← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“Jeffrey Epstein and his infiltration of the justice system”
00:41:55
Nicolle Wallace covers new reporting from The Miami Herald which details how Jeffrey Epstein cultivated relationships with high-ranking officials in the Florida justice system, including the former chief of the criminal division in Miami, to gain special favors and lower sentences for his crimes.
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- [00:00]
Glenn Thrush
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- [00:21]
Podcast Host
Subscribe to MSNow Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad free listening and bonus content to all of MSNOW's original podcasts. Exclusive 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 Pod.
- [00:57]
Nicole Wallace
Hi everyone, it's four o'clock in New York. The relentless courage and the pursuit of accountability by the survivors of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, combined with some intrepid reporting that pulls the curtain back on Jeffrey Epstein's world and the world of his associates, has Team Trump on his back foot today. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the Trump Justice Department is reviewing whether it withheld certain files, including interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was a child just 13 or 14 years old. Of course, that is a bit like asking the fox to guard the hen house these days. Our colleague Lisa Rubin reported on Wednesday that in a memo, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch asked staffers reviewing the files to flag certain materials, like the interviews from the accuser that are now missing. The Justice Department's previously stated defense for why any files would be missing don't exactly add up either. They have said that all documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein have been produced, unless they fall into one of three categories duplicates, privileged material, or part of an ongoing investigation. But the missing documents are clearly not duplicates. If they were, we would have been able to find the other copies. As Lisa Rubin said on our show this week, nothing in these documents would be privileged. So I guess that means this Justice Department is actually investigating Donald Trump. Color me skeptical. Here's what ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia, had to say about that.
- [02:31]
Glenn Thrush
It is outrageous that the DOJ right now is hiding these documents, and there is no reason, no, certainly no legal reason for them to be doing so. And so either the President's under investigation or The DOJ is lying to us.
- [02:48]
Nicole Wallace
Meanwhile, reporters continue to comb through what has been made available of the Epstein material. A blockbuster piece of reporting from Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald details how Jeffrey Epstein cultivated relationships with the very same people who could have investigated him while he continued to sexually abuse women and girls for more than a decade after serving time in prison in 2009. From that new reporting, quote, the documents reveal how Jeffrey Epstein wooed state and federal prosecutors, assistant district attorneys, sheriff's deputies, probation officers, federal marshals, and Customs and Border Patrol officers. The Justice Department was well aware of Epstein's attempts to compromise the legal system. At least two federal probes were conducted. One was in 2011. It was into whether Jeffrey Epstein unduly influenced federal prosecutors involved in his Florida criminal case. And the other was in 2020, it looked into allegations that officers from the US Customs and Border Protection turned a blind eye to the young female passengers Jeffrey Epstein flew into the St Thomas Airport on his private plane. Neither of those probes ever resulted in criminal charges. The bombshell revelations about what is in the Epstein files and the bombshells about what is still missing from the Epstein files and is the backdrop for what the GOP led House Oversight Committee is up to today. That committee is, as we come on the air, deposing Hillary Clinton who says she has never met Jeffrey Epstein. She has said publicly she met Ghislaine Maxwell a few times. Former President Bill Clinton is set to be deposed tomorrow. That would make him the first former president to be compelled to testify in a congressional investigation. Former President Bill Clinton has said he knew nothing about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes and neither he nor his wife have been accused of wrongdoing involving Jeffrey Epstein. Hillary Clinton has published her opening statement to the committee on social Media. It reads, quote, if this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein's trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement. It would ask him directly and under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files. If the majority was serious, it would not waste time on fishing expeditions. There's too much that needs to be done. What is being held back, who is being protected and why the COVID up? Those questions are where we start today. Tara Palmeri is back with us. She writes the Red letter on Substack. She has hosted two acclaimed podcast series on the Epstein case. Joining me at the table, former Assistant Special Agent in charge at the FBI, our national security and intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg. Here in New York with us. We're going to start with our senior congressional correspondent, Ali Vitale, who is covering that deposition of Hillary Clinton for us from Chappaqua, New York. Ali, tell us what is, what is happening? What has happened?
