WEBVTT - Chuck's Commentary - Trump's Actions Are Impeachable + Ask Chuck 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.160 Happy Monday. Welcome to another episode of the Check podcast. 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:12.920 I am coming to you. It's a Sunday evening. I 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.040 have had personally a busy weekend. I traveled down to 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:21.200 go see a college football game Miami survive a wet 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:27.560 and soggy challenge from the Florida Gators. I will at 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:29.520 the at the other end of the interview give you 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:31.600 my towards the end of the podcast, because I know 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.319 not all of you care about college football, but I'm 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.560 going to keep this up over over over the over 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.239 the season, so we'll do that. At the end, I 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:42.960 have to say my Sunday didn't go so well in 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:47.280 the football front, thanks to some offensive line problems for 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.440 the Green Bay Packers, but I will I will save 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:52.360 that when I always try to tell my son when 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.360 it comes to the NFL college football, you cannot lose 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:59.280 a game the NFL. You can survive dumb losses. You 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.240 can serve five dumb losses. That was a dumb loss. 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.800 So we shall see. But ultimately, I'll be honest, I 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:13.800 feel a tiny bit guilty even referencing football, considering the 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:20.280 alarming sort of ninety six hours that we and I 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.080 say this because you can claim every week depending on 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.720 where you stand, depending on how concerned you are about 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:31.759 the Trump presidency and where this is headed. But this 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.319 is one where you know, and this is you know 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.080 again we've and I can get into did we spinal 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:39.680 tap the Trump presidency back in the first term, So 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.319 nobody can hear anything and everything is always to eleven, 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:46.280 so nobody's quite sure what's a serious threat to the 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:52.360 Constitution and to the republic and what is just and 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:57.640 own the lib's angry moment, if you will. But I 0:01:57.680 --> 0:01:59.480 do think we need to put this last week in 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:02.880 a little bit of context here, because this last week 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.840 has been some of the most direct challenges that we've 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:13.680 seen from Donald Trump on some basic things that previous 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:20.840 that would have driven impeachments plural one that you know, 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.960 the behavior actually that he's doing right now with the 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:29.280 Justice Department was not dissimilar to what happened with Richard Nixon, 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.680 who resigned the presidency to avoid being impeached and convicted 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:37.760 and kicked out of office. You know, look, and this begins, 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.320 I'm not even going to be getting into the entire 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:44.240 FCC situation where he has ordered it appears he has 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.280 ordered a regulator to just target his media enemies, because 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:51.760 there really is no other explanation for this, for what 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.400 Brendan Carr is doing and the way he publicly celebrates 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.920 because he wants to make the Boss happy, but he 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:04.480 is systematic going after only those that Donald Trump wants 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.720 him to go after. We now have him upset and 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.680 angry that he can't get the people that came after 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.040 him in over the last five years. Leticia James, the 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:17.440 Attorney General of New York, Adam Schiff, who is now 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:22.240 US Senator, James Comey, the former FBI director. He went 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:27.240 on a truth social rant, upset that none of these 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.040 people have had charges brought against them. In fact, he 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:32.960 fired or a US attorney resigned. We can have a 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:38.520 debate about that, because the US attorney was doing this 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:40.960 horrible thing as far as Donald Trump was concerned, he 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:43.080 was actually following the law to try to figure out 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.360 if there actually was a case to be made against 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:50.240 Leticia James and this mortgage fraud that the Trump administration 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.360 was alleging. He didn't have enough evidence to bring charges. 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.720 Donald Trump didn't care. He wants charges brought anyway, pushes 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.680 this US attorney out, and once the attorney who was 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:05.240 a former member of his legal team. So that's just there. 