“DOJ investigating E. Jean Carroll’s defense funding”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House – “DOJ investigating E. Jean Carroll’s defense funding”

Host: Nicolle Wallace
Air Date: May 28, 2026
Main Theme/Purpose:
This episode focuses on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll’s funding sources for her legal battles against Donald Trump, examining broader concerns about the politicization of the DOJ under Trump’s second term. The panel dissects the motivations, legal merits, and chilling effects of using federal law enforcement to target political adversaries, as well as the ramifications for American democratic institutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Overview of the DOJ’s Investigation into E. Jean Carroll (00:57–04:07)

• Nicolle Wallace opens with the DOJ’s criminal probe into E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Trump for sexual assault and defamation.
• The crux: DOJ is investigating whether Carroll lied under oath about third-party funding for her lawsuits, particularly undisclosed financial assistance from billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
• Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former lawyer, has recused himself. The DOJ, under Blanche's tenure, is described as aggressively targeting Trump’s critics, including Carroll and former FBI Director Jim Comey.

“Donald Trump using the Department of Justice as his own personal law firm to pursue the woman who beat him in a court of law is where we start today.”
— Nicolle Wallace (03:41)

2. Carol Lennig’s Reporting: Focus on Venue and Investigation Scope (04:07–09:03)

• Carol Lennig explains the investigation is run out of the Northern District of Illinois (Chicago), mainly because Reid Hoffman’s nonprofit (America Future Republic) is based there.
• The DOJ appears more focused on Hoffman than Carroll, eyeing possible money laundering or obstruction.
• Lennig stresses skepticism among career prosecutors about the legal justification for the investigation, suspecting a political motivation.

“This is a Department of Justice that has put all its oars in the water… to prosecute every possible case that would please Donald Trump, that would go after someone that has angered him.”
— Carol Lennig (07:09)

3. Panel Analysis: Political Targeting and Chilling Effects (09:03–13:07)

• Panelists question DOJ’s choice of venue, speculate about the difficulty in finding a compliant U.S. attorney elsewhere, and underline the pattern of investigations against Trump’s perceived enemies.
• Molly Zhang Fast emphasizes the deterrent effect on Democratic donors and civic actors.

“It’s meant to have a deterrent effect. This is what happens to you if you are a prominent donor… they will come after you. The process is the punishment.”
— Molly Zhang Fast (11:02)

• E. Jean Carroll, in a past interview, describes her legal team’s resolve and Trump’s absence at trial with sharp criticism and vivid imagery.

“He is like a walrus snorting and like a rhino flopping his hand. He is not.”
— E. Jean Carroll (12:13)

4. Framing in Historical and Legal Context (13:07–16:22)

• Ibram X. Kendi compares the situation to previous government overreaches, like McCarthyism, underscoring the need for legislative guardrails to prevent similar abuses.
• Discussion of how the DOJ’s resources are being diverted from security and core legal duties to the president’s enemies list.
• Melissa Murray calls for rebuilding legal guardrails and oversight.

“We found someone who doesn’t care about norms or friendship bracelets, and they’re just moving fast and breaking things… maybe we need to put some more guardrails in.”
— Melissa Murray (26:15)

5. Inside the DOJ: Staffing, Morale, and Process as Punishment (23:40–25:42)

• Wallace and Lennig report demoralization and departures from DOJ offices tasked with these politically charged prosecutions, citing real-world impact on actual national security due to diverted resources.
• Prosecutorial workforces are described as “gutted,” with historical staff reductions in offices pressured to pursue political targets.

6. Legal System as a Political Weapon—Trump's Lawsuits & Settlements (27:03–30:14)

• Wallace covers Trump’s $10 billion refiling against the Wall Street Journal, contextualizing it as part of a strategy to punish critics via legal burden, even without merit.
• Kendi and Murray discuss how settlements and repeated legal action create the appearance that the media or adversaries did something wrong, regardless of judicial outcomes—concretizing Trump’s “vision of the law.”

“It’s like to my friends, everything, and to my enemies, the law.”
— Ibram X. Kendi (28:09)

7. Federal Judges’ Rebuke of the $1.8 Billion Anti-Weaponization Fund (32:11–38:27)

• Wallace breaks news of nearly three dozen former federal judges urging an inquiry into Trump’s fraudulent “anti-weaponization” slush fund, accusing the administration of collusion and judicial manipulation.
• Melissa Murray explains the unprecedented nature of such advocacy from ex-judges and the legal grounds (Rule 60) for reopening the case.

“We have never seen in American history groups of judges... take as active a public advocacy role as they have recently. That should be a sign to us that things really are dire for the rule of law.”
— Legal Analyst (possibly a judge or legal expert) (33:36)

8. Civic and Cultural Resistance: Bruce Springsteen’s Protest (39:12–43:09)

• The episode spotlights Bruce Springsteen’s concert in Washington, D.C., as an act of patriotic dissent, countering the Trump administration’s exclusionary version of American identity.
• Springsteen is credited with reclaiming the symbols of Americana for critics of the administration.