- [05:50]
Ali Vitali
Well, look, this is after months of haggling, Nicole, between the committee and the Clintons. The Clintons saying, we're happy to come talk about this. We just want to do it publicly. And that's an important thread for us to follow throughout today because ultimately they did come, an agreement that they would do it here in Chappaqua, about an hour north of New York City, where, near where the Clintons live. They were going to do it behind closed doors. And that is what happened for the first hour and a half. But then sometime this afternoon, a picture was leaked through Congresswoman Lauren Boebert to a conservative influencer that was posted on social media, caused the committee to basically say, all right, pause. We got to go off the record here, figure out what's happening. A Clinton spokesperson came out and said there was a pause in the deposition proceedings inside the room. I'm told by sources who were there that there was a conversation between Clinton lawyers and James Comer, the head of the committee, basically saying, if you're going to put these pictures up online, then we want the press to come in the room and listen to the rest of the deposition. We agreed this would be private. Obviously, that's not what's happening here. Colmer then conferred with attorneys, conferred with colleagues, decided, no, it's just one picture. We're going to proceed as usual. And that is how it went. I do think, though, that the Clintons asking for press to be in the room is notable. It's something that Democrats from the committee came out and reiterated repeatedly. But I also think the way Republicans went into the room not acknowledging the fact that Hillary Clinton has said she didn't know Jeffrey Epstein, she was not aware of any of the criminal activities. She says in her statement that you just read from Nicole, she'd never been to the island. She had never been on the plane. She has nothing to say about those issues. It's what makes Hillary Clinton a clearly political move out of a committee that is trying to say that they are pursuing this in nonpartisan fashion. It's also partly why I asked Chairman James Comer, okay, if everything's nonpartisan here, then do you also want to hear from people like Congress, like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick? And he actually answered me today in a different way than he's answered me to that question. On the Hill recently, Nicole, he said that's a possibility and then pivoted away from it. But you can bet that Democrats on the committee who heard him say that to me are going to follow up on it. And I think for your viewers who hear the Democrats saying we want to see Trump, we want to see Lutnick, there are all these things that we want to do on this committee. This is a reminder that you don't really have much power if you are in the minority, which is where Democrats are right now as they continue to pursue this investigation.
- [08:14]
Nicole Wallace
I want to ask you, Tara Palmieri, what other than politics, questions you would have for Hillary Clinton. I mean, what part of this does she illuminate in a truly transparent fact finding mission?
- [08:32]
Tara Palmeri
Well, Hillary Clinton was very close with Glenn Maxwell. She was a VIP guest at the Clinton Global Initiative. According to CNN's reporting, she was. I mean, you can see her there. She also attended Chelsea Clinton's wedding. That is a very privileged invite. I think maybe she had one degree of separation between herself and Jeffrey Epstein, but he was certainly in their world. And for Jeffrey Epstein, everything was about proximity to power, having that relationship that extended after his conviction as a sex offender, even if it extended to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was obviously so closely entangled with his network. I mean, that gave him power for a very long time until his arrest in 2019. So whether she has knowledge directly or indirectly, I would want to know everything that she knew well.
- [09:30]
Nicole Wallace
And that brings us to Julia K. Brown's incredible reporting. She's been with Tara at the forefront of really peeling back the layers. And, and we should be clear, we're talking about, I've tried to put them in these different rings. I mean, the removal of Brad Karp from running Paul Weiss is about this ring of contacts. The removal of Peter, his name is Attia from CBS is about someone who had horrific content in an exchange but isn't accused of engaging in the trafficking. This ring is getting a lot of exposure and she really delves deep into this ring, ring of enablers. I think the vital circle of the men who may have participated in child rape and sex trafficking remains more opaque. Do you agree with that?
- [10:21]
Michael Feinberg
Yeah, I think that's probably true. It is highly unlikely that, for example, the FBI or even local police departments that got wind of this in some of the cities where Jeffrey Epstein lived would let those accusations occur without taking some sort of follow up action. And that's really what makes the missing documents purportedly about President Trump so interesting. It's not A question of just one document and a single accusation that was chased down and sort of delved into. We know there's four documents missing. It is incredibly rare for an FBI investigator to have to go back to an interview subject, not just one extra time or two extra time, but three extra times, to develop more information. It suggests that there is more to that universe of inquiry than what we know right now. Either the FBI developed something that could bolster the purported victim's testimony, or maybe they developed something that could undermine its credibility. But either way, it wasn't the sort of thing that was apparently resolved quickly or easily.