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.160 Never mind the direct sort of rants, maybe you call 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.160 it an order to Pambondy. I didn't even bring up 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:17.800 the unconstitutional attacks on Venezuelan ships that I think have 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:22.839 led indirectly to the Pentagon trying to essentially prevent the 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.360 press corps from reporting from the Pentagon. I will get 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:29.400 into that also here in a minute. So let's just 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:32.560 step back here. Oh and then there's the borders are 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:36.480 who have took a bag of cash in twenty twenty four, 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:40.320 Tom Holman and the Trump Justice Department decided to drop 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.360 the charges because they couldn't prove anything. Though they're not 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.440 they're not somehow denying that Tom Holman took a bag 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:51.599 of cash under what was apparently a promise to bring 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.840 government contracts to these FBI agents who were posing as 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.200 undercover businessmen. So all of this has happened in the 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:02.719 last week. Again, we have Brendan Carr systematically targeting, going 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:05.800 after and trying to target media and political enemies of 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.800 Donald Trump and the press, even using mafioso language, drawing 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:11.960 the ire of some conservatives, which I want to get 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.240 into a minute. Donald Trump firing or forcing a resignation 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.000 from the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.680 because they wouldn't bring charges against Letitia James, angry that 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.440 his attorney general has yet to bring charges against Adam 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:30.320 Schiff or James Comy let alone Letitia James. We've got 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.800 this Tom Holman story that, you know, frankly reads like 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:38.239 a bad you know, a bad update to the old 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:42.200 famous ab scam story if you ever followed that, it 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.799 got turned into a fun movie. And then of course 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.039 what the Pentagon is doing, and the possibility that there's 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:55.360 extra judicial killings going on without any sort of congressional 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.640 authority to go with it. So here we have all 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:03.080 of these challenges essentially to the basic in some ways 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:08.839 what are the basic premises of our constitution? And I 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.159 think the question is is any of this going to 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.760 be alarming enough that you start to see Republicans say, hey, 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.520 this is too much? Enough is enough? I might argue, 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.560 you actually are starting to see some of this because 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.960 the difference between term one and term two. Right, we've 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:28.839 gone through this right and Trump one point, oh, writes Pribish, 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.520 and Mike Pence made sure that administration was stocked with 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.280 professional conservatives. What did I mean by that? Yes, they 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:39.359 were conservative, but they believed in these crazy things like 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.279 the constitution, the rule of law. You get my point. 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.320 Donald Trump wasn't going to let that happen. In Trump 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:47.720 two point oh, he's surrounded by sick of fans, and 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.240 he made sure to put in people who were going 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:53.440 to personally do him favor. He even put his personal 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:57.080 attorney as the deputy attorney general, which is just you know, 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.200 that in itself, and Todd Blanche that in itself is 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.480 I guess you would use the word praising. But here 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.479 we are, and this is this last ninety six hours. 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.600 It is about as troubling as we can get. So 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.040 let me get into some of this a little bit. 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.920 Let's go into the what's going on with Letitia James. Right, 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:21.320 he's been trying just using you know that he has 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:25.800 this guy that's been combing through the records of high 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:33.280 profile people's mortgages and trying to come up with finding 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.160 to see if they, you know, somehow committed mortgage fraud 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:40.480 by declaring more than one residence a primary residence. They've 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:43.280 been using this mortgage fraud. They Adam Schiff is one 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.280 of them. Leticia James is one of them. Of course, 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.920 the whole fight about does he have the authority to 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:53.520 just randomly fire FED governors whose term if he can 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.400 claim that there was wrongdoing, although there's seems to be 0:07:57.440 --> 0:07:59.680 no proof that Lisa Cook, the FED governor, did that. 