“He is not content to let the MAGA opposition own the notion of patriotism... He’s reminding the critics of Trump... that it’s our country, too, and we own patriotism as much, if not more than the people we find ourselves opposed to.”
— Legal Analyst (possibly a judge or legal expert) (39:31)

9. Conclusion and Next Segment Preview (43:09–44:53)

• The conversation closes by linking Trump’s use of U.S. attorney offices for political prosecution to attempts to reshape national icons, referencing congressional efforts to block Trump’s controversial projects in Washington, D.C.
• The hour ends with a promise to cover new findings about Trump’s financial dealings and continued efforts to entrench his influence.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On DOJ politicization:
  “This is a department… angling to remove prosecutors who raise questions and doubts… Let's just open up and start sniffing around for the possibility there could be a crime. ‘Find me the man and I’ll find you the crime’ is the policy now.”
  — Carol Lennig (21:51)

• On the cost of process as punishment:
  “The process and the pain and the cost of the process is the punishment. On the other side of the ledger, the continued resubmission of weak and failing and flawed cases is part of the lawfare….”
  — Nicolle Wallace (28:09)

• On reclaiming patriotism:
  “We love America so much that we are literally willing to do what democracy demands, which is to be skeptical and critical of the government and to call the government out when it goes too far.”
  — Melissa Murray (42:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:57 – Nicolle Wallace’s overview: DOJ shifts focus to E. Jean Carroll
• 04:07 – Carol Lennig on reporting and venue logic behind the investigation
• 09:03 – Analysis of pattern: DOJ targeting of Trump’s opponents
• 12:13 – E. Jean Carroll’s take on winning her case (quote)
• 13:07 – Ibram X. Kendi contextualizes with American history
• 19:47 – Lennig update: Focus on Hoffman's Chicago-based nonprofit
• 23:40 – DOJ staffing, morale, and resource diversion
• 27:03 – Trump’s defamation lawsuits against the Wall Street Journal
• 32:11 – Judges’ intervention in $1.8 billion slush fund
• 34:41 – Judge Scheindlin on judicial fraud implications
• 39:12 – Bruce Springsteen’s DC concert as pro-democracy protest
• 44:09 – Legislative and legal pushback against Trump’s monuments and contracts

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Takeaways

• The DOJ’s pursuit of E. Jean Carroll, with parallels to other Trump rivals, represents a broader trend of using federal prosecution as a political weapon.
• Career professionals within the DOJ express skepticism and demoralization at the prioritization of these investigations.
• The process, not the outcome, is used to punish dissenters, with the intent to stifle opposition and send chilling messages to donors and activists.
• There is growing resistance—both legal, with ex-judges stepping forward, and cultural, with figures like Bruce Springsteen rallying patriotism for pro-democracy causes.
• Panelists repeatedly call for the restoration of institutional guardrails and for Congress to exercise oversight and protection of democratic norms.

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This summary encapsulates all major discussion areas, highlights, and perspectives for listeners or readers seeking a comprehensive account of the episode's substance and tone.

Transcript

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[Nicole Wallace]

Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in New York. For more than 100 years, the motto of the Justice Department has been a Latin phrase that translates basically to who prosecutes on behalf of Justice? Donald Trump's Justice Department has taken that motto to mean instead, who prosecutes on behalf of Donald J. Trump? There is brand new reporting today that Trump's DOJ has set its sights on E. Jean Carroll. Eugene Carroll brought two civil lawsuits against Donald Trump, and she won. In one case in 2023, a jury found that Donald Trump was liable for sexual assault. The following year, she won $83 million in damages in a defamation case she brought against Donald Trump. Now a source familiar with the matter confirms news first reported by CNN to our colleague Ken Delaney that DOJ is now conducting a criminal investigation into whether E. Jean Carroll lied under oath about outside funding or for those two civil cases. CNN reports that prosecutors are looking at her 2022 deposition in which she said she received no outside funding, although it turns out that entrepreneur and billionaire Reid Hoffman did pay some legal fees and expenses. E. Jean Carroll's lawyer declined to comment. The New York Times is reporting that acting AG Todd Blanche has recused himself from the case since he was Donald Trump's lawyer during the civil case E. Jean Carroll brought against Trump. But it's worth wondering if the Justice Department is acting as Donald Trump's law firm. All the same, the DOJ under Blanche has been laser focused on pursuing Donald Trump's critics. Just weeks ago, former Director of the FBI Jim Comey was indicted over An Instagram post of a picture of beach shell art. And now E. Jean Carroll is under criminal investigation. They're reviving an argument that Team Trump has already failed in a court to use against her. New York Times reports that before Trump's lawyers accused E. Jean Carroll of hiding that she received outside funding for her case, they brought it up in their appeal of the verdict that found Trump liable for sexual abuse. When Trump lost that appeal, a three judge panel looked at the question and found this, quote, Ms. Carol plausibly represented that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained in September of 2020 when this question was first posed to her in 2022. And the additional discovery did not indicate otherwise. Rather, it showed that Ms. Carol simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs. Donald Trump using the Department of Justice as his own personal law firm to pursue the woman who beat him in a court of law is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Senior investigative reporter Carol Lennig joins us. And with me at the table, political analyst Molly Zhang Fast, she's the host of Fast Politics and, and a New York Times contributing opinion writer. Also joining us, NYU law professor, our legal analyst, Melissa Murray, Carol Lennox. Take me through what you know about

the reporting on this story.