- [11:35]
Nicole Wallace
The four interviews happened in 2019 while Donald Trump was president. It seems unfathomable now. I mean, how can you just tell me how that happened? Or is that normal? I mean, we now are sort of colored by what we view as Trump's heavy hands on top of the FBI reaching into it. Would it have just been normal for the FBI to interview a potential child victim of sexual assault and physical assault four times? Or that still isn't normal.
- [12:05]
Michael Feinberg
It's really fact determinative. It's hard to say without knowing what's in those 302s, which are what we call the documentary records of an interview. You know, I'll say this. It occurred in 2019. William Barr was the Attorney General. He was certainly a Trump partisan. The way he handled the Mueller report, for example, was inexcusably partisan. But he was also, at some level, an institutionalist who cared about the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice. Todd Blanch. Todd Blanche left a storied law firm to create his own firm for the sole purposes of representing Donald Trump. He now has taken that mindset to the Department of Justice, where him and Pam Bondi treat the RFK Building as essentially a sitting room or satellite office of the White House. So Barr, at the end of the day, would have allowed those inquiries to go forward. I think Blanche and Bondi, at the end of the day, are more the sort of people who would search for a way to cover them up.
- [13:11]
Nicole Wallace
Would he have even known about it? I mean, could something happen in the FBI field office without these sitting Attorney General knowing?
- [13:17]
Michael Feinberg
There are, and I'm going to get away from the specifics because I'm not quite sure how much is public now, but. But there are safeguards where if you are interviewing somebody at the level of the President or a Cabinet secretary or a member of the Gang of Eight in Congress, it is inconceivable that senior FBI and DOJ management would not be made aware of the activity?
- [13:41]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I mean, I guess I asked Tara Palmeri because there is a chunk in Jeffrey Berman's book, his own memoir, his own telling, where he makes clear that there were aspects of the Epstein case that he kept from Main doj, which was run by Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein and their deputies. What is the. Again, I hate asking about normal, but I do believe that someday things will be normal again. What would the normal way to pursue the truth and the facts around this be?
- [14:13]
Tara Palmeri
I just don't really trust that the FBI or the Department of Justice have ever taken this case seriously. Just going back to 1996, when Maria Farmer put in a call to the FBI talking about the fact that her and her sister, who was 16 at the time, were literally moved into another state, New Mexico. Sister was fondled and she was touched inappropriately in a bed by Glenn Maxwell, and the FBI did nothing with that. So are we really supposed to believe that they take all of these tips seriously? I mean, that's the story of Annie Farmer, which was the key story, the key testimony in the case to indict and convict Belen Maxwell. Okay. They waited decades for that. And then you go to 2008 and you look at the fact that in the. Excuse me, the federal at the prosecutor Marie Vilafagna put forward six counts, 60, excuse me, of trafficking. And they were all dropped, all of them. And he went back to the state level and got one count of soliciting a minor for prostitution. I don't understand how we can just accept when we have 2.5 million documents in the ether, we don't know why we don't have them, that we are just supposed to accept. The Department of Justice has always done the right thing, that they have always been following up on all these tips and, and making sure that all of these girls who were trafficked, that none of that, they were never trafficked to anyone outside of Jeffrey Epstein, despite their own accounts.
- [15:51]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, I think that brings us to. I mean, I'll let you respond to that if you want to.
- [15:56]
Michael Feinberg
No, I mean, I think we have to be cautious about talking about the Department of Justice and the FBI as if they were monolithic entities. There are, I think, 90, some, if not over a hundred U.S. attorney's offices throughout the country. There are 56 FBI field offices. What agents and prosecutors at the line level pursue doggedly, of course, are sometimes going to get swept away by either inept or malevolent management. We've both worked in government. We know that that is tragically. And horrifically, something that sometimes happens. I am not quite as ready as Tara is to paint with that particular brush the entire institution. But I'm also not going to deny that this case, like many sexual abuse cases I'm thinking particularly of Larry Nassar, was handled horrendously by the Department of Justice and the FBI. I think we just need to be careful about who we're levying the responsibility for that malfeasance against.