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:01.640 But he did appeal to the Supreme Court to see 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:05.280 if the Supreme Court would okay that firing given what 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.200 we what the Supreme Court said over when he did 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.640 get their permission, essentially to fire folks on the National 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.840 Labor Relations Board, that the FED was going to be 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:21.800 treated differently as an independent agency versus the NROLB. So, 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.400 but this little gambit of trying to use mortgage fraud 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:31.280 has been, frankly, is kind of it's not kind of failed, 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.760 it has failed. Right. You have Eric Siebert, who is 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.720 the US Attorney from the Eastern District of Virginia, who 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:43.000 Donald Trump is frustrated that there were two Democratic senators 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.720 who were okay with that person being the US attorney 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.640 and because this person was going to get bipartisan support, 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.640 Donald Trump thought that was one of the reasons why 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.839 this was proof this person might be a rhino. Both 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:58.720 Tim Kane and Mark Warner were fine with this. Ironically, 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:03.480 the current Attorney General, Pambondi, has actually desperately been trying 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:12.040 to save this, to save secrets nomination, because they do 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:14.439 feel as if he's been there a long time, he's 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.800 considered somebody who knows what he's doing, and they've been 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.800 trying to stop it. Of Course, the last time an 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:24.640 attorney general got in a president tried to get this 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.959 involved with firing US attorneys, it cost an attorney general 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:33.480 their job. Alberto Gonzalez. Back during the Bush forty three administration, 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:38.000 they fired a whole slew of US attorneys essentially very 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:42.000 upfront as political, you know, sort of political reasons, saying 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:44.319 they wanted to put in their own folks on that. 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.920 But how it was done, how it was conducted, was 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:50.760 pretty controversial, and it cost the attorney general's job. In 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:53.600 this case, we don't have any kind of uproar, we 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:57.120 don't have any kind of bipartisan concern yet, but I 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:00.520 think it's possible that's going to happen. Should know, the 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:03.679 Eastern District of Virginia is one of the more important. 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.000 This is where a lot of the terror counter terrorism 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:11.280 trials happen. It's you really have to have really good 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.800 people here. They're politically sensitive cases get brought here, get 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.120 brought in this in the Eastern District of Virginia, and 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:22.959 so the main Justice Department of Justice doesn't like this 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:27.360 one to be as politicized as other slots for the 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:33.200 US Attorney So so that's troubling number one. And after 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.120 that rant, then he went on a true social rant, 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.040 really upset that none of these people have been indicted. 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.200 He addresses his Attorney General, Pam Bondi as Pam, and 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.400 he goes, we can't delay any longer. It's killing our 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:51.600 reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, they indicted me 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:55.920 five times over. Nothing. Justice must be served now. Now again, 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:58.840 he is only targeting the people that he believes brought 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:03.360 charges against him. He wants charges brought right back against 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:08.600 them on this front. So it is it is he's 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:13.360 ranting about this. It's unlikely at this point, right if 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.360 the Justice Department does end up bringing charges against any 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.760 of these folks, if the court, if it's in a 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:25.080 legitimate court of law, the prejudicial aspect of Trump's own words, 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:29.120 are going to likely have all these cases either dismissed 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:32.440 or juries are just going to not Grand juries won't 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.320 in diet or if they're in jury trials, juries aren't 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:40.240 going to convict because it's blatantly obvious. He's basically already 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.199 wanting to convict these folks. He's just searching for evidence 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:47.320 in order to get his conviction. The evidence he hasn't 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.480 found yet, even people who want to try to help 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:53.880 him can't find the evidence to do it. And yet 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.680 he doesn't care. The question is what is the Department 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.880 of Justice going to do next in order to appease him? 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.280 Is this going to get uh? Is this going to 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:08.400 get really ugly? Uh? And is this gonna you know, 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:10.440 are they going to just bring indictments whether they have 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:12.600 it or not. I mean, look, they tried to bring 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.400 some indictments back in DC and we saw grand Jury's 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:18.079 just said no. Normally grand juries will say yes to 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:22.360 the Justice Department. But this Justice Department has been so compromised, 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:25.960 its credibility so compromised in the public that I think 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.000 they're going to have a harder and harder time bringing 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:34.800 basic charges and getting indictments out of grand juries because 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:38.640 of the reputation that they're starting to get for basically 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:44.640 just trumping up charges and yes, pun was intended on 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:48.080 that one. Let me get into the Tom Homan situation 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:52.120 because I think that one is is something else. So 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:53.880 I don't know if you've you've paid attention to this. 