[Carol Lennig]

Yes, this is a little tricky, Nicole, and I hate to start your panel with saying this is a little tricky, but there have been a lot of people sharing information that the Justice Department is zeroing in on Jean Carroll. And I don't think that's wrong. But I want to be careful about what we say about the status of this investigation, which by the way, is run out of the U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of Illinois, which is obviously Chicago, and that that district has been looking at Carol and some of her statements, but also looking very much at Reid Hoffman, which makes a little more sense. Reid Hoffman is the individual who, who essentially provided some free legal help, his donation to help finance Gene Carroll's civil lawsuit that was so successful against Donald Trump and really did humiliate and annoy him to the ends of the earth. This case bothered him almost more than the business fraud case that Letitia James and also a New York court found against him. Again, back to this being tricky without being too legally nerdy. My understanding is that prosecutors in Chicago have been looking at Carol almost as a another subject, along with investigating Reid Hoffman and his contributions to her fund and to her suit, as well as a nonprofit that he runs.

[Nicole Wallace]

Why is does Reid Hoffman live in Chicago. Is that the reason that this office is involved in the E. Jean Carroll investigation?

[Carol Lennig]

That my understanding is, forgive me, that I was reporting right up until the moment you said here are some of the parties. So I can't with great surety tell you his residence. My understanding is that this is from sources inside Justice. My understanding is venue is far more reliable in Chicago related to Hoffman. It could be because he lives there. It could be because his business is there. And I can't say with certainty, Nicole, but I'll find out during the break.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, Caroline, just more broadly, whether

she's swept up in an investigation of

another perceived political enemy. I mean, Reid Hoffman is a prolific Democratic donor or she's being targeted because a jury found Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse.

And then I think it's a different

jury that found him guilty for defamation

or maybe it was the same matter.

It is of a part, I mean, Tish James, Jim Comey, John Bolton, I mean, this is, and your reporting really makes it richer. It is E. Jean Carroll and Reid Hoffman under criminal investigation by Todd Blanche's Department of Justice.

[Carol Lennig]

Dead right, Nicole. Dead right. This is of a piece, this is a Justice Department that, you know, I never thought I would say these words as just a straight up objective reporter. But this is a Department of justice that has put all its oars in the water, especially since Pam Bondi's firing. It's accelerated this desire to prosecute every possible case that would please Donald Trump, that would go after someone that has angered him. And honestly, again, back to the tricky factor. I think some of the goal of the framing of, of who this case is focused on is partly because that is something anonymous sourcers want to please Donald Trump with. Right? They want to make him happy and say, look, we're going after Jean Carroll and no doubt she has swept into this. No doubt, given the they'll be analyzing her statements, they'll be looking at perjury. But this really, really is, at least at the moment, I'm told, focused on Hoffman. Back to your point of this is of a piece. I've never seen a Department of justice spend so much time on cases that career prosecutors find disdainful, a waste of time. And back to your really smart question, if you don't mind me addressing it. The issue could very well be here and we don't have enough facts. I hope to have more soon. But the issue here could be we have a way to possibly bring charges about hoffman and sweep Ms. Carol in. I've heard that two of the Statutes that they're looking at are money laundering and obstruction. Sources have told me this makes zero sense. But maybe there is a, you know, a fig leaf of a legal justification for doing this, and maybe there are real facts to back this up. We just don't know yet.

[Nicole Wallace]

But the fact, I guess, Melissa, that Carolyn is saying and reporting that it's equally plausible that he's pursuing one enemy and swept up the other, or the other enemy and swept up the other is the whole damn point. All they do is go sniffing around like stray rodents around the garbage looking for something to. I mean, this is how the judge argues in the dismissal of the Kilmar

Abrego Garcia case, that it was a

prosecution in search of facts and that

Todd Blanche was behind it.

[Melissa Murray]

No.

