, Jordan, but it's both
Speaker 7: the most.
Speaker 5: Serious and least serious case of my career.
Speaker 7: It's serious because the implications are vast, which we're going
Speaker 7: to talk about. It's also rooted in so much nothing
Speaker 7: that it's almost painful. Like when they call it the
Speaker 7: independent state legislature doctrine or the independent state legislature theory.
Speaker 7: Almost everybody puts doctrine in theory in air quotes because
Speaker 7: there's no there there. It's not something that is rooted
Speaker 7: in constitutional history. It's not something that's rooted in tradition.
Speaker 7: It's something that was almost entirely plucked from a chunk
Speaker 7: of a Renquist opinion in bushfe. Gore that only got
Speaker 7: three votes. It's not a majority opinion where he was
Speaker 7: kind of spitballing.
Speaker 5: You may recall bushv.
Speaker 7: Gore also not a serious decision.
Speaker 2: So this is like a Reest fever dream that we're
Speaker 2: in the midst of right now.
Speaker 7: It's a Renquist fever dream where he's sort of spitballing.
Speaker 5: Hey, maybe state.
Speaker 7: Legislatures have you know, kind of plenary unreviewable power and
Speaker 7: state courts can't come in in bigfoot on them.
Speaker 5: It gets two votes, that should be the end of the.
Speaker 7: Story, but instead it's being lifted up as this important
Speaker 7: piece of doctrine and.
Speaker 5: Not to get too in the weeds.
Speaker 7: But the reason it's serious is because if the claim
Speaker 7: in this case, and this case comes from a North
Speaker 7: Carolina gerrymander, the North Carolina Supreme Court says, oh, hell no,
Speaker 7: do your maps again. And the North Carolina Republican Legislature
Speaker 7: takes this to the Supreme Court and says, we're here
Speaker 7: proffering this completely asinine, rootless theory that when a legislature
Speaker 7: does election stuff, no court can review it.
Speaker 5: End of story is.
Speaker 2: That it we are in a nutshell. If you're to
Speaker 2: explain it to our audience, read our host. Pretend there's
Speaker 2: somebody who read the headline of a Vox article but
Speaker 2: maybe didn't get all the way through because they're busy.
Speaker 2: Is that basically it. It's something that's looking at the
Speaker 2: power of state legislatures over federal elections and questioning whether
Speaker 2: or not they have ultimate power. Is that ballpark?
Speaker 7: There's but there's one clarification. There's one section of this
Speaker 7: that has to do with the Elector's Clause in the Constitution.
Speaker 7: That's the federal elections. There's one that is the elections
Speaker 7: clause that has to do with state elections. So this
Speaker 7: particular case actually doesn't implicate some of the stuff we
Speaker 7: talked about Brad Raffinsberger and you know, state electors and
Speaker 7: sending over fake state electors. This is not scooping up
Speaker 7: that this is about state processes. But it does mean
Speaker 7: that if a red state, and let's remember thirty of
Speaker 7: the fifty states have read state legislatures, if they decide
Speaker 7: they want to make up new rules about ballot initiatives,
Speaker 7: they want to do new vote suppression, they want to
Speaker 7: close polling plate, whatever they want to do. They are
Speaker 7: saying nobody can take this to a state supreme court,
Speaker 7: not even a federal court, a state supreme court and
Speaker 7: complain because basically nobody is the boss of me. So
Speaker 7: this particular one is about the state house state election.
Speaker 5: Procedures are handled. But one tiny wrinkle there, Jordan, that's
Speaker 5: worth saying.
Speaker 7: One consequence of that is that if they win on
Speaker 7: that claim, you're going to have on the same ballot
Speaker 7: they used to have state and federal elections complete chaos
Speaker 7: because one set of them can't be reviewed and one
Speaker 7: presumably can. So one of the things that this is
Speaker 7: going to inject into the system is totally different lanes
Speaker 7: for state and federal office.
Speaker 5: Okay, so you're looking perplexed. I'm worried that I've.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds it sounds like there may be
Speaker 2: should be a checker of balance in there that these
Speaker 2: state legislatures shouldn't be able to be the final say.
Speaker 2: Where do the justices stand on this? Like, what is
Speaker 2: the actual likelihood that state legislators will gain control of
Speaker 2: federal election procedures?
Speaker 5: I mean, here's the tricky part.
