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Deadline: White House
“Demanding an election army”
00:43:13
Nicolle Wallace covers Donald Trump’s desperate attempts to hold onto power. From pressuring states to gerrymander and redistrict to compelling his Justice Department to go after his political enemies, Trump is now threatening an election army to oversee the upcoming midterm elections.
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- [00:00]
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Nicole Wallace
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- [00:57]
Nicole Wallace
Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in what Donald Trump wants He usually posts about on Truth Social at odd hours. From his demands that states gerrymander their congressional maps to keep him in office to compelling his Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies. Now, amid flashing red warning signs that his party will lose the midterm elections by large margins due to both historical trends and his soaring unpopularity, Donald Trump is demanding an election army. Over the weekend, Donald Trump lashed out at an Election Integrity effort launched by Democrats, posting this on Truth Social quote, During my historic election in 2024, the Republicans had an election Integrity army in every single state to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote. We will be doing the Same again in 26, but it will be much bigger and stronger. While that sort of brutish, detailless claim would normally prompt an eye roll, it does come amid other stuff. An alarming effort by Donald Trump and his backers to centralize control of our elections into the hands of the federal government. With Trump allies calling for ICE at polling places in November. Take a look.
- [02:14]
Todd Blanche
Like why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places? Illegals can't vote? It doesn't make any sense.
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John Brennan
We can use what's happening with these
- [02:27]
Nicole Wallace
ICE helping out at the airports. We can use this as a test run, as a test case to get to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm elections. We should point out to Todd Blanche that the Argument cuts both ways, right? People here illegally can't, and based on the Trump administration's own investigation, don't vote. So why would UTT Blanche send them there? But it also comes as Todd Blanche's department, as well as Donald Trump's allies in state houses all across our country are working overtime to undermine the authorities of states to conduct their own elections. As Trump's Justice Department weaponizes the big lie to get a hold of election data in key swing states like Arizona and Georgia. Republicans in red states are rushing to redraw their congressional maps after Donald Trump demanded they do so. They're also doing that after his hand picked justices and the Supreme Court participated in the gutting of the Voting Rights act with Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina all making efforts to eliminate majority black majority Democratic districts in just the last week. And if you're looking for the why, why are they doing all this? Look no further than the polls, which increasingly show Donald Trump's party losing the 2026 midterms. The economist forecasting model gives Democrats a 19 in 20 chance of taking back the House. Donald Trump's full court press to keep his party in power by any means necessary, whether voters like it or want it or not, is where we start today. The former lead investigator for the January 6th select committee, Tim Havey, is back with us. He's now a partner at Hafey, Smith, Harbach and Windom. Also joining us, Protect Democracy Executive Director Ian Bassin is back. And with me at the table, NYU Law professor legal analyst Melissa Murray is here. Tim Hafey, they tried this in 2020. They came up short because of the actions of a handful of people. No one investigated those crimes more thoroughly than you. Tell us what they tried before, what stopped them and where those guardrails no longer exist.
- [04:42]
Tim Hafey
Yeah, Nicole, you started the piece here by talking about the why, right? Their why is that there's widespread election fraud, that lots of people around this country, illegal aliens or people out of ret proper precinct trying to vote, that's just false. The president has been saying this repeatedly for years and it just isn't true. There's this myth of widespread voter fraud that is the purported justification for an Election Integrity Unit or other steps in 2020.
- [05:15]
Ian Bassin
Right.
- [05:15]
Tim Hafey
His argument again, which he continues to repeat, was that the results in that election were infected with widespread fraud, ineligible voters voting, dead voters, miscounting, intentional voter fraud. And again, Nicole, there's never been any factual basis for that. So all he is doing now, I think, as you correctly define the why, is coming up with a sort of precedential argument as to why he will lose. It's, it's to, to argue even in advance of the election that, ah, there's going to be fraud. That's why we're taking all these steps, because he knows that what's likely to happen based on historical trends in the polls is that he's not going to do well this time. But we got to just, every time we talk about this, I feel like we just have to come back to the baseline fact of the myth of voter fraud in this country. We do this well. States are really good at it. We have integrity in our voting systems across the country, and it's just false to suggest otherwise to the American people.