[Molly Zhang Fast]

Again, there's a lot of open questions here. When I read about this, I had the same question you had about venue. Why is this being investigated out of the Northern District of Illinois? Netflix, to my understanding, is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Reid Hoffman lives in Palo Alto. E. Jean Carroll lives here in New York. The Northern District of California, the Southern District of New York look like more obvious homes for this investigation. I wonder if they could not find a U.S. attorney willing to do that in either of those districts. But they found a more hospitable U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Illinois. Who knows? We don't know. What we do know is that this is a Department of justice that is basically operating as a private law firm for Donald Trump, pursuing his interests, not the interests of the American public. I'm sure that there are a number of things going on in the Northern District of Illinois that requires the attention of the U.S. attorney's office. And the taxpayers should know those things are not getting attention because instead, we are focused on investigating Reid Hoffman. And maybe E. Jean Carroll gets swept up in it. Or we're simply prosecuting all of these people who are on a list because they've angered the President of the United States in some way. This is not how prosecutors typically work.

[Nicole Wallace]

And the point about Reid Hoffman as a potential target, I mean, this is also part of a piece in terms of attacking Democratic campaign infrastructure, the donors

and the actual Infrastructure act blues under investigation as well.

[Molly Zhang Fast]

That is, it's meant to have a deterrent effect. This is what happens to you if you are a prominent donor, if you're someone who has resources and you marshal them in favor of causes that the president doesn't like, they will come after you. And again, it doesn't have to be availing everyone I Think agrees that there probably isn't much there there, but the process is the punishment. You've gotta defend it, you've gotta get up, your name is diminished in some way. I mean, Jim Comey talked about all of this.

[Melissa Murray]

That's the point.

[Molly Zhang Fast]

And it's a massive deterrent to anyone speaking out.

[Nicole Wallace]

I want to show you, you were friends with Eugene. I want to show you what she had to say about prevailing in her defamation case against Donald Trump.

On with my colleague Rachel Maddow.

[E. Jean Carroll]

I think we've made a statement that, That things are going to be different, that there's going to be a new way of doing things in this country because of this indestructible team of lawyers. Rachel, I am sometimes 50 years older than some of the associates on our team. I'm 40 years older than Sean. I'm 30 years older than Robbie. And together this team of brilliant young people have, as you said, stood up to the man who, by the way, Rachel, is not even there. He's nothing. He is without. He is like a walrus snorting and like a rhino flopping his hand. It was. He is not.

[Nicole Wallace]

I think the one clip does as good of a job as anything at showing why he's so enraged. One, he lost legally. Two, he lost financially. Three, he lost reputationally.

[Ibram X. Kendi]

Look, this is the whole gestalt of Trumpism. And this, it comes back to Project 2025. What they told us they were going to do before Donald Trump got into office was an expanded presidential power. The, you know, a presidency that's really for Trump, by Trump, and that's what we're seeing in the doj. I mean, you read this quote about how it's on behalf of justice. There is no world in which this E. Jean Carroll thing is on behalf of justice for who? And so I do think these are jury verdicts.

[Melissa Murray]

These are.

[Ibram X. Kendi]

And, but you know, this history, American history, has had moments like this. And I think of my grandfather who was blacklisted by McCarthy and put in jail for three months. Like we have seen the American government go off the rails before many times. And so this is not like unprecedented. This is something that happens. And this is why we need Democrats prepared for when they get back into office with the real norms, this sort of anti corruption legislation we saw after Nixon. You know, instead of norms, we need like real laws that prevent this kind of thing.

[Nicole Wallace]

What's amazing though is as you're talking, you know, the other story that we've been covering in the split screen is the weaponization fund for Convicted insurrectionists, many of whom pleaded guilty in front of justice judges. Others were convicted by juries. The vast majority of them copped their crimes in sentencing adjudicated criminals. Trump makes a slush fund available for them while brazenly turning his. Like, there's always a projection. Trump is always doing the thing that he's claiming he was a victim of, for sure.

[Ibram X. Kendi]

And also a lot of this stuff seems so far outside the norm. Like the slush fund is being looked at by judges. It's gonna be looked at by a lot of. Does feel like Todd Blanche is acting really as a lawyer for Trump more than anything. Right. Because this is. There's no precedent for a slush fund for people who feel they've been offended. I mean, it's just wild. And so a lot of the stuff we see with Trump is like tearing down the East Wing. Stuff that is not necessarily illegal, but no one's ever done it because it's so outside of the norms. And that is, I think Democrats problem was that they did not necessarily put in laws because we didn't think that things like that needed to be illegal because people never did it. And I think that is gonna need to be. I mean, you couldn't have seen it coming, but you also are gonna have to do something to shore up the norms of democracy.

[Melissa Murray]

I'm not sure it's accurate to say that it's not illegal. It's just not something we normally have done. I mean, I think tearing down the East Wing, which is at historic preservation

[Nicole Wallace]

site, might very well be illegal.

[Melissa Murray]

Might very well be illegal.

[Nicole Wallace]

What he's erecting doesn't appear to have

gone through any legal appro process.