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:58.160 So MSNBC broke the story Caro Lenox, former longtime reporter 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:01.200 basically you know who own owned all of the secret 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:05.120 service stories over the last decade from the crazy secret 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:07.880 Service stuff back during the Columbia days. I mean, Carolina 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.000 has been sort of on top of this, and they 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.240 broke this story here here's the basics of the story. 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:19.080 In September of twenty twenty four, while the president's borders 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.000 are Tom Homan was a private citizen at that time, 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:26.400 basically just campaigning for Donald Trump. Homan was allegedly recorded 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:31.800 accepting fifty thousand dollars in cash from undercover FBI agents. 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:34.840 Fun little detail was in Akva bag, So you know 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:40.560 that'll be a fun Maybe Cava will do some viral 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.680 marketing based on that. So these agents, this goes back. 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:45.960 If you've ever if you're real political junkies, you'll know 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:48.280 what I mean when I say abscam. This sort it 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.440 has all reeks of abscam Apparently agents were posing as 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:56.880 business people or contractors who were seeking immigration related government contracts, 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.480 contingent of course, on Trump winning the twenty twenty four election, 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.360 and they assume that Homan, if they did, would be 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:06.520 in a position of influence. This meeting was recorded. There 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.480 apparently were also hidden cameras in audio, so there may 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:14.360 be video of Homan actually accepting this money. We'll see 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:16.880 if this video exists or if it's going to get destroyed. 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.440 Now here's the issue, right, these are various and this 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.200 happened dur an abscam. They couldn't It's tough to bring 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.720 the charges. Right, you promise you're going to do something 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:32.640 for this cash. If you cannot prove the quid pro quo, right, 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.920 you have the cash, but you don't necessarily have anything 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:38.840 else proving that there was a quid pro quo, then 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.400 it is sort of difficult to bring charges. Now, the 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:45.160 Department of Justice under the Trump administration. This is what's 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:47.560 amazing about this story and the fifty thousand dollars here 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:52.760 is that the Trump administration is not denying that he 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:56.320 took fifty thousand dollars. By the way, the irs may 0:14:56.560 --> 0:14:58.680 want to have may want to know a little something 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:00.960 about that fifty thousand dollars now, so he may he 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:04.360 may end up having some tax problems. He's not careful 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:07.640 on this, and if they choose to bring charges, right, 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:09.640 the federal government could easily a lot of times with 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.280 bribery cases, that's what you do. If you don't actually 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:17.480 you can't prove the bribery, you can prove the unreported income. 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.120 And so he has this extra fifty thousand dollars. So 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.720 either he has reported and paid taxes what are to 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.520 report the income as, or he didn't and he's going 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.840 to owe some taxes, which means he possibly broke the 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.920 law doing that. But the Department of Justice under the 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:36.440 Trump administration decided to close this investigation earlier this calendar year. 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.120 They're totally upfront about it, and they said the state 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:43.080 of reason is lack of credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing. 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:47.280 The FBI director Cash pttel Right, donald Trump's handpicked FBI director, 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.840 and the Deputy Attorney General Todd blanche again, donald Trump's 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.280 former personal lawyer, who's now in this position of authority 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.720 for some bizarre reason. Why he got confirmed by a 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.400 United States Senate is up to United States senators to 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.360 explain this. They used to have joined statements saying the 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:07.960 evidence didn't meet the threshold he took the cash. They're 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.120 not denying this, and they're not going to break charges 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.440 because he's a friend. Right, we all know this. They're 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:17.000 not saying that part of it. If I promise you, 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:21.360 if this were oh, let's let's do you know, let's 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:25.280 say this work somebody that had been working for Kamala 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.440 