- [06:15]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, Tim, I guess the pushback, though, is that, you know, you guys had his backers who believe the lies. And so I think on Earth one, actually even dangerously close to Earth two, the second Trump administration investigated through its Department of Homeland Security, this matter of whether people here illegally vote, and they found that they do not. So even if you want to use their own numbers, this is a, a solution. ICE agents at the polls is a solution in search of a problem. But I wonder if we're asking about the wrong problem. I mean, it's obviously there to intimidate and threaten. And what do you do about that?
- [06:59]
Tim Hafey
100%, Nicole? You're exactly right. It reveals the why, because again, the why is not voter fraud or protection of integrity of the ballot. The why is to intimidate people, is to get people to stay home, is to shrink the map or shrink the number of people voting to try to maximize the chances of his political, political success. Right. Again, if you're, if there's nothing to protect, there's no fraud to prevent, then it's revealed what the purpose is. I'm much more troubled, Nicole, by the prospect of ICE agents or police officers or even National Guard or military near our polling places. Historically, we have had political polling places that have, that have been independent of military law enforcement intervention. That's because we don't want them to be intimidating. We want people to freely come and exercise the franchise, their right to vote. So I'm more troubled by the presence of law enforcement officers than I am by lawyers standing back behind the tables in some election. Both parties have done that for years. I've done that on the Democratic side, been an election integrity monitor, and there's nothing wrong with that. And there are rules about what they can or can't say or do or come within certain number of feet from the actual polling place. It's the presence of the uniform military and law enforcement, Nicole, that's much more intimidating and has the potential to. To suppress the valid exercise of the franchise
- [08:28]
Nicole Wallace
in Basin. The sort of elephant in the room is that the two stories hang together with what is clearly an attack on minority voting rights in America. I mean, ICE agents aren't there looking for me. They're there looking for people who they think they can make feel afraid that they'll either be asked to produce, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, but documents to prove that they're citizens or follow them home to attack someone that they think may live in a mixed status house or harass them or create some sort of vigilante system where people who vote are then investigated to make sure they have that status. And it comes at the same time that this Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act. Do you think we are. I like to always sort of get your big brain thinking about the pushback. I mean, are we sort of back at a, at a time, a chapter of history where it will become the mission of everyone who wants to remain a democracy to go down and make sure that people have the right to vote and they're not harassed?
- [09:31]
SimpliSafe Voice
The answer to that, absolutely is yes. I mean, we are witnessing an attack on voting rights and particularly the voting rights of black communities and communities of color at a level that we really haven't seen since sort of Jim Crow in the South. And we need to respond to it. And there is going to be a mass day of action this Saturday, May 16th, across the country, but centered in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, honoring the sacrifices made by the civil rights generation. And everybody who's watching this now should go to allroads leadtothesouth.com and register to participate this Saturday, because it is now our generation's time to carry the mantle forward of civil rights and voting rights in this country to make sure that we remain a democracy. That's going to take work by all of us. But the good news is we are going to succeed at this, right? Donald Trump has been president during one one other midterm election in his life, and that was in 2018. And in 2018, the Democrats flipped 40 seats in the House of Representatives at a time when Donald Trump was more popular than he is today. They cannot gerrymander their way out of a 40 seat shellacking, and he's less popular today than he was in 2018. So they are gonna try to gerrymander their way out of it because they are otherwise losing unpopular, and they're gonna try to rig the rules. But here's the thing. Our founders, in their inimitable wisdom, made it so the president doesn't control the rules of elections. And for the president to try to rig the midterm elections, he is going to need accomplices up and down our federal system, at the state level, at the local level, in the Congress and the courts. And in order to get those accomplices, he needs to show that he's politically powerful. And the fact of the matter is, he is not. We have reached the point in the story where the Trumpist political project is in its death spiral. And I have talked to Republican leaders who are in the sort of non hard, hardcore Trump but soft Republicans supporting of the Trump administration camp. And they know it. They know that the Trumpist political project is over. And that means he is not going to be able to do what he needs to do to complete his authoritarian consolidation. And if we do our part, we are not just going to save our democracy, but we're going to have an opportunity to really reform it and rebuild it to be fit for purpose for the 21st century.
