“Trump’s ‘war on fraud’”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House

Episode: Trump’s ‘war on fraud’
Host: Nicolle Wallace
Date: August 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Nicolle Wallace and an array of legal and political experts discuss new revelations about the Trump administration’s approach to fraud, corruption, and the Department of Justice. The conversation centers on recent reporting that the administration is aggressively prosecuting small-scale fraud—often involving marginalized communities—while pardoning or scrapping prosecutions for high-profile white-collar crimes involving wealthy allies and corporations. The episode also delves into the administration’s dismantling of anti-corruption infrastructure and a bizarre Air Force One “plane swap” incident, exploring implications for American democracy and the upcoming midterm elections.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s “War on Fraud”: Targeting the Small, Shielding the Powerful

[01:09–05:14]

• Nicolle Wallace sets the stage with a New York Times report revealing Trump's focus on targeting small-scale fraud (e.g., food trucks, daycares) while pardoning wealthy friends and abandoning cases against corporations.
• Highlights the contradiction: "Donald Trump letting his friends and donors off the hook isn’t just making his friends and donors richer, it’s making all of us poorer."
• The administration’s rollback of the Corporate Transparency Act and other anti-corruption efforts is described as part of a broader strategy to "transform the American economy... by and for the oligarchs."

2. Long-Term Damage to Rule of Law and DOJ Capacity

[05:14–08:46]

• Michael Feinberg (FBI veteran) warns, “The damage is immense,” emphasizing that repairing lost expertise at DOJ/FBI will take years.
  • "They’ve jettisoned literally centuries of cumulative subject matter expertise and experience. You can’t just replace a toughened, experienced prosecutor or a seasoned investigator with somebody who just graduated."
• Feinberg also points out the racial and economic bias in prosecution priorities, targeting minorities and the economically vulnerable while excusing the wealthiest.

3. Corruption of Pardons and Selective Justice

[08:46–11:29]

• Liz Oyer (former DOJ Pardon Attorney): "The pardon power has become completely corrupted under Donald Trump."
  • Trump has issued unprecedented corporate pardons and commuted sentences for major financial criminals, e.g., Gautam Adani, who allegedly traded promises of investment for leniency.
  • This is described as “a total corruption and abuse of the discretion of the Justice Department.”

4. Entrenched Disparities in Federal Prosecution

[11:29–12:47]

• Oyer details how prosecutorial priorities now "entrench disparities that have long existed," doubling down on targeting low-income people of color while enabling impunity for the wealthy and politically connected.
  • “Those are the people that he ultimately does not care about at the end of the day.”

5. Populism, Economic Anger, and Political Impact

[12:47–18:38]

• Nicolle Wallace and John Heilman discuss Democrats’ growing embrace of anti-corruption, anti-billionaire rhetoric, blurring lines between centrists like Mark Kelly and progressives like Bernie Sanders.
  • Mark Kelly (Clip) [13:52]: "It’s not that hard work stopped mattering. It’s just that your hard work...makes somebody else rich."
• Heilman: “Mark Kelly and Bernie Sanders sound pretty close these days. ...In this moment, where the politics are so obviously in favor of populist rhetoric, Donald Trump keeps handing issues like that over to his opponents.”
• Discusses Trump’s enormous campaign war chest as a direct consequence of his transactional approach to big business and legal leniency.

6. Republicans and the “Rich” Quiet Part Out Loud

[18:38–19:07]

• Clip of Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Openly admits favoring the rich: "Actually, I think we should do a little bit [more for the rich]... We are aimed at helping the average guy."

7. Case Study: Corruption Made Relatable

[21:14–23:34]

• Texas Senate candidate James Talarico’s ad (regarding Ken Paxton stealing a Mont Blanc pen) is used to show how to translate high-level corruption into an everyday moral failing.
  • Wallace: “You don’t have to understand tax fraud…This is the kind of person who would steal a pen.”
  • Heilman: “Not only the kind of person who would steal a pen. A person who did.”
  • This grounds the conversation about corruption in simple, universally comprehensible terms.