Speaker 7: We already have four justices on the current Supreme Court
Speaker 7: who've evinced real enthusiasm for this theory. So we have
Speaker 7: Justice as Alito, Gorsach, and Thomas that are kind of
Speaker 7: like pedal to the medal, this is cool, And in
Speaker 7: some of the pre twenty twenty election cases we saw
Speaker 7: them sort of effusing about how cool this was. And
Speaker 7: then we have a fourth Justice, Kavanaugh, who's done some
Speaker 7: like chin stroking e like, oh, this is kind of
Speaker 7: I think this is pretty compelling, but isn't necessarily all in.
Speaker 7: Let's remember it takes four votes to grant a case,
Speaker 7: so that might be it. We don't know where Amy
Speaker 7: Coney Barrett sits on this. We do know that Chief
Speaker 7: Justice John Roberts doesn't think this is necessarily a fantastic idea.
Speaker 7: We also know he's irrelevant, so there might be five
Speaker 7: votes already going in.
Speaker 2: So it's probably coming down to Amy Cony Barrett is
Speaker 2: going to decide this case. That's that's your best guess
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 7: My guess is that John Roberts thinks this is too extreme,
Speaker 7: and he's written lots of prior cases, famously an Arizona
Speaker 7: case where he has said time and time again, we're
Speaker 7: not taking state just judges powers away over state legislatures.
Speaker 7: So I think he's pretty much going to adhere to
Speaker 7: some version of that.
Speaker 5: This is wackad do right. Have we made that point enough?
Speaker 7: This is insane, and John Roberts is many things insane,
Speaker 7: he is not, so yes, I think it comes down
Speaker 7: to what Justice Barrett thinks, and we have no idea
Speaker 7: on this doctrine.
Speaker 5: What she thinks.
Speaker 2: Well, this issue has popped up over the last hundred years.
Speaker 2: Supreme Court has batted it out over and over again.
Speaker 2: Why is it cropping back up now?
Speaker 7: It's cropping back up as part of this kind of larger,
Speaker 7: larger and I think this goes to your sort of
Speaker 7: vote suppression frame. What do you do when you can't
Speaker 7: win majorities anymore in America?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 7: What you do is you capture state houses and then
Speaker 7: you jerrymander the heck out of your state voting systems
Speaker 7: to make sure that tiny minorities stay in charge. And
Speaker 7: so I think this is of a piece with a
Speaker 7: whole subset of things, whether it's voter suppression bills like
Speaker 7: you know, the stuff that Stacy Abrams has been fighting,
Speaker 7: or whether it is ridiculous you know, malaportionment that means
Speaker 7: that you know the Alabama case that the court heard
Speaker 7: earlier this year, Merrill, where you have a third of
Speaker 7: Alabama of Alabama is African American, almost a third twenty
Speaker 7: seven percent, they're all smashed into one of seven districts,
Speaker 7: so they can't elect the candidate of their choice. So
Speaker 7: I think there's all sorts of ways that you suppress majorities.
Speaker 7: And I put this in the bucket of why do
Speaker 7: it small if you can do it huge? Right, if
Speaker 7: you can just do whatever you want is a state
Speaker 7: legislature and it's unreviewable by any court. And by the way,
Speaker 7: just one other parenthetical, there's a maximalist crazy version of
Speaker 7: this not at issue in mor V Harper. That would
Speaker 7: also say that governors like you talked about checks and balances, uh,
Speaker 7: also have no power to do anything.
Speaker 5: They can't veto this. So I think one way.
Speaker 7: To sort of lock in minority rule for time immemorial
Speaker 7: is to just make it impossible for majority will to
Speaker 7: be represented at the ballot box.
Speaker 2: Go big or go home, and while you're at home,
Speaker 2: just stay there because there's no reason to go out
Speaker 2: to vote, or.
Speaker 5: That you can have an entire orderly election.
Speaker 7: And this is where folks should think about what happened
Speaker 7: in Georgia in twenty twenty, where you have a completely orderly,
Speaker 7: non chaotic election and then you have the legislature be like, hmm, no.
Speaker 5: We don't like those electors.
Speaker 7: Let's go for this slate of it, which is what
Speaker 7: John Eastman and Donald Trump were asking Brad Rafinsberger to do.
Speaker 7: So I want to be super clear that issue is
Speaker 7: not I think in the four corners of what this
Speaker 7: appeal is.
Speaker 5: But I think it's of like you have.
Speaker 7: To draw a straight line between this and the kind
Speaker 7: of election denialism we're seeing in twenty twenty where you
Speaker 7: had dates and state legislatures being lobbied by Donald Trump,
Speaker 7: by Jenny Thomas, by John Eastman to be like and
Speaker 7: nevermind what the voters say, let's do it this way.