- [11:48]
Nicole Wallace
My head wants to nod along with everything you said, but my gut still feels scarred by the news events of last week. Just speak a little bit about how the sort of shock and awe of the Virginia decision and the Supreme Court decision rippled through MAGA as maybe, I don't know, a last hurrah. I mean, I know, I guess intellectually that everything you're saying about the movement being at about 28 to 30% is true. But it does feel like this branch of government that we've looked to over the last 15 months for its steadfast rejection of Donald Trump's lawlessness has just handed him two massive victories on the voting rights side.
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SimpliSafe Voice
Yeah, well, first off, it's important to recognize that the current iteration of the United States Supreme Court has been against voting rights rights and racial justice since the beginning of this Federalist Society conservative ascendancy took over the court. So this is not a Trumpist project. This is a project that those six members of the Supreme Court have been at for their entire career since John Roberts was a young lawyer in the executive branch. And at the end of the day, they are going to probably help Republicans in a handful of se across the country through a really disgusting allowance of racial gerrymandering across the South. But it is basically going to give the Republicans a handful of seats in which they are better positioned than they would have been before both the Virginia decision and the U.S. supreme Court decision. But as I was just saying, Democrats flipped 40 seats when Trump was less, was less, was more popular than he is today. They just don't have enough seats there that they can gerrymander. And here's the other thing. Every time they engage in one of these obvious and blatant attempts to deprive people of rights and race the system, it has a political counter reaction. People rebel against this sort of shenanigans. And if you are taking a plus 10 Republican district in Tennessee or in Alabama and you are reducing it to plus 5, meaning that there's a percentage favorability towards Republicans at plus 5, in order to make a more urban district more friendly to Republicans, you are making both districts more vulnerable to a blue wave. And I think what is going to end up happening here is they are going to shoot themselves in the foot being too by half, and they may end up setting their whole entire operation back, further back than it would have been because they're making more seats actually achievable in a significant wave. And they're behaving in a way that is causing Americans of all stripes, Democrats, Independents and Republicans to say, this smells fishy and smells like a rat and we just don't like it.
- [14:20]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I mean, this is the part that is sort of on their side. They're solving the wrong problem. If Donald Trump actually wanted to solve his political problem and his party will lose seats in the midterm because that's historically what happens. And as everyone has pointed out, he's wildly unpopular, but if he wanted to make it less seats, he would. It sounds dumb to even say, but he would focus himself on ending the war in Iran, wouldn't have a ballroom, wouldn't build a ballroom, and would try to strengthen the economy in the months ahead of measures, like the fact that he's not capable of that, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene's district's won 24 points. That is post gerrymander. You got to do something else. And I'm not saying I'm not ruling it out for them, but that is not a gerrymanderable deficit in one of the most conservative districts in Georgia.
- [15:09]
Melissa Murray
So all of that is right. I mean, I think there are ways for them to minimize this loss, ways that don't require cheating, ways that don't require mid cycle redistricting. They obviously are unwilling to sort of just prosecute the case for normalcy. But I can't emphasize enough the amount of distortion in the landscape Ian is exactly right. This is not insurmountable, but it is going to require a concerted effort on the part of every American. This cannot be one of those elections where, you know, there's no big race at the top of the ticket.
- [15:38]
Nicole Wallace
Right.
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Melissa Murray
Sitting it out. The distortion in the electoral landscape, the gerrymandering, both the partisan gerrymandering and the racial gerrymandering, which we're now ignoring because partisan gerrymandering is apparently okay. The voter suppression, the intimidation, with the prospect of law enforcement being at the polls, all of that distorts the field to the point where if you are going to overcome that kind of distortion, you need really record numbers Hungary style. Exactly. You've got to have people who recognize this is a break glass moment and you have to show up. And there are some guardrails. The Constitution puts up some guardrails. The fact that the states get to make rules for federal elections rather than the federal government has honestly been a saving grace here. And there were people during the Biden administration who talked about nationalizing elections. Boy, are we glad we didn't do that, because that would be in the hands of this administration right now, and it would have been disastrous. So there are some guardrails here, but the real guardrail is going to be the people. This is the moment for we the people to get up, get off the couch and really fight for what they want. If you really care about the direction of this country, now is the moment.
- [16:47]
Nicole Wallace
Do you feel like we are communicating in a way? Like we have this conversation every single day and I came to work in my we the People sweater. I'm going to Bruce Springs like I am. I've got my democracy wardrobe, but I do this all day, every day. And I've been a part of the Republican Party. I know what they're capable of. Do you think that people understand that the Republicans have broken bad? They have no interest in their kids in the military. They have no interest in their. In their families, economic security. They have no interest in any of the things that they campaigned on 15 months ago.