8. DOJ Is Now a Political Tool

[25:25–28:09]

• Feinberg: Cites Clausewitz, drawing a parallel: “...the Justice Department is…a tool to be used when electoral politics fail.”
  • Outlines how DOJ is used to launch investigations against adversaries and shield allies, rather than impartially upholding the law.
  • “I am unaware of another democratic nation whose leadership has elevated corruption and put it up on a pedestal as something we should strive for.”

9. Shielding Corruption, Burying Evidence

[29:03–30:28]

• Oyer: Points to a DOJ memo expanding executive privilege to shield communications, and efforts to hide evidence ahead of potential congressional investigations.
  • “We have only seen the tip of the iceberg of this corruption and fraud, Nicole.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nicolle Wallace [01:09]: “Marie Antoinette is choking on her cake today because in Donald Trump’s world, it’s cake or brazen grift and corruption for him and his billionaire buddies and the gallows for the little guy.”
• Michael Feinberg [05:14]: “If you did another demographic breakdown and analysis, you would find that this is just one more piece of the administration’s general preference to go after minorities at the expense of people who are actually damaging the country.”
• Liz Oyer [09:24]: “He has actually granted pardons now to three. Three corporations, which is literally unprecedented.”
• Mark Kelly [13:52]: “Your hard work... makes somebody else rich. You’re still generating wealth. It just gets deposited into somebody else’s bank account.”
• John Heilman [17:03]: "That [Trump’s] $400 million war chest is the direct result of the policy we're talking about today."
• James Talarico Ad [21:33]: “Vote for James Talarico. He won’t steal your pen.”
• Michael Feinberg [26:15]: “The Justice Department is now a selective tool...a bludgeon or a scalpel to be used when eliminating a political obstacle.”
• Liz Oyer [29:03]: “We have only seen the tip of the iceberg of this corruption and fraud, Nicole.”

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Special Segment: The Air Force One “Plane Swap” Scandal

[33:06–44:38]

• Late-night comedians lampoon the Trump administration’s covert airport maneuvers, reflecting the surreal and unorthodox approaches to presidential security.
  • Tom Nichols (quoted by Wallace): Questions logic of the “decoy plane” plan, which prioritized Trump while putting senior officials and press at risk.
• John Hudson (Washington Post): Explains the frantic, last-minute decision-making amidst questionable intelligence about threats, revealing deep trust breaches between White House and press/staff.
  • Hudson [42:18]: “There were some officials who were on that plane who had an understanding of what was going on. But I can guarantee you there were some officials who did not know this and found this to be extraordinary.”
• John Heilman [44:25]: “This is not just lying to people. I just can’t imagine you could keep working for someone who would put you in that kind of jeopardy without telling you.”

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Conclusion and Takeaways

• The episode thoroughly explores the duality of Trump’s anti-fraud crusade, exposing its function as a shield for the powerful and a cudgel against the powerless, deeply undermining DOJ impartiality and anti-corruption infrastructure.
• With vivid examples (pardons for the ultra-rich, small fry prosecutions, DOJ hollowing out, and outlandish security incidents), the show lays bare the systemic consequences for public trust, justice, and democracy.
• The political impact is immediate, fueling rising populism and reorienting both parties’ rhetoric. But the structural damage—a loss of expertise, trust, and fairness—will have lasting consequences far beyond this epoch.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:09] Main theme introduction: Trump’s war on fraud and corruption
• [05:14] Michael Feinberg on long-term DOJ damage and bias in prosecutions
• [09:24] Liz Oyer on the corrupted pardon process
• [13:52] Mark Kelly on populism and wealth disparity
• [17:03] Heilman on Trump’s war chest and transactional politics
• [21:33] James Talarico’s ad highlighting everyday corruption
• [25:25] Feinberg: DOJ as a political weapon
• [29:03] Oyer on concealed corruption and expanded executive privilege
• [33:06] Plane swap story and late-night reaction
• [34:56] Hudson on the facts of the plane swap and the intelligence involved
• [42:18] Discussion of staff and press kept in the dark about being used as decoys
• [44:25] Heilman and Wallace reflect on the breach of trust and comparisons to previous White Houses

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Transcript

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[Nicole Wallace]

Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in the East. Marie Antoinette is choking on her cake today because in Donald Trump's world, it's cake or brazen grift and corruption for him and his billionaire buddies and the gallows for the little guy. New reporting by the New York Times finds that even as Donald Trump is issuing pardons to his wealthy friends and donors at rates we've never seen before for crimes like wire fraud, bank fraud, insider trading, and money laundering, Donald Trump is devoting his energy to targeting small dollar fraud. The Times write this quote as the White House expands its war on fraud, the Justice Department announced criminal charges in recent days against a new symbol of that battle, a food truck in Santa Ana, California. The new emphasis on small dollar fraud comes as the administration has issued pardons and commutations to white collar convicts pulled back from pursuing criminal cases against multinational corporations and dropped high profile charges against wealthy executives. One former federal prosecutor telling the New York Times that a food truck, quote, is not the kind of case you would typically see federal law enforcement resources being poured into, and that's resources being pulled from other areas. We're not seeing an increase in fraud prosecutions involving public companies, investment frauds, and the more traditional Wall street prosecutions typically pursued by the Justice Department. Donald Trump letting his friends and donors off the hook isn't just making his friends and donors richer, it's making all of us poorer in the process. In one analysis by the California governor's office earlier this year, they find that, quote, victims and the public won't get back the nearly $2 billion that courts had ordered those criminals to pay as part of their sentences or were considering ordering when the pardons came in. And the Trump administration isn't stopping there. Axios reports this. The Treasury Department this week scrapped a key part of the federal anti corruption law, the Corporate Transparency act, that required anonymous shell companies and other firms to disclose their owners. All of this is a part of Donald Trump's effort to transform the American economy. As one writer in the Atlantic puts it, quote, his administration has worked relentlessly to topple America's anti corruption infrastructure, eliminating task forces dedicated to combating dirty money, killing the enforcement of anti bribery statutes, and gutting efforts to force the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of taxes, among countless other measures. The demolition of the Corporate Transparency act is just the latest and most dramatic move to cater to the President's deep pocketed buddies and fellow cronies. But it surely won't be the last. Donald Trump working overtime to transform America and a country by and for the oligarchs is where we begin today with some of our favorite experts and friends. Former assistant special agent in charge of the FBI national security and intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg's here. Also joining us, Puck News senior political columnist and national affairs analyst John Heilman is here. Also joining us, former Department of Justice pardon attorney Liz Oyer is here. She's now the host of the podcast Is this Really Legal? Michael Feinberg, I start with you. It is extraordinary when you take all this reporting together because you could look at one pardon and it could be a massive example of white collar crime or fraud, of the defrauding of investors, Madoff style. But you take all these things next to each other and it is a clear, it is a deliberate, it is a brazen, it is a deeply politically unpopular, it is a very anti capitalistic policy to fold into your economy corruption, fraud and criminality. And I wonder what you make of the long and short term damage being done.

[Michael Feinberg]

The damage is immense. And unfortunately, like so many things that this administration is doing, undoing it will take orders of magnitude longer than it took to destroy. Look, there's a couple things going on here. The first and most obvious one is that this administration pursues policies to benefit the socioeconomic class to which most of the policymakers belong. But I'm going to say the quiet part out loud here. If you look at the sort of small scale fraud they are now solely pursuing, whether it's against daycares in Minneapolis or food trucks in Southern California, or I'm willing to bet that if you did another sort of demographic breakdown and analysis, you would find that this is Just one more piece of the administration's general preference to go after minorities at the expense of going after people who are actually damaging the country. The notion that you would go after a daycare or a food truck or something else with a relatively small economic footprint and no tentacles that reach into other criminal organizations while giving a pass to major corporations that might actually be committing large scale fraud or enabling embezzlement and money laundering is insane. And I can't find any legitimate motive for it.

[Nicole Wallace]

What can you say about all of the capabilities that are being either purged from the Department of Justice, redirected inside the Department of Justice, and how long it takes to sort of get those wheels grinding again in these kinds of complicated investigations? I mean, Enron becomes such a flashpoint because it's so hard to topple and take on a company like Enron. Just talk about all of the brain drainage.

[John Hudson]

Yeah.