Speaker 2: Well, let's let's draw that line. So we do have
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists and election deniers in pretty prominent positions. Granted,
Speaker 2: quite a few of them did lose in the midterms,
Speaker 2: including Kerry Lake and Arizona, who is now contesting her
Speaker 2: loss for governor even though the results have already been certified.
Speaker 2: Is it crazy to think that whole states that have
Speaker 2: election deniers and their legislatures could just choose to throw
Speaker 2: out the results in federal elections.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's crazy, and I think, in fact,
Speaker 7: one of the things this doctrine is setting up is
Speaker 7: the stepping stone toward that right. I mean, the reason
Speaker 7: it didn't happen in twenty twenty when Donald Trump called
Speaker 7: Georgia and said, you know, give me a fresh ballot
Speaker 7: of fake electors is that there was no architecture in
Speaker 7: place to.
Speaker 5: Support that right.
Speaker 7: This case would be part of building the architecture that
Speaker 7: says state legislatures can.
Speaker 5: Do whatever they want.
Speaker 7: It is unreviewable, nothing can go to a state Supreme court.
Speaker 7: And one other point again on this is there's an
Speaker 7: easy way to solve this particular North Carolina case, which
Speaker 7: is the actual legislature in North Carolina has already said
Speaker 7: that the state judiciary can review these questions.
Speaker 5: So this is an easy case.
Speaker 7: It shouldn't even be a question because the legislature has
Speaker 7: taken this power away from itself. But I do think
Speaker 7: you're exactly right to say this is really a building
Speaker 7: block toward a future where state legislature's power are so
Speaker 7: utterly unreviewable or even creepily reviewable only by the US
Speaker 7: Supreme Court, that you should just stay home.
Speaker 2: Well, you say this shouldn't even be a question, and
Speaker 2: I guess I'm curious what that says about our country's
Speaker 2: political ideology and also the ideology of the justices. There
Speaker 2: are a number of conservative legal figures who are coming
Speaker 2: out against the Supreme Court even hearing this case. The
Speaker 2: fact that they are, what does that say about the
Speaker 2: ideology of the justices.
Speaker 7: So this is, without a doubt for me, the most
Speaker 7: interesting part. Right, You've got Mike Loutig, the guy who
Speaker 7: almost got Chief Justice John Roberts seat at the Court right,
Speaker 7: he was on the shortlist. This is a stalwart conservative
Speaker 7: legal movement giant. He's also the guy, by the way,
Speaker 7: who you may recall Mike Pants was like, dude, can
Speaker 7: I do this thing that Donald Trump is asking me
Speaker 7: to do and not certify the election. It was Mike Lutigg,
Speaker 7: you know, conservative legal giant, who was like, no, Mike,
Speaker 7: you can't do that. So he's wildly come out opposed
Speaker 7: to this, and in fact, I think he's one of
Speaker 7: the people, at least he said on my podcast like
Speaker 7: this would signal the demise of orderly elections in checks
Speaker 7: and bounces. So he's come out against it. Ben Ginsberg,
Speaker 7: famous Republican election lawyers, against it. Every chief justice of
Speaker 7: every state Supreme Court is on a brief in this
Speaker 7: case saying like this is insane. Stephen Calibracy, co founder
Speaker 7: of the Federalist Society, has come out again like there's
Speaker 7: very few sane conservative figures who are for this. So
Speaker 7: then your operative question is why the hell is the
Speaker 7: court flirting with this, Like why are they playing foot
Speaker 7: sea with a theory advanced principally by John Eastman, the
Speaker 7: guy who was the architect of the January sixth legal coup.
Speaker 7: And I think the reason is because there's no breaks
Speaker 7: at the US Supreme Court because they have.
Speaker 5: A six justice supermajority.
Speaker 7: Everything in the world they wanted last term, abortion, guns,
Speaker 7: you know, kneecapping, the EPA, kneecapping the CDC.
Speaker 5: Everything they wanted, they got.
Speaker 7: Everything they didn't get last year they're getting this year.
Speaker 7: So this is just a my friendly allotment at Michigan
Speaker 7: calls it the hashtag Yolow Court. You know, they used
Speaker 7: to have some solicitude and sensitivity for what the public
Speaker 7: could tolerate, and I think now they're like directly in
Speaker 7: opposition to what.
Speaker 5: The public can tolerate.