- [17:04]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I guess, Ali, what I'm wondering is, you know, the January 6th select committee was an example, again, from the outside, of a congressional committee with public support as the wind at its back seeming to from the outside, go further than the Department of Justice. Are the Democrats on the committee trying to model any of their investigative work and investigative conduct after that? And do they believe they can now make a case, again with the public support as wind at their backs, that if Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton are being deposed, why not Donald Trump and anyone around him?
- [17:42]
Ali Vitali
They're definitely trying to make that case. But here's what I think about the January 6th select committee a lot, because it was such a rare moment in Congress of not just having public opinion at their back, but of having Republicans and Democrats actually working toward the same goal on that committee. And that's important because, again, you need to have the majority in order to be able to enact the moves that you're trying to make. And so, yes, it is a blueprint for a committee that was effective, that was doing more than the DOJ was doing at the time. Ultimately, we know that there was a back and forth when the January 6th select committee was writing its final report. The DOJ behind the scenes was trying to say, okay, can you turn over all your transcripts, all your evidence, all the information that you've gotten? There was a push and pull for a few weeks and months there, but ultimately, the committee did make public what they had. What's different about this committee is that the work that they are doing. And I've asked several Democratic lawmakers, what's your goal here? Is it, as you talk to the survivors, to try to give them enough to bring some kind of a civil suit? When you talk to Les Wexner and you finally get him on the record about a whole number of issues and you release the transcript and the video, what is that meant to do? If it doesn't spur something criminal in terms of a prosecution, does it give you enough to try to give these survivors another avenue for accountability? And I know that it all feels like too little Anyway, and I think Tara is right that this has been slow. And of course, the arc of justice for women who have been treated in such a horrific manner is so slow and often bends towards justice too slowly. But I do think that for Democrats, they are thinking about how in the court of public opinion in the near term they can find ways to get accountability. They can find names to get names of men out there who participated in this. They can find ways and depositions that will be made public, including the one with Hillary Clinton today and Bill Clinton tomorrow, tomorrow, that they can find ways to ask questions that at least illuminate new avenues of investigation, even if they do not yet have gavel power, subpoena power, the ability to say, hey, we want to hear from Howard Lutnick, hey, we want to hear from President Donald Trump. But I think this is where the politics carries alongside the investigation, as it always does. The fact that Democrats now can add this to their midterm message and say through the lens of affordability and accountability, I think the two A's that govern the 2020, 2020, what are, what year are we in 2026 process, that, that, that is the way that they are going to be able to make that case. If you want more accountability, if you want these committees to actually act in nonpartisan favor, put us in the majority in the House and we will try to get closer to doing that. I mean, Congress is an imperfect body, but I think that's the way that I'm thinking about it through the lens that you're using of the J6 committee, how it's different, how it's the same, and how it might mirror what this can committee ultimately does.
- [20:25]
Nicole Wallace
And Helly, just quickly, is there any chance, I mean, Hillary Clinton has said something slightly different than what Tara's reporting suggests, that she never met Jeffrey Epstein and that she was, I think her words are, quote, not close to Ghislaine Maxwell. Is there any sense that she'll come out and speak on her own behalf after this deposition ends?
- [20:49]
Ali Vitali
That's not clear to me. And we don't have many of the specifics either from inside the deposition, though certainly I have tried to ask when Democrats came out. I do think an important thing that the ranking member, Robert Garcia did say to us in the last few hours is that at no point did she plead the Fifth that she has answered all questions. It is still ongoing. We don't have a sense of if Clinton is going to come out. I think that's very much a live ball at this point. It has been hours, though, of this deposition. I'm not sure if that weighs on the Clinton camp calculus at all here. Though, of course, she's been doing a lot of interviews. She's been talking a lot about this on the record. And by that metric, that is the reason that Colmer and other Republicans say they don't feel the need to go and ask Trump to come before the committee because they say he talks about this all the time in the press and that that is it seems sufficient for them. Of course, Democrats have a very different view and we all know that it's very different to testify before Congress under oath.