- [17:21]
Melissa Murray
This is where I think the Democratic Party needs real messaging. I mean, I've tried to sort of say what I say. I think a lot of black women have been saying this for a long time. Like, this is a really critical moment. When I look at the Constitution, when I was writing the book and trying to explain all of those causes, it was so clear what the framers were trying to protect against, like, truly despotic government. A government that would run roughshod over the will of the people. We have all of the tools we need, the right messaging to reach people who are disengaged, who are worried about other things. That's the thing I think that's missing here. Like, people need to understand he's never going to be about you. I mean, he talked about Kamala being for they them. He's about he himself and not about you.
- [18:03]
Nicole Wallace
He, him and it the Gold Ballroom. Right, Exactly. I mean, but like, that's the thing.
- [18:07]
Melissa Murray
Like, do you like you're the one suffering? You're the one trying to climb out of whatever hole this war has put you in, this economy has put you in. He's not helping. Look at all of those oligarchs arrayed behind him at his inauguration. This is not a populist movement. This is the Gilded Age writ large. That's what this is.
- [18:26]
Nicole Wallace
I love that your phone's ringing because we're always multitasking.
- [18:29]
Todd Blanche
I know.
- [18:29]
Nicole Wallace
Mine probably went sushi. Can we have this conversation every Monday? I think I might need it. Tim Hafey, Ian Bassin, thank you for starting us off. Melissa sticks around a little bit longer. Still ahead for us, our exclusive interview with former director of the FBI Jim Comey is coming up in the next hour. He speaks out for the very first time since Donald Trump's Justice Department indicted him a second time following an Instagram post of an image of seashells arrayed on a beach at Ms. Now exclusive with Jim Comey live in studio coming up in a few minutes. But first, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took his family on a heavily promoted, heavily sponsored road trip. That road trip at a price time when the price of gas is soaring, is drawing a lot of backlash for a lot of reasons. We'll talk about all of it coming up and much, much more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [19:23]
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- [19:32]
Nicole Wallace
Police are on the way.
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SimpliSafe Active Guard Outdoor Protection Plan starting at $49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012.
- [19:54]
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- [20:26]
Nicole Wallace
Brand new project by an unelected Trump administration official is backfiring for being wildly tone deaf and offensive and it's really something you have to see to believe. It's a Cabinet official sending a message to a country at war that that country didn't exactly ask for. It's a new YouTube reality show that will follow Donald Trump's transportation secretary, a guy named Sean Duffy, as he and his family get in their car and travel around the country with the mission of, quote, understanding America. It's drawing criticism for how wildly out of touch with America it really is with gas prices at more than $4.50 a gallon, largely because of Donald Trump's war with Iran. But this guy, this official Mr. Duffy in these highly produced videos encourages all Americans to, quote, gas up the car, car and take a road trip of their own. Duffy revealed on Fox News that he spent seven months, seven months while he was being paid by the American taxpayer making a reality show again, I guess, doing double duty as the country's transportation secretary and a reality TV show person. His predecessor, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, called the TV show, quote, brutally out of touch while regular families can't afford road trips anymore. His husband, Chastain Buttigieg judge, added this quote, the same Duffys who threw endless fits on national television when Pete was working from our son's ICU bedside are now bragging about their multi month taxpayer funded family road trip while gas and grocery prices soar for American families because of Trump's war of choice. How much more unfocused, unserious and out of touch can you be? Joining me at the table, Norm Eisen. He served as Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform in the White House under President Barack Obama and was co counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump. He's now a Senior fellow at Brookings and the Executive Chair of Democracy Defenders Fund. Melissa is still here. It's always amazing to me and it will never feel normal that we have to distinguish between the first and second impeachment. You know, this person worked on the first, but not the second or this person worked on the second, but not the first. This person actually took time off to do the. I mean, how far from anything normal in the area of ethics are we?