[Melissa Murray]

This is a guy with an edifice complex, 100%. We understand that, but I think this is. I think you're right. This is like McCarthy, but it's also different because this is organized around a single person, not necessarily a movement. And in that regard, I think it is unprecedented. I mean, we had government of by and for the people, and now we have government of by and for this one guy.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah. And I guess what's extraordinary is that Todd Blanche isn't saying otherw. You know, he said we are, quote, lucky that Donald Trump is picking the prosecutions for us. We're going to sneak in a break. We're going to let Carolina do some reporting in that short time. We'll keep this conversation going on the other side. Also ahead for us, as I mentioned, a group of former federal judges are calling out Donald Trump, alleging collusion and deception and how he settled his lawsuit, his IRS lawsuit and the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund that came of that settlement. They'll put that in air quotes, what they're asking a court to do now. Plus the stock trader in chief trades again and is using his job in the White House to make that stock price rise again and again. And profiting off the presidency as Americans continue to say they are struggling to pay for everyday necessities. And later, a huge shakeup at one of the oldest and most revered news programs in the country as the new Trump aligned media owners make their mark. All those stories and much more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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[Carol Lennig]

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[Nicole Wallace]

We are back with Carol, Molly and Melissa. Carol, let me do. Let me do a little bit of housekeeping here. We were asking you and wondering why Chicago? Why the northern district of Illino? We wondered if it had anything to do with where businesses were located. We misspoke and sort of flip flopped the name of the founder of Netflix. He is not implicated in this. Your reporting was that this was about a donor named Reid Hoffman. Just tell us more about what you're learning and what you're reporting about possible reasons why this venue is where the E. Jean Carroll criminal investigation is based out of.

[Carol Lennig]

Thank you, Nicole. Thanks for giving me a little time. I think I got a whole:90.

[Nicole Wallace]

I know you well enough to know how much you can do in a minute and 90 seconds.

[Carol Lennig]

Well, your team, too. Hats off to you guys. We are reporting now at Ms. Now that this investigation, which is sweeping in Jean Carroll, is focused on Reid Hoffman's nonprofit and possible money laundering charges. Again, I want to emphasize for fairness that there are many people I've spoken to who have serious doubts about whether there is a real legal basis for this. But we don't have all the facts, so we're not going to give our judgment. But this nonprofit, which is called America Future Republic, was founded by Hoffman in 2019 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. And I just want to thank sources who literally saw me on air and reached out to add what they could and we were able to verify a few new things there.

[Nicole Wallace]

We're grateful to you for doing that. I want to add what the New York Times is reporting and see if we can all sort of lay these things next to each other. New York Times reports Justice Department is said to Open Criminal Inquiry of E. Jean Carroll Over Trump Lawsuits Andrew Boutros, A Trump appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, opened the inquiry into Ms. Carol. The conduct of prosecutors under Boutros supervision has come under serious criticism in recent days. Last last Thursday, he announced that misdemeanor charges against people who had protested outside an immigration detention facility near Chicago last year would be dismissed. In a hearing in downtown Chicago, Boutros said that potential misconduct by prosecutors during the grand jury process had led to the dismissal. Defense lawyers said that prosecutors working under Boutros held conversations with individual grand jurors outside the courtroom about the case. A breach of rules Is this, Carolina, your understanding of, of the office? This office, led by Mr. Boutro, it has the criminal investigation into both Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Carol.

[Carol Lennig]

I think that reporting from the Times is quite solid, though. I say that based on knowing the quality of the people involved, not with my own independent reporting. But I think that is accurate description based on what I've heard and also that I, that I vouch safe for those individuals who are doing this reporting. I think what's really important to underline here, if I may, is something Melissa alluded to in our last chat before the break, and that is that this department is sort of on a hunt for whomever will bring the case, who, whomever will please the king. It's such a strange thing to say aloud. I am not positing a theory here about Mr. Boutros. I'm not claiming that people are compromised here, there or the other. But this department with solid reporting that we have done, is angling to remove prosecutors who raise questions and doubts about the legality of opening these investigations without a predicate. Basically, what you guys were describing earlier, let's say let's just open up and start sniffing around for the possibility there could be a crime. Sort of find me the man and I'll find you. The crime is the policy now. And this department is hunting for people who are willing enablers of a new system of justice in which we are going to do exactly that. Instead of worrying that we have evidence of a crime and then opening an investigation to determine it, we are going to go through a list and figure out do we have any dirt we can bring up about this person.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, Carol, it's an important point because I think you and I have been around government, we've all been around government long enough to know that there's not an extra group of people working on prosecuting and investigating the made up crimes to please the king. It's the same group of people. And in fact they are the department's being gutted. I think there is. What's been reported is about a 7 to 10% deficit in the workforce. So it's the same group of people. And I heard from a former national security official today, I mean, the despair on the national security side of what the department is not doing because they're doing this is growing by the week.