Speaker 7: They're like, oh, eighty percent of Americans hate this, let's
Speaker 7: do it.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 2: This is what an uplifting conversation. It's so good to
Speaker 2: hear about the people who are pulling the levers here. Okay,
Speaker 2: so let's if states choose to do this. If this
Speaker 2: is a situation that does come into fruition, what happens
Speaker 2: next is that it for democracy? Is there anything people
Speaker 2: in these states could do to prevent that?
Speaker 7: Well, I think that you're going to see very much
Speaker 7: what you're sort of seeing Postdobs, which is blue states
Speaker 7: will rush to bolster blue state supermajorities and will create,
Speaker 7: you know, supermajority districts, and will do all the things
Speaker 7: that New York tried to do and failed to do
Speaker 7: in the midterms. But you'll see red states rushing to
Speaker 7: bolster you know, the power of Republican supermajorities in all
Speaker 7: the ways that they do that. And so I think,
Speaker 7: in a weird way, maybe it's a sort of second
Speaker 7: iteration of the red state blue state patchwork we're seeing
Speaker 7: around guns, around environmental protection, around abortions. We're just going
Speaker 7: to see both sides further, you know, push whatever it
Speaker 7: is that they can do to make sure they have
Speaker 7: unlosable power.
Speaker 5: And that's pretty scary.
Speaker 2: The important question I think we're all thinking about what
Speaker 2: does this mean for me in the short term? Am
Speaker 2: I going to go out into the world and just
Speaker 2: here stop the steal forever or at least until rogue
Speaker 2: red states decide to reinstall President Trump again.
Speaker 7: That is what we call a Stephen Bryer four part
Speaker 7: hypothetical question. Can we start with There's so many pieces
Speaker 7: of that. I mean, I think what it really means
Speaker 7: is that, first of all, this is an incredibly abstract case.
Speaker 5: Nobody understands this case. This should be bigger than Bush v. Gore.
Speaker 7: The implications, as I said, are vast, and yet I
Speaker 7: think folks are just like flummoxed right on the Stop
Speaker 7: the steel folks, I have to say, just looping back
Speaker 7: to where you started, Jordan, I'm pretty happy about the
Speaker 7: fact that the Stop the Steelers got absolutely schill Act
Speaker 7: in the midterms, because it tells me it was not
Speaker 7: as salient as they thought.
Speaker 5: It was, and more urgently, and I think the.
Speaker 7: Polling really showed this people kind of like democracy. I mean,
Speaker 7: it was one of the issues that people showed up,
Speaker 7: you know, in addition to reproductive rights. People were really
Speaker 7: anxious that the machinery of crushing democracy had kind of
Speaker 7: gotten a toe hold. And so I actually think it's
Speaker 7: not to say this isn't a worry. It's a huge
Speaker 7: worry because the Supreme Court, as we have both stipulated,
Speaker 7: does not care what you and I think. But I
Speaker 7: do think that the appetite for crazy, lawless vote suppression,
Speaker 7: democracy shattering initiatives is not what I think Donald Trump
Speaker 7: and Carrie Lake thought it was. And so I'm like,
Speaker 7: I was like eight Bourbons. In this time before the
Speaker 7: you know, before the midterms, I think maybe this isn't
Speaker 7: terrible because I think, as much as it sucks that
Speaker 7: the US Supreme Court is an unchecked christocracy that is
Speaker 7: going around doing whatever the hell it wants with life
Speaker 7: tenured people, one of whom has a wife who was
Speaker 7: involved in January six.
Speaker 5: That's bad, let's agree.
Speaker 7: I think that folks recognized that after Dobbs in a
Speaker 7: way they didn't. And I think that the ability to
Speaker 7: just sit there and like take it on the chin
Speaker 7: because the Supreme Court says so is much. I think
Speaker 7: the taste for that is in decline right now. I
Speaker 7: think people are sort of angry and so I'm not
Speaker 7: as hopeless as you sound.
Speaker 2: Well, I will drink to that. That looks like a
Speaker 2: good place to end. Daliolithwick, thank you for coming out
Speaker 2: of the podcast.
Speaker 5: It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, that's it. The end of our six episode limited
Speaker 2: edition mini series something like that. It's a limited series,
Speaker 2: it's a podcast, whatever it is. We did six episodes.
Speaker 2: It's what we said we're gonna do, and now we've
Speaker 2: wrapped it up and there's a chance we'll come back
Speaker 2: because there's always a world in which Americans believe dumb shit,
Speaker 2: and we want to talk about all of that. Thanks
Speaker 2: for listening. This has been a blast. Listen to Jordan
Speaker 2: Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy from The Daily Show on Apple Podcasts,
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