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Ian Bassin
I think you have to look back to the Roman Empire in the days of Nero to find a precedent. Nicole. When I was the White House ethics czar, I wouldn't let Barack Obama refinance his modest family home in Chicago because he was regulating the banks in the time of the Great Recession. So the profit taking that we've seen has been staggering here. Sometimes it's direct. We know that the Gulf nations are pouring countless hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump link businesses. We've done a series of exposes and complaints on that at the Democracy Defenders Fund. And then it's indirect. We were talking on the break on things like Donald Trump slapping his name on the Kennedy Center. I'm suing to personally scrape the name off the Kennedy Center. He's dumped the toxic dirt, chromium, lead, arsenic, things that were in the East Wing debris. He's dumped those in a public park in D.C. we're suing to deal with that. So those kinds of vanity projects, as well as the profit taking, make this the most corrupt administration in American history.
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Nicole Wallace
What is your sense of how much people care?
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Ian Bassin
I think they care a lot. You find when you talk to the American people or you look in polls, there's kind of a trifecta. The three Cs, they're upset about costs, the cost of living, crisis, corruption and competence, the incompetence of this administration. And I think you see that the corruption. Donald Trump is taking the money out for himself, literally and his cronies in and outside of government. Another thing we've led on is supporting the state AGs, encouraging them block the Paramount Warner's merger. We've just gotten over 5,000 from movie stars down to the working people in Hollywood begging. The ags and the ags are listening. I think they are going to move to stop this merger. So it's a devastating impact on the American people, and they know it. And by the way, it's not unique to the United States. There was the same trifecta in Hungary with Peter Magyar. Nobody elected Donald Trump to take money out of their pockets.
- [25:36]
Nicole Wallace
I asked you because I used to have David Farenthal on when he was at the Washington Post. They moved to the New York Times about the flagrant violations of the emoluments clause during the entire first term. And I think he did unbelievable journalism. I believe he won a Pulitzer. Donald Trump has been stealing from the American people the whole time. He's also been lining his pockets with the money of foreign states and foreign governments. He's had Secret Service stay in his hotel, or is it the one in Scotland? And yet he was reelected. And I wonder if you think that the corruption, that if we do a bad job, I will just say, actually, I won't put you on the spot. I think we do a bad job covering the corruption. They're difficult stories to tell. And when he's separating young families and throwing children at dilly detention, you sort of get to the corruption story and you're like, wow, this one is a child suffering, this one is more money in his pockets. I can only, you know, so I think we're failing. But I think the other thing is the trifecta that you, you talked about, just talk about the toxic combination politically and historically, when a population is suffering economically and their leader is getting fat and rich.
- [26:43]
Ian Bassin
Well, it is tough with any individual corruption story, given the sheer level of crisis.
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Nicole Wallace
But I feel like that helps him. Right, because there's so much.
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Ian Bassin
But it accumulates after a while and people do get an idea. And you do see when you look at the cross tabs of the polls that the American people understand that this is not normal, that they don't like it and they associate it. You know, look at, look at the tax break bill for the billionaires. They slashed health care, another cost increase on the American people. And then the incompetence of why there's a form of corruption going into Iraq to satisfy his vanity and the impact it has on the cost of gasoline. So it does start to get through. And I will say it's an, I think of it as going in the corruption category and it has made a huge impact on the American people. The Epstein files, the classic definition of corruption is utilizing public power for private benefit. And for Donald Trump to have his administration hide the documents about him or hold back millions of pages to take Ghislaine Maxwell because she said something exonerating of him, and to move her from a real prison to a country club prison. People get that. And it exemplifies the larger corruption scandals. So I think there is going to be a very heavy price to pay. And there already has been at the polls where you see Democrats outperforming or winning by double digits in hundreds of key races so far, even with some of the unfortunate developments from supreme, the Supreme Court over the past weeks, we're still going to. Which we're also litigating. We're still going to see a very strong showing, I believe, come November, speaking out against the corruption.
- [28:53]
Nicole Wallace
Could I ask you a favor? Could you help us focus in on one corrupt act a week and we'll sort of do like corruption for 500? Because I think you just said something really important. There's so much that what people are internalizing is the cumulative power of it. But any effective storytelling is sort of about one egregious example. So maybe you could help us sort of bring one. Like we'll start with the dirt. We'll start with the east wing dirt. We'll try that.
- [29:18]
Ian Bassin
I'll come to you live next to the toxic dirt pile.