[Carol Lennig]

Yes, absolutely. And you used the right word here, Nicole. Gutted. Remember what happened in Minnesota. I'm just going to remind viewers U.S. attorney's office based in Minneapolis had a 1/3 reduction in its team of prosecutors after there was a pressure campaign from Washington, from the White House, from the dhs, from the Department of Justice to prosecute protesters as domestic terrorists and to not investigate a federal officer for the possible use of unauthorized deadly force when he killed Renee Goode. That's what's happening in U.S. attorney's offices over and over and over again. I've heard stories from the Eastern District of Virginia. I've heard stories from the Western District of Virginia. I've heard stories from the U.S. attorney's office in D.C. of how few people are literally left standing. Now add and compound to that, that instead of focusing on something that might say, protect Molly where she lives, protect Melissa where she lives, might protect all of us from another Nine. Instead of doing that, we are going to focus on the quote, unquote, enemies list of Donald Trump.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, Melissa, I think a lot of people watching wonder why it can't be stopped.

[Melissa Murray]

I mean, it's a good question. I think it could be stopped.

[Molly Zhang Fast]

You know, one entity that could have

[Melissa Murray]

a lot to say here is the entity that funds the government, Congress. Congress could step in like, they have the power to call hearings, they can have oversight hearings about how this is being run, what is these resources are being used for in the name of the people. And we just haven't seen appetite for that. And, you know, that's an open question. I think people ought to be asking, what is Congress doing if these resources are being used in ways that don't make us safer, that don't make the streets safer, that actually may compromise our security in other ways. So, you know, that's one aspect of it. The other point is the point I think Molly made. You know, in a lot of ways, we are a government kind of held together by friendship bracelets and norms, and we found someone who doesn't care about norms or friendship bracelets, and they're just moving fast and breaking things. And maybe we need to put some more guardrails in. This certainly needs to be what the next chapter looks like, rebuilding doj, but also putting in real guardrails that can hold in a situation like this.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, judges have played that role. And when. I mean, Donald Trump has been delivered more defeats by judges, even some that

he appointed, than any actor in any

of the three branches of government. New York Times is reporting that Trump has refiled a 10 billion with a B dollar lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. I'll read to you from that story. Trump Wednesday refiled his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the publisher of the Wall Street Journal over an article about a birthday book greeting to the sex offender. Jeffrey Epstein. A judge had dismissed Trump's previous complaint. The amended complaint, like the original one, was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of of Florida. Judge Darren Gales had thrown out Trump's first lawsuit in April, saying that the President had not plausibly shown the Wall Street Journal publish the article with actual malice, the legal standard that must be met by public officials in defamation cases. He just keeps, you know, to the point about investigating perceived enemies. The process and the pain and the cost of the process is the punishment. On the other side of the ledger, the continued resubmission of weak and failing and flawed cases is part of the lawfare. They're engaged in.

[Ibram X. Kendi]

Right. It's like to my friends, everything and to my enemies, the law. Remember that. But look, what's so interesting about this Wall Street Journal case. Who owns the Wall Street Journal? Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, who owns a lot of conservative media, but who is a longtime media owner and knows the power of the First Amendment versus a lot of the very sycophantic people in Trump world who have taken over media entities to create arms of Trumpism. So I think it is interesting to see him stand up for his reporters. The Wall Street Journal has done really incredible reporting and has, you know, understands the importance of the First Amendment. And I do think, look, this is, I mean, Melissa, we were talking about, you know, we don't have, we this, we're sort of in a moment that is again, there's some historical precedent, but not much. And so it is. But what we see with the Trump administration losing in court is that a lot of this is not legal. Most of this is not legal. And if they can sort of spin out the clock long enough, that's what happens. But it's, it's, well, I don't even know.

[Melissa Murray]

It's just about spinning out the clock long enough. I mean, these refilings, I mean, this is a calculated attempt to, to have his vision of what the law should be hold. Right. So we've seen him go up against these media entities in a lot of cases. You know, I think under the actual malice standard that you mentioned for defamation, they'd probably lose. But he actually winds up getting a settlement with some of these entities because nobody wants to be in litigation with the president. And when you're in a settlement with the president, like, and he wins because he there's been a settlement, you basically concretize his vision of the law that the media company did something wrong, even though no judge and cbs, I mean, in a way, it's him usurping the court's obligation to say what the law is.

[Ibram X. Kendi]

And that's the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. And Trump 1.0 people did stand up to him. So the institutions held in Trump 2.0, you had all these billionaires just doing sycophancy. And that's how we got here, which

[Nicole Wallace]

sets up our next story perfectly. Caroline, thank you so much for bringing us your reporting as it was coming in. We're so grateful to you and to your sources. Molly Zhang, for, thank you for starting us off. Melissa sticks around. After the break, we'll turn to this. Nearly three dozen former federal judges are asking the court to investigate Trump's slush fund and the lawsuit that led to it. We'll tell you what they're saying next.

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[Chris Hayes]

you Artificial intelligence is moving very, very fast and it's raising new questions just about every day about what it is, what it isn't. When all is said and done, what is the end game? I'm Chris Hayes and as part of my podcast why Is this Happening? I'm speaking with leading experts each week to help ground that conversation.