- [21:44]
Nicole Wallace
I don't know that I would even describe Trump as talking about this. He utters the same three sentences he stole her from me about Virginia Jiff Wray and totally exonerated, which is what he said about his perfect call. It's what he said about Aileen Cannon's cases, about documents. It's what he said about the Mueller report. It's sort of a thing he says a lot. Ali Vitali, thank you for your reporting. Tara Palmieri, thank you for your reporting. Michael Feinberg sticks around for a bit. When we come back, we'll be joined by Marina Lacerda. She is a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. She says Donald Trump and his Justice Department are dehumanizing her and her sisterhood of fellow survivors will have a chance to talk to her about what's happening today and where the fight for accountability and transparency goes next. Plus, Donald Trump's FBI director has purged another round of agents. A whole bunch of decades of experience has been taken away from the FBI and by extension, the American people. And their crime, if there was one, was that they were connected to Donald Trump's illegal storing of classified documents at Mar a Lago. We'll talk with a reporter covering that story about the timing of those firings as other headlines about Cash Patel seem to pile up. And later in the broadcast, Donald Trump again attacking our elections as he and his allies seem to see the only possible way they can cling to power is to rewrite and rig the rules of the game, starting with our elections. There's brand new reporting on his latest push to test the limits of his authority on that front. We have all those stories and more when Deadly White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [23:23]
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- [23:54]
Podcast Host
Subscribe to Ms. NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad free listening and bonus content to all of Ms. Now'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
- [24:27]
Marina Lacerda
I was only 14 years old when I met Jeffrey. It was the summer of high school. I was working three jobs to try to support my mom and my sister. From 14 to 17 years old, I went and worked for Jeffrey. Instead of receiving an education every day, I hoped that he would offer me a real job as one of his assistants or something. Something important. I would finally have made it big as, like we say, the American Dream. That day never came. I had no way. I had no way out. I was until he finally told me that I was too old.
- [25:09]
Nicole Wallace
That was Marina Lacerda. She made those statements publicly in September when she bravely shared her story of abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein for the first time publicly, Lacerda has been credited with helping secure the federal indictment of Jeffrey Epstein, publicly identifying herself as Epstein, unidentified minor victim one, in the 2019 federal indictment against the disgraced pedophile. Lacerda has been active in the push to hold the government accountable. She attended both the State of the Union address this week as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries guest and was there for Pam Bondi's performance, if you can call it that, at her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month. It is a privilege to bring in Marina Lacerda. Thank you so much for talking to us.
- [26:00]
Marina Lacerda
Thank you for having me.
- [26:01]
Nicole Wallace
How are you doing?
- [26:05]
Marina Lacerda
Tired, but definitely not tired enough to give up.
- [26:13]
Nicole Wallace
And what do you want? The government? What does the government holding on to? And in your understanding or in your sort of theory, why are they holding on to something that is really damaging to the credibility of Donald Trump and the Justice Department? What are they keeping secret in your analysis?
- [26:41]
Marina Lacerda
You know, at the end of the day, I think that we all can make sense of this. You know, it comes down to who are they really protecting here, you know, and that's why they're holding on to files and, you know, more redactions, you know, different types of things that we can't see as Americans. And sometimes I wonder how important are these people that they need to protect, but they don't want to protect the children in America. And it's not only in America, we have to look at these children that were abused in the past. It's all over the world at this point.
- [27:17]
Nicole Wallace
Marina, you were 14. Do you wonder how anyone with a 14 year old daughter or son could possibly look at you and not deliver all the accountability and transparency that you're asking for for the sake of their own kids and everyone's kids?