Harris on her campaign taking a bribery. Do you think 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.160 they would just drop these charges because the person is 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.120 no longer in a position to agree to contracts. I mean, 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:39.320 this is sort of the bizarre stated reason for doing this, 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:45.000 but it's something else. Right, And here's the thing. None 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:46.680 of us are going to be surprised by this, Right, 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.720 the amount of and in fact, fifty thousand dollars of 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:52.600 small potatoes. Look at all of the pay to play 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.160 that we've already seen in this administration, whether it's pay 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:59.520 to pay to corporations all right, look at his inaugural fund, 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:03.080 pay to play and diplomacy cutter and the plane that 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.760 eventually goes to the Trump Library, The shakedown of ABC 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:11.640 that gave money to the library, the shakedown of CBS, 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.920 which gave him also some more money to that the 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:20.199 crypto industry, which has basically been just lavishing all sorts 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:25.119 of investment opportunities on the Trump family just so that 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.720 as president he will legalize as much of the crypto 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.720 industry as possible, trying to make a bunch of wealth 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:35.960 that we weren't sure was going to exist or not 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:41.720 depending on various regulatory rules. So fifty thousand dollars is 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:46.919 small potatoes, But sometimes some stories are sticky because of 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.080 some of the details and the details that it's in 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:53.040 a kava bag the Mediterranean fast food restaurant. It's one 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:56.879 of those that probably means this will stick for a while. 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:02.440 So see that story that percolated, and again they are 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:08.359 just wiping it away because they can so uh once 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.280 again undermining the credibility of the rule of law. Right, 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:14.800 if you're a friend of the president, the law doesn't 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:17.120 apply to you. If you're an enemy to the president, 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:20.280 they're going to look for ways to use the law 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:24.320 to punish you. It's pretty simple. We're seeing it now. 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:29.040 Tom Holman is caught on tape doing this. They're dropping charges. 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:34.080 They don't have enough evidence to go indict Leticia James 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.080 for mortgage fraud. He doesn't care. They don't have enough 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.120 evidence to get anything on James Comy, he doesn't care. 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.159 They don't have enough evidence to get anything on Adam Schiff. 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:45.960 He doesn't care. He just wants and you know, he 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:48.240 actually just wants them to go through a court case. 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.400 He even said that during a gaggle about this he 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:54.520 was he was asked a little bit about it, and 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:58.560 he simply said, look, you know, if they're they're innocent, 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.080 they're innocent, but they need to go through this, right. 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.600 That's that's really what this is about for him, Right, 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:08.720 is that in his head, they have to go rule this. 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:12.880 And then it brings us to a third story here, 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.119 which I think is a huge challenge, direct challenge to 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:17.720 the Constitution. And that is and it's trying to and 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:21.440 I want people to understand the timeline. So the Pentagon 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:27.760 has put into place a new me I'm gonna I'm 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:29.879 gonna be generous here and call it a tighter press 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.080 access policy. And what it does is that they want 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:37.280 to require credentialed Pentagon reporters to quote, to get permission 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:41.280 or sign a pledge before reporting any information that's gathered 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:46.320 inside the building, including some unclassified material that would give 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:50.000 the Defense Department brought authority to revoke passes for violations. 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:54.280 So basically, if you have somebody in the Pentagon that says, hey, 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:58.480 this something little shady's going on here, and you get 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:02.280 a leaked document, I help you finish the reporting your story, 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:04.600 which is frankly, I had to say, is pre standard 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:08.040 operating procedure for any reporter. Right, we never get any 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:12.960 official documents from the government. It's usually some whistle blower 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:16.000 or sometimes the staffer that you know. Maybe they want 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:17.400 to do the right thing, or maybe they just want 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:19.800 to get their boss right. I don't know what their 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.879 motive is to leak, but if the information is solid, 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:25.800 it helps you report a story. What the Pentagon wants 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:28.160 