[Melissa Murray]

We're right now in a situation where

[Carol Lennig]

it's very difficult to understand what is

[Ibram X. Kendi]

real and what's not real.

[Chris Hayes]

Why is this happening? The AI Endgame, a special miniseries from Ms. Now. Start listening today wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nicole Wallace]

Dozens of former federal judges from across the political spectrum have launched a bid to upend what they call Donald Trump's unprecedentedly fraudulent $1.8 billion anti weaponization fund, the slush fund. In a blistering filing, the group urged a judge in Miami to reverse her decision to dismiss Donald Trump's lawsuit against the IRS and to instead investigate the deal to settle as an act of collusion. The judges write this quote, the purported settlement that the parties never placed before this court raises profound questions about the party's candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system, which threatens to undermine confidence in the administration of justice, adding that by reopening the case, the judge can, quote, commence an inquiry into whether the court was deceived and that it would, quote, preserve the status quo and ensure that the settlement provisions cannot be carried out while the court completes the inquiry. That was detailed by the voluntary that was derailed by the voluntary dismissal. I want to bring into our coverage former assistant special agent in charge at the FBI, national security and intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg. Melissa is still with us. Michael Feinberg, the judges weighing in, they have over the last 15 months really chosen their arguments, chosen their spots, and this one seems very intentional.

[Carol Lennig]

Yeah.

[Legal Analyst (possibly a judge or legal expert)]

I think it's important to view what the judges are doing not in the context of the past year and a half of this administration, but in the context of the history of the entire Article 3 system. We have never seen in American history groups of judges and associations and individual former members of the judiciary take as active a public advocacy role as they have recently. And I think that should be a sign to us that things really are dire for the rule of law, not just with respect to the executive branch, but with respect to how it is trying to manipulate the other co equal branches of which, for all intents and purposes, only one is functioning independently. Right now. We should be very alarmed that their own alarm bells are going off.

[Nicole Wallace]

I want to show you what Judge Shira Shenlon had to say on our network.

[Judge Shira Scheindlin]

What was really short circuited is whether there was a really honest case or controversy. If there was no case, then the court had no jurisdiction and you couldn't settle a case that doesn't belong in the court. So you take away the underpinning of the entire so called settlement, which is based on that case. It even uses the caption, it says, you know, this case was filed and now we're settling this case. Two days later. She was to receive briefs. The judge was to receive briefs as to whether there was a real case or controversy. But by rushing into court on that day, on May 18, she never saw those briefs. She never got a chance to rule. And we don't know if there was a real case or controversy.

[Nicole Wallace]

I need you to do a little bit of translating. But what I understand this to be is the judge had indicated that there couldn't be a case or controversy because he was suing himself.

[Melissa Murray]

Right. So the constitution and Article 3 specifically says that federal courts only have jurisdictions over so called cases or controversy. There is no controversy if there isn't adversity between the parties in this particular case, even though the President was filing this in his personal capacity, he was on both sides of the V because he is the President suing in his personal capacity. But it is against an agency of the United States government, which he is technically the head of. So he's on both sides of the V. And there was this whole hearing that was supposed to be had about whether or not this. There was true adversity between these parties. If there wasn't, the case would have to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction. And then before that hearing could happen, before the judge could weigh in on whether this was a live case or controversy, there's this announced settlement, a voluntary motion to dismiss the case voluntarily with prejudice that the judge grants. A number of people, including people on my podcast, suggested that maybe the judge should have had a hearing to sort of probe the nature of the dismissal, whether there was a settlement in the offing, what that settlement might look like. That didn't happen. And these former federal judges are now weighing in to say this has to be reopened under federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60, which allows you to reopen a final judgment of the court. They say that this is a final judgment, this dismissal, and that this court has an obligation to look at this to make sure that a fraud wasn't perpetrated on the court because the settlement, they argue, is the product of collusion and it needs to be addressed. And even if the court is unwilling to reopen it under Rule 60, the court should nonetheless investigate whether or not there has been a fraud perpetrated because of the nature of the settlement.

[Nicole Wallace]

And if they decide that a fraud has been perpetrated, who in Trump's very corrupt DOJ cares?

[Melissa Murray]

Well, I mean, that's a good question. Like, this is one of those situations that we've been talking about for the

[Molly Zhang Fast]

entire length of the second Trump presidency.

[Melissa Murray]

Like, you know, do they listen to courts? Like, what are they going to do? They've announced that they're going to do this. But again, I think if there is more kicking of the tires around the settlement, I think certainly the public has a right to know what's really going on here. You know, one thing that I think hasn't been talked about enough is that, you know, this settlement, which ostensibly may benefit those who rioted against the government on January 6 and were pardoned, but subsequently have been doing other things. You know, this is how you pay a private army for the next insurrection, if you really think about it. And, you know, who knows if that's what's happening? It's really interesting that one of the alleged clauses in the settlement indemnifies the United States for the misuse of any of the funds that are distributed to any of these beneficiaries. Why would the government need to do that? I mean, there's so much to ask here. Leaving aside just the basic constitutional Questions of can this even be done? Does it violate the separation of powers? Does it violate the 14th amendment? They're just basic questions about what are these funds going to be used for and by whom.