- [27:35]
Marina Lacerda
Well, I have a 12 year old daughter and my, you know, the reason why I was open about my story in public when I broke my silence in September was also because of Virginia and also because of my daughter and this generation. We need to keep this story alive. We need to bring awareness. And it just is very confusing. When I sit at the State of the Union and I was able to see the division between the Democrat and the Republican and how I just looked from on top and I was like, wow, these people here are listening to President Trump praise and brag about all these things that he has not done. He has not done and yet he did not bring up the Epstein files. But if we were talking about the American people and what he has done for, let's say, health care, let's talk about affordable groceries, mortgage, rent, none of it is true. We are struggling as Americans here. He also had said something about gas prices, which is not true. And when I look down, I look at these Republicans and I look at his supporters and I just see these people only care about if they have money in their pockets and don't care about what we've been through. And I think they live in a world where they think it won't happen to their children, it won't happen to their sister, it won't happen to their mother. And guess what? I'm going to tell you one thing. Money does not cover it. It can happen to anybody. And I think that's something that, you know, Trump supporters need to understand this. It can happen to your children. My child is very important to me. And if it happened to my child, I would be fighting everyone to get to the bottom of it. And I would hope that Trump would put himself in maybe my father's position and say, you know what, I need to fight for the truth and maybe, just maybe come and testify and come to a hearing and talk about what is really happening and why he's coming out in these files.
- [29:44]
Nicole Wallace
What do you say to Donald Trump when he calls the whole thing a hoax?
- [29:55]
Marina Lacerda
We don't have to say anything to him. We all know, he knows it's not a hoax. You know, it's, it's almost like a joke. It's, it's like the Pan Bondi hearing. It was a circus act. And he can say we are hoax, but we're not a hoax. We have our proof. We have been talking about it. We go back to 1996 where Maria Farmer was ignored about her statement. And now we are again ignoring other statements that are now allegations. But are we going to repeat the same thing again? We're going to ignore these allegations, these serious allegations that these women have talked about when they were young. Are we going to repeat this again and ignore it and then a decade from now talk about this? This is ridiculous. This is something the American people are lacking. We are looking all over the world. Everyone is taking action and they are bringing down monarchies. They are doing everything. People are getting arrested over here. We are doing absolutely nothing except talking about it in the news. And the most. And I think what we have to do and continue to do it is ask why hasn't President Trump, you know, just say, hey, listen, offered himself to say, I'm going to testify, I'm going to clear my name, not say that us, the victims, have exonerated him? Because last night I had, you know, rep on a Paulina Luna say that the victims have exonerated him. I have not yet talked to the doj. You think the Trump administration has reached out to myself? I can't speak for my survivor sisters, but I'm pretty close with them. I'm pretty sure they would have shared that with me. So it's, it's something that, you know, we're not a hoax here. I think the hoax is actually them.
- [31:50]
Nicole Wallace
Marina, I marvel at not just your ability to tell your story as you did in September, but to be part of our effort to understand all these developments. And I thank you for being part of our coverage today. Thank you so much.
- [32:06]
Marina Lacerda
Thank you for having me.
- [32:08]
Nicole Wallace
Thank you. Up next for us, did Kash Patel just execute another politically motivated purge? And is it ongoing? We'll bring you that reporting next.
- [32:24]
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Ali Vitali
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- [33:24]
Nicole Wallace
military deployed on the streets of America Whole communities targeted for removal.
- [33:30]
Marina Lacerda
There was tremendous anxiety as they saw neighbors and friends being taken and when
- [33:36]
Michael Feinberg
accountability finally came knocking, the Burn Order to cover it all up.
- [33:41]
Marina Lacerda
I never believed that America would be doing this.
- [33:44]
Nicole Wallace
A stain on this country. One that we said we would never repeat.
- [33:48]
Podcast Host
Rachel Meadow Presents Burn Order all episodes available now.