to do is criminalize that, and if you get caught 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:29.879 doing it, then they want to get you off the 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:34.800 premises completely. Now you might ask why now, right, we 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:38.400 already know that there's been all right, that Pete hagk Set, 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:43.159 the Secretary Defense, has been getting some terrible press and 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.080 I for you know, we have the weird where he 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:50.520 shared classified material on a signal, and a lot of 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:53.359 that came from leaks, and he started firing people that 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.320 he thought were leaking. So now instead of trying to 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:59.320 fire the leakers, because I think he realized that that 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:02.119 was sort of a game of whack a mole that 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:06.600 he would never win. Could they just simply get rid 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:09.760 of the reporters from the Pentagon right, thinking that that 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:14.600 will somehow prevent people from leaking. Buddy, I could tell 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.560 you, you know, the more you try to stop this, the 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:20.520 more it's only going to encourage people to find other 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:24.560 ways to get these things, other ways to leak these out. 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.880 But I do think it's a pretty important to understand 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:33.320 a bit of the timeline of this story, okay, because 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:36.880 I think there's a real reason why this happened when 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:41.080 it happened. Let me give you this timeline on September seventeenth, 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:43.959 last week, So this is just so where am I 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:49.560 at here? So last Thursday was September excuse me? Last 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:54.760 Wednesday was September seventeenth. The Wall Street Journal published the 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:58.879 phone report. Pentagon lawyers raised concerns over Trump's strikes on 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:04.240 alleged drug boats, these Venezuelan drug boats, where the military 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:08.240 has been launching strikes against these boats without any congressional 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:12.920 authority whatsoever. They claimed some authority having to do loosely 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:16.960 if because they've somehow designated these posts as narco terrorists, 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:19.200 and that this falls under the same thing that would 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:21.160 allow them to go after al Qaeda and things like that. 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:26.000 On September nineteenth, the Washington Post reported on legal concerns, 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:29.679 internal legal concerns about the strikes themselves, Pentagon officials voicing 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:34.240 uneasiness that their opinions, their legal opinions about whether these 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:38.240 extra judicial killings were legal or not, that they were 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:43.240 being sidelined. That happened on September nineteenth, And when did 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:47.080 this story come out? On these new roles, So that 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:49.479 story came out in the nineteenth, which means the reporting 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:52.600 happened on the eighteenth, and lo and behold on the nineteenth. 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:55.880 The Pentagon press secretary decides to come up with these 0:22:55.920 --> 0:23:00.520 new roles because what were the important sources of these 0:23:00.560 --> 0:23:02.919 stories to both the journal and the Post. It was 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:07.000 classified Pentagon information from people that worked at the Pentagon. 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:12.320 These reporters did not get permission from there. The person 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:15.640 who runs the press shop there, Sean Parnell, And therefore 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:17.879 they wanted to create a situation where that if you 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:23.800 somehow used anonymous sources or classified material that was not approved. Again, 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:26.160 I don't know in what part of a free country 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:28.840 with a free press that this would be a situation 0:23:28.960 --> 0:23:34.400 that would be acceptable. They suddenly put out these new rules. 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:40.880 So what this is really about is they don't want 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.320 they don't want there to be stories that there are 0:23:44.320 --> 0:23:47.159 a lot of people raising legal questions about whether the 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:50.480 president has the authority to just drop bombs on a boat. 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:53.240 He decides to tell people in the Caribbean, is we 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:55.320 know they're narco terrorists. How do you know, Well, we 0:23:55.440 --> 0:23:58.760 just know what's your evidence. Don't worry about it. Oh 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:00.679 we saw the evidence once we blew it up. There 0:24:00.680 --> 0:24:05.000 were floating bales of fentanyl and things like that. Again, 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:08.520 this stuff ill legal, This stuff's unconstitutional. He does not 0:24:08.600 --> 0:24:11.159 have the authority to do this. I promise you that 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:16.320 if at some point right somebody is going to have 0:24:16.359 --> 0:24:22.200 a due process, it's going to bring a case before 0:24:22.800 --> 0:24:27.160 our court system, it'll be some family member of somebody 0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:30.679 who was killed on one of those both, and I 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:33.760 don't think they're going to have very good legal standing 0:24:34.240 --> 0:24:54.480 on any of them. So once again, to understand, I 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:57.160 just want to make it clear what the legal questions 0:24:57.200 --> 0:25:03.400