- [29:22]
Nicole Wallace
I don't want you to breathe it in, but I think we need to do a better we, meaning us, a better job telling these stories. Maybe we'll start one at a time and you're in the middle of all of it. Thank you so much.
- [29:32]
Ian Bassin
I'd love to do it.
- [29:32]
Nicole Wallace
Okay.
- [29:33]
Ian Bassin
Thank you.
- [29:33]
Nicole Wallace
Thank you. Melissa sticks around. Still ahead for us, as we said, Jim Comey will be here exclusively for the very first time since Donald Trump's Justice Department issued another criminal indictment against him. We'll talk to him right here. But first, how does it feel to be targeted and attacked, have your reputation slaughtered day in and day out and then ultimately indicted or investigated by Donald Trump? We'll ask two former career officials. You know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of his harsh words. Much more ahead. We'll be right back.
- [30:10]
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- [30:17]
Nicole Wallace
Police are on the way.
- [30:19]
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Simplisafe Active Guard Outdoor Protection plan starting at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com licenses for alarm license information.
- [30:37]
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Tennessee2012 subscribe to Ms. Now premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad free listening and bon and to all of MSNow's original podcasts including the chart topping series the Best People with Nicole Wallace, why is this Happening? Main justice and more. Plus new episodes of all your favorite Ms. Now shows. Ad free and ad free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. Subscribe to Ms. Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.
- [31:11]
Liz Oyer
Now that Vince Comey has been indicted,
- [31:13]
Nicole Wallace
who is the next person on your
- [31:15]
Tim Hafey
list in this retribution?
- [31:16]
Liz Oyer
It's not a list, but I think there'll be others. I mean, they're corrupt. These, these were corrupt, radical left Democrats because Comey essentially was a. He's worse than a Democrat. I would say the Democrats are better than Comey, but, no, there'll be others. Look, it was. That's my opinion.
- [31:34]
MSNow Premium Announcer
Is this more about justice or is it about revenge?
- [31:38]
Liz Oyer
It's about justice, really. It's not revenge. It's about justice. It's also. It's also about the fact that you can't let this go on. They are sick, radical left people and they can't get away with it. And Comey, Comey was one of the people. He wasn't the biggest, but he's a dirty cop.
- [32:00]
Nicole Wallace
It's about justice. That's why dozens of people have fled my Justice Department over it. But you got to give it to Trump. It is one of the only campaign promises he's actually kept. His promise to use the Justice Department for retribution, including, as you just heard him field questions about against former Director of the FBI Jim Comey, along with a litany of other career public servants, many of whom worked in the area of national security, who were appointed by presidents of both political parties and worked for presidents of both political parties over decades and decades in the federal government. He's also targeted state elected officials, people like New York Attorney General Tish James, his own former national security advisor, John Bolton, as well as our next guest, former Director of the CIA John Brennan. All of them, despite doing nothing wrong that we know about, had their lives upended by political attacks, reputation assassination, and constantly being thrust into the news in a negative manner by Donald Trump himself. Now, Donald Trump's DOJ retribution campaign has intersected with Todd Blanche's Hire me campaign and found a fresh wave of momentum. Todd Blanche says it isn't just permissible, but it's actually Donald Trump's presidential duty to decide which of his enemies should be prosecuted. And we're lucky about that. Watch.
- [33:30]
Todd Blanche
Well, look, first of all, we have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right now. And it is true that some of them involve men, women, and entities that the president in the past has had issues with and that believe should be investigated. That is his right, and indeed, it is his duty to do that. People say the president wants to go after his political enemies. No, the president has said time and time again that he will wants justice
- [34:00]
Nicole Wallace
again, that justice has come at the cost of dozens and dozens of employees of the Department of Justice quitting over these political prosecutions. I want to bring into our coverage former director of the CIA, our senior national security and intelligence analyst John Brennan. He is under investigation as part of Donald Trump's fixation on the so called grand conspiracy. Also joining us, former Department of Justice pardon attorney Liz Oyer. She was fired by Donald Trump's DOJ last March after she refused to reinstate actor Mel Gibson's gun rights. Melissa is still here as well. Director Brennan, this has been something that you've been so generous to talk about here. I want to ask you, though, what the impact is of 10 years of Donald Trump smearing people like yourself and like Liz as part of a deep state. Well, we're now a country at war against a very sophisticated cyber enemy, terrorism, state sponsored terrorism. What is the impact of targeting and purging from the government so many people with national security expertise?