[Nicole Wallace]

We know it's a story as old as the second Trump term that Congress doesn't seem to care about doing their jobs. But Bruce Springsteen is filling the void. I'll show that to you next.

[E. Jean Carroll]

We have a president who wants to create a one point billion dollar fund to compensate and reward people who attacked our nation's capital, Attacked our democracy, assaulted our police officers on January 6th. This is an American outrage and this is happening now.

[Nicole Wallace]

Filling the void doesn't begin to get at what Bruce Springsteen is doing. He is. Lots of our viewers are wide aw. Lots of Americans are wide awake. But he was in Washington, D.C. where some of the political class wasn't yet awake. And you were there last night, Michael Feinberg. Now they are.

[Legal Analyst (possibly a judge or legal expert)]

Yeah, I think people were pretty awake going into that show. For anybody who's seen it, he opens it not with a song, but with a brief monologue before the first song that makes no secret of his contempt for this administration, particularly with the way it has disregarded rule of law and traditional American values. And he does something interesting in the whole show, which made me very glad to see, which is that he wraps his criticism in the tradition of Americana. He is not content to let the MAGA opposition own the notion of patriotism. He sings old protest songs. There are references to. To the works of John Steinbeck and the films of John Ford. There are multiple moments with flying flags being projected as large as possible on the video screen. He's essentially throwing down a gauntlet in a lot of ways other people have not. And that he's reminding the critics of Trump, the people who are foes of this nascent authoritarianism, that it's our country, too, and we own patriotism as much, if not more than the people who we find ourselves opposed to.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, I mean, it's super important, Melissa, that this point not be lost on anybody. I mean, it starts with a prayer for the men and women of the military, for their safety, for their safe return home. 13 men and women have died in Donald Trump's war with Iran. And. And if none of the rest of us are owed an explanation about what the purpose of that war is, they sure as hell are. I mean, this idea, I mean, I say this only half jokingly, that this concert came to DC Last night where a lot of the political class is still operating like business as usual. But you see it everywhere. You see people asking Scott Besant questions. Scott Besant is the Secretary of Treasury who sat in a Cabinet meeting telling Donald Trump how smart he is. Kelly Loeffler said, all the people that I meet want me to tell you that they love you. Billions of Trump's own voters are furious. They are rip shit about the economy and this sort of wrapping in bubble wrap and lies. The prestige of the presidency in this faux patriotism feels like something that it should be more than Bruce Springsteen puncturing that.

[Melissa Murray]

No, I think the point that Michael makes is a good one. It's not simply that Bruce Springsteen is asserting his own patriotism, but he is resisting this idea that the president and many people in the administration continually tout, that progressives or people who disagree with the president are not patriots, that they don't love this country, that they don't love America. In fact, what Bruce Springsteen is saying, like, we love America so much that we are literally willing to do what democracy demands, which is to be skeptical and critical of the government and to call the government out, out when it goes too far. I mean, I talk about this in my book. I mean, that's the whole point of the Constitution. It is about limiting government, but also empowering the people to defend their rights. It requires individuals who are discerning and critical and skeptical, who just don't roll over and adopt the government's orthodoxies but say, you know, like, I'm not quite sure I agree with that. That's the whole point of a democracy. Dissent is at the core of what that is. And dissent is what this administration has, has over and over again tried to

[Nicole Wallace]

silence, not just try, but that's what they, I mean, to tie the whole hour together. That's what they have their cronies and U.S. attorney's offices investigating and attempting to prosecute. That is how they roll. Michael Feinberg, we're glad you were there. Thank you for joining us today. And Melissa Murray, thank you for spending the whole hour with me after the break. For us, two new groups moving forward to try to stop Donald Trump's arch project in one Washington. We'll tell you about that next. There's growing blowback to Donald Trump's ludicrous attempts to remake the nation's capital in his own image. House Democrats have a proposal to stop the arc, the Arc de Trump, which threatens to be more than double the height of the Lincoln Memorial and would tower over Arlington National Cemetery, according to the latest plans approved by Donald Trump's commission. Congressman Dan Beyer said this about the legislation he proposed? Quote, arlington National Cemetery is sacred ground, the resting place for our heroes. Desecrating this hallowed space to build a monument to Trump's ego is wrong. It would waste taxpayer money and break the law. A group of Vietnam veterans are suing the Trump administration, arguing the third the 250 foot arch blocks the sight line connecting the Lincoln and Robert E. Lee memorials, a connection which was intentional signaling unity after the end of the Civil War. We'll stay on top of that after the break. New scrutiny around a multi billion with a B dollar White House contract that has also made Donald Trump a whole lot richer. We'll bring you that story.

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