- [33:56]
Nicole Wallace
At a time when the nation's director of the FBI is guzzling beer and racking up one bad headline after another with his taxpayer funded and fueled adventures, most recently to the Olympic Games in Milan, Kash Patel seems to have turned to his tried and true tactic to make Donald Trump happy. Public retribution. Kash Patel fired at least 10 FBI employees this week, some of whom were veteran FBI agents, all of whom worked on the classified documents investigation into Donald Trump. Those firings came hours after Kash Patel told Reuters that his phone records, along with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles phone records were obtained by the FBI in that investigation. Cash Patel and Susie Wiles were both private citizens at the time. New York Times reports this, quote, requests for phone records are common in complex criminal investigations to establish timelines and provide proof of communication, adding, quote, it has been known for years that Mr. Patel was closely scrutinized by investigators under the Special counsel Jack Smith and was compelled to testify in front of a grand jury. The fact that investigators obtained some of Susie Wiles phone records was made public during the inquiry into Trump's mishandling of classified documents. I want to bring in New York Times Justice Department reporter Glenn Thrush. He is bylined on that reporting. Michael Feinberg's still here. Glenn Thrush, tell us what you're reporting.
- [35:23]
Glenn Thrush
Well, I should say that these firings may not be at an end. We're hearing rumors that there might be more of them coming perhaps as early as today. They really again, correlation is not necessarily causation. But we. We had some unflattering reporting about Cash Patel's schedule at the Milan Olympics about 24 hours before this broke. There was also a report out of Senator Durbin's office about a whistleblower who was also questioning Cash Patel's lavish travel and security expenses. And I should just say, in the past, we have seen this cycle where firings have taken place subsequent to these unflattering stories about Kash Patel. Again, I don't have any reporting that shows these two things are linked, but we have to lay these things side by side, considering what his practice has been. And the other thing that is really, really important here, these individuals are not being fired for cause. Nobody has covered information that they behaved illegally or improperly in the execution of their duties. Just as no one has yet made any accusations about Jack Smith or the special counsel staff acting illegally or improperly in the conduct of their investigations. Donald Trump and Cash Patel simply don't like what Jack Smith did at the moment. So the other factor here is if any of these 10, a couple of these folks are sport personnel, not just agents. We have seen situations in which the Bureau has flouted the law and regulations by dismissing agents who were veterans without a special lane of due process that they were supposed to be given. So we could be seeing a situation in which people were just summarily dismissed without giving an explanation, without having the proper procedures being followed at the whim of a director who has been dealing with some pretty terrible headlines about his lavish use of government resources.
- [37:30]
Nicole Wallace
The reporting about the whistleblower, Michael is about the plane being unavailable at the time of the mass shooting at Brown University and thus FBI forensic folks having to drive through a snowstorm to collect evidence.
- [37:43]
Michael Feinberg
Yeah, there's a specialized evidence response unit out of the FBI Academy at Quantico, and they do things like bullet trajectories, analysis of crime scenes, and they're sort of the real heavy hitters in that world. Every field office has its own team that does that, but a lot of the teams that are headquartered at Quantico, like that team, or like the Hostage rescue team, are who you bring in when things really break bad. And it's only natural that they would want them on the scene immediately. What is not natural is that they would not create any travel mechanism for them to get there. And look, it's really important to note, during that interval between the shooting at Brown and when the FBI finally deployed all of its resources up there, another individual was murdered by the assailant. So Again, I'm going to steal Glenn's statement like this is not causation, but there is correlation. And this is why you need, frankly, an adult at the head of the FBI who is not going to be thinking about where he's going to travel to next, but be thinking about what are the needs of the bureau and in a larger sense, what are the needs of the country.
- [39:01]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, there's never anything public facing that suggests those things are on his mind. No one's going anywhere. There's much more developing today, as both our guests have indicated. We'll all be right back. Glenn, you mentioned that he may not be done. Do you have any accounts of ongoing firings?
- [39:26]
Glenn Thrush
Well, we're hearing various things today. We're trying to track them down. I don't want to kind of surface anything that we're, we're not 100% sure of. But as we put in our story yesterday, there was a very strong belief that multiple shoes are going to fall within the next couple of days, if not as soon as today.
- [39:43]
Nicole Wallace
And Michael, what is the purpose other than retribution?