- [35:13]
John Brennan
Well, first of all, for individuals who are leaving the Department of Justice, the FBI, the intelligence community, because they really cannot countenance the things that the Trump administration is doing. The American people are the losers there because there's so much expertise, there's so much capability that is no longer available to be able to fight our adversaries, foreign and domestic, and to do the things that our national security professionals are expected to do. For individuals like myself and Liz and others, I mean, it is tiring, it is wearing. And it's also it comes down to what we need to do in order to protect and defend ourselves in terms of legal defense, other types of things, things. But this is all part of the Trump campaign to carry out revenge against his adversaries. And you know, Todd Bland saying that this is not, you know, his going after his political enemies. I mean, how can he actually look himself in the mirror and believe what he is saying? As you pointed out, he looks like he is auditioning to be nominated to be attorney general. But in many respects, what is happening right now in the Trump administration I think justifies and legitimizes the things that I have been saying nearly for 10 years about what is happen under the leadership of Donald Trump and how much it is eroding these institutions of governance and our rule of law and our respect for the institutions that really we have relied on for so long to keep our country safe and secure.
- [36:46]
Nicole Wallace
Liz, you were in the department most recently and there's fresh reporting in the Washington Post over the weekend about the exodus from the office. The Eastern District of Virginia, the first office to indict Jim Comey. It included Eric Siebert. He was a prosecutor in good standing in MAGA world, had relationships with Mained doj. He left because there was no evidence to bring a case against Jim Comey, a view that Pam Bondi at least seemed sympathetic to unless or until Donald Trump ordered Lindsey Halligan to bring the case. What does it say and how do you deploy the information that's been revealed to us as a public about how weak these cases are according to the people inside the Trump Justice Department right now?
- [37:37]
M
We have seen this repeated cycle, Nicole, where Donald Trump declares that someone is a criminal. He just says, James Comey is a criminal. X person that has aggrieved him as a criminal. And then the leadership of the Department of Justice goes scurrying to try to find a crime that they can prosecute. Inevitably, the career experience prosecutors in the department fail to find any evidence of a crime. They report that back to the leadership and they get fired. They get fired or removed from their post. The same thing that's happened in the Eastern District of Virginia has happened in the Southern District of Florida, where a very senior, experienced prosecutor was removed from the investigation of Director Brennan because she presented information to her supervisors to suggest that she believed there was not a criminal case case there. She is a lawyer who was trusted by this administration even. She was handling, even leading the prosecution of the individual who attempted to assassinate the president at his golf club. And now she's out because of her refusal to pursue a political vendetta. Director Brennan is absolutely right that this is a loss for the American people. It makes us less safe in this country. But I do take some measure of comfort in the fight fact that my fellow career professionals have decided not to be complicit in this abuse and corruption of the justice system. It would be worse if people were staying and allowing themselves to be used to further a political agenda. I had no choice in the matter. I was fired after I refused to allow my career position to be exploited to give a veneer of legitimacy to a political favor for a friend of the president. President and I take comfort in seeing that others are going voluntarily. We have seen over 3,000 Justice Department lawyers depart since Donald Trump returned to office, which is a quarter of all of the lawyers in DOJ's workforce. That is crippling to the work, but it is also a strong sign that those lawyers are standing up for the Constitution. And the Constitution is Still holding strong.
- [39:41]
Nicole Wallace
It's an extraordinary figure. And when you look at what they're still doing, it just forces us to rumble with the question of who's left and what is the caliber and character of the people that are still doing Todd Blanche and Donald Trump spitting. We'll delve into that on the other side of a short break. No one's going anywhere. We're back with Director Brennan, Liz and Melissa. So, Melissa, we talked in the first hour about this being a break glass moment. The thing about the Department of Justice is even if Democrats run the tables and take over, take regain control of the House and the Senate, Donald Trump and Todd Blanche still wield an enormous amount of power through doj.
- [40:23]
Melissa Murray
No, this is huge. DOJ has been changed. I don't know if it's irreparable, I don't know if it's irrevocable, but DOJ is markedly different than it was even two years ago. It was changed after the first Trump administration, though not nearly as thoroughly as it has been. And I think the American people have to understand what that means. Means for them, like DOJ isn't just some pie in the sky agency. Like, this is the bread and butter of federal law enforcement. So when you have the president using the resources of the Department of Justice as his own personal law firm to prosecute personal vendettas, that's work that isn't being done in your communities. Like, if you have federal crimes that are going on in community, those aren't being prosecuted because other things are priorities. When you have 3,000 lawyers leaving the Department of Justice, that means that you aren't doing things that, like dealing with civil rights violations, dealing with police brutality and things of that nature. I mean, there's a whole slate of activities that DOJ is charged with that's going by the wayside. It's also important to think about DOJ as part of our intelligence agency. So we don't think about it in that way. I mean, obviously the CIA, the FBI have a real role in all of that. But dealing with threats and prosecuting threats after they happen, that's also part of the DOJ's mission. And when you have that kind of, of massive departure from an agency, like truly a bloodletting of the agency, like, you just can't do that. And so this is going to take years and years to rebuild. And it was already, I think, slightly hobbled from the first Trump administration. It has been completely gutted at this point.
- [41:57]
Nicole Wallace
Director Brennan, I wanna ask you if you can just Speak to what remains in the system to slow down what is now nakedly. I mean, I think a Hallmark between Trump 1.0 and 2.0 is that it's all out in the open. Donald Trump says these people are dirty. Todd Blanche says we're lucky to have Trump involved in this. Kash Patel says, I have a bat phone into the Oval Office. He has succeeded largely in turning DOJ and the FBI into political arms of his political operation. What still exists in the system to slow that down?
- [42:31]
John Brennan
Well, I think, as Liz mentioned, there's still a legion of professionals in the law enforcement environment, Department of Justice, as well as the CIA and other places, the who are refusing to follow politically motivated prosecutions, those who are refusing to support any type of political activities on the part of the Trump administration that are inconsistent with the authorities, the responsibilities of the intelligence community, law enforcement community, and Department of Justice. So we have to rely on these individuals to stand up to their professional responsibilities and also to the courts, to the judges, to those judges who in fact, took an oath of allegiance to the law, not to a political party, not to a person. And, you know, I'd like to think that there are still some members of Congress, certainly, you know, I'm looking for the Republicans who at one point had spoken out against Donald Trump and had spoken in support of the law, but they seem to have just totally caved. And I think, as has been said, you know, what has happened to our institutions is really going to have longstanding damage to these institutions, to our system of justice and to the rule of law. And it's unfortunate. We shouldn't put all the blame, though, on Donald Trump. It's the enablers. It's those individuals in these institutions, in the halls of Congress and other places that have allowed him to do this to those institutions of government that we again rely on to keep us safe and secure.
- [43:59]
Nicole Wallace
All right. No one goes anywhere to sneak in a quick break. We'll give Liz the last word on the other side. Liz, I always feel like I'd be remiss to simply cover what the Justice Department is doing to lifelong public servants like Director Brennan or Jim Comey or yourself, without pointing out the way he's using the department to alleviate exposure from criminality for people like the January 6th insurrectionists. It's the two sides that threatens the rule of law.
- [44:28]
M
Yeah. One area where I see this acutely is the pardon power. It's being used to do political favors to the wealthy and well connected, while there are thousands of ordinary Americans have done everything under the sun to earn the opportunity for a second chance through clemency whose applications are being ignored in favor of the wealthy and well connected. This has absolutely shattered public trust in the legitimacy of the justice system and has created a two tier system of justice where some people get special favors and other people do not. And the next attorney general is going to have a tremendous job on their hands of rebuilding public trust in the, the Justice Department. That is going to be the top priority for, for repairing all of this damage has been done is getting the public to buy into the legitimacy of the justice system again. And I hope that we will soon have the opportunity to put a new attorney general in place under a new administration who will see to doing that important work.
- [45:24]
Nicole Wallace
And we should all have that conversation. I mean, because I think it's now been so badly damaged, it's not even about snapping back. It's about rebuilding something more transparent, more nimble, more sort of easy to understand. If rebuilding trust is a central mission, I am always grateful to all of you for being here and talking about all of this. Director John Brennan, Liz Oyer and Melissa Murray, thank you so much for being here today. Coming up next for us, our exclusive conversation with former director of the FBI Jim Comey. The next hour of deadline White House starts after a very short break.
- [46:05]
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Nicole Wallace
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