- [39:48]
Michael Feinberg
I think it serves a couple purposes. The people who were either the executives or the line agents that were willing to investigate Trump clearly have no political masters. They are the sort of agents who want to follow the facts wherever they lead. And sometimes that leads to a Democrat who gets indicted, sometimes it leads to a Republican. But they're not the sort of people who are going to tailor their investigations to please a particular individual in power. Those people threaten someone like Kash Patel because he is fundamentally a political actor. So the more that you can get rid of those people and the more you can scare other people with those values who are still in, the less pushback you're going to get when you really want to go off script to help the president. But then there's also just this is a White House obsessed with revenge. Look at how many times Trump himself uses the word retribution in truth social postings. There is a real schoolyard bullying aspect to all of this. And Cash Patel's not tough enough to be the schoolyard bully, but he could go mop up the remains once Trump or Todd Blanche or Pam Bondi are done.
- [41:08]
Nicole Wallace
Glenn, you talked about a couple of the other bad headlines. Let me just read some of that bad reporting for Kash Patel. I think your byline is on this. FBI Director Kash Patel's four day trip to Italy, culminating in a celebratory beer swig with the US Hockey team at the Milan Olympics, included several hours of work, meetings A handful of meet and greets, hours of downtime, private meals and cultural activities. What I mean like in the spirit of not normalizing that which is
- [41:39]
Marina Lacerda
bat
- [41:39]
Nicole Wallace
BLEEP crazy, why was he there?
- [41:42]
Glenn Thrush
Bat BLEEP crazy. I really like this. I gotta get a T shirt that says that.
- [41:46]
Nicole Wallace
I usually get the wrong bleep, but I got it right today.
- [41:50]
Glenn Thrush
If you misplace the bleep, you suffer serious consequences. Unless the crash Patel. But look, personally, I just gotta know what the cultural activities are, right? I mean, I guess the last supper is something somewhere up there. And there's the Shroud of Turin in the. Not too, not too far off. But I just gotta. I would love to get a sense of what he defines as cultural activities. Someone sent me the internal schedule. Patel and his team were not happy about this. They claimed it was a criminal act to hand it off. Even though the document that I received was marked unclassified and the events described. Didn't divulge any security arrangements and they'd already happened.
- [42:33]
Marina Lacerda
But.
- [42:33]
Glenn Thrush
But basically he did a couple hours of meetings. He did meet and greets. All this stuff's totally legit. You know, in terms of. In terms of trips that he take took. He only did a half an hour security briefing on the Olympics and the rest of the time was. Was fairly unstructured. We're talking about four days here. The one thing I just want to say really quickly is none of this would be necessarily put under a microscope if Cash Patel hadn't been doing this sort of thing a lot. Anyway, we broke a story. I think Ms. Also did as well divulging that he deployed a SWAT team to protect his girlfriend at a singing gig in Atlanta. So none of this stuff would necessarily rise to the level and people would cut him some more slack if he hadn't been doing this more frequently.
- [43:19]
Nicole Wallace
Glenn Thrash, thank you for a really extraordinary body of reporting to chew on on this topic. Michael Feinberg sticks around a little bit longer after a new numbers from the very red state of Texas are giving Democrats a big jolt of excitement ahead of Tuesday's primary elections. We'll tell you about it next. Why do all these stories matter? Hiding the Epstein files, having a on his face, unqualified director of the FBI. They matter because the reaction is this story. If you were looking for an indicator of what the reaction is in the country and how fired up Democrats are for the upcoming midterms, look no further than Texas said no. 1 where they are breaking records now in their first week of early voting. The competitive primary for the US Senate seat between State Representative James Talarico and Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is a major driver. The Texas Tribune reporting that more ballots have been cast for their March primary race than any recent midterm or presidential election year. And that is largely driven by high turnout in the Democratic primary, which so far is more than double what it was during the past two election cycles. Perhaps even more unbelievable, the turnout for the Democratic primary is exceeding Republican turnout. Friday is the last day to vote early, and Election Day is this coming Tuesday, March 3rd. You can watch the live results come in of those primary contests right here as part of our special coverage of the big races of 2026. That is Tuesday night starting at 7pm Eastern. And speaking of elections, when we come back with all of that stipulated excitement on the Democratic side, public stumble after public stumble on the Trump side, Trump's fixation on false claims of voter fraud is turning into real rules being rewritten by aides in the White House. We'll get to that reporting when deadline White House continues after a quick break.
- [45:16]
Ali Vitali
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