[Michael Feinberg]

Let's not forget when Enron was prosecuted, it required the establishment of a specialized task force involving multiple government agencies that spent years sorting through the detritus and dregs of that company in order to make an effective prosecution and get justice, or at least as much justice as could be gotten for its victims. That's going to be exponentially more difficult the next time something like that happens, because this Department of Justice, whether we're talking about the main RFK building or its criminal investigative sub components like the FBI, they've jettisoned literally centuries of cumulative subject matter expertise and experience. You can't just replace toughened, experienced prosecutor or a seasoned investigator with somebody who just graduated from law school or Quantico. Becoming experienced by necessity involves having experiences. And when you're pushing people out simply because you want to replace them with loyalists, you lose all that. And it's going to take years to rebuild.

[Nicole Wallace]

Liz, I wanted to set up the gutting of the sort of corporate fraud investigation unit next to the pardons, because taken together, they really are this two sides of the coin. Right. It's not just criminal conduct on a scale vast enough to damage countless ordinary people not being investigated. It's the people who were investigated, who were convicted by juries of their peers or who settled acknowledging guilt being pardoned if they happen to be political allies.

[Liz Oyer]

Yeah, the pardon power has become completely corrupted under Donald Trump. Essentially, he has wielded it to decide that the laws don't apply to certain types of people in whom he sees something of himself. He has actually granted pardons now to three. Three corporations, which is literally unprecedented. There is no known example of any other president actually pardoning a corporation. He has also used the pardon power primarily to benefit wealthy individuals who have committed large scale financial crimes and who owe tremendous amounts of money either to the victims of their crimes or to taxpayers. Donald Trump has walked away from prosecutions of those individuals using the pardon power, and his Justice Department has repeatedly disputed, dismissed major cases against wealthy individuals. The most recent example of that that I've been following is an individual named Gautam Adani, who is one of the wealthiest men in the world. This week, charges were dismissed related to foreign bribery and fraud. He is his. His net worth is over $80 billion, and he apparently, according to reporting by numerous outlets, offered the Justice Department $10 billion, said that he would invest $10 billion in the United States in exchange for these charges. The prosecutors said that's not why they ultimately dismissed them. But at the end of the day, the charges were dismissed against this incredibly wealthy individual over the objections of career prosecutors and investigators, and seemingly only because he had the ability to support and assist Donald Trump and his political agenda in some way, which is a total corruption and abuse of the discretion of the Justice Department.

[Nicole Wallace]

Let's weigh in on Michael Feinberg's point about the cases that do seem to be getting department resources and leading to investigations and prosecutions are, in this example, a food truck. Another example that J.D. vance talks about a lot is, I think daycares in the state of Minnesota talk about the things that are being targeted.

[Liz Oyer]

Yeah. The prosecutorial priorities of this administration are just overtly entrenching disparities that have long existed in the federal criminal justice system. I was a federal public defender for about 10 years, and the majority of my clients were low income people of color. And those people have always experienced the unfairness of the criminal justice system because of disproportionate targeting with prosecutions and because of having less resources to defend those cases. This administration has essentially doubled down on those disparities which other administrations have tried to alleviate and ameliorate through prosecutorial policies. But Donald Trump does not care one bit about who he is targeting disproportionately and how his prosecution policies affect communities of color, low income communities, communities with large immigrant populations. I mean, those are the people that he ultimately does not care about at the end of the day. And he is pursuing political objectives by disproportionately prosecuting people in those communities while wealthy white business owners and people who look like Donald Trump are going free for very serious crimes that have very serious consequences for their victims.

[Nicole Wallace]

Heilman all of this is so brazen that we don't need to bother with a conversation about whether it's just a coincidence that these are the policies they landed on or whether it's deliberate. But one of the things that's interesting about corruption, and I may have been a little blind to this because I think I was on Morning Joe with you the morning when he was first running for president, and he stopped at his hotel in Scotland and was talking about the thread count and his sheets. To me, he's always been sort of pillaging the American taxpayer to enrich himself and his businesses. But there is something about the economic despair that most people feel about the price of everything, groceries, gas, housing, health care, and the brazenness with which he and his sons are enriching themselves. Trump made more money than he's ever made before his first year back in the White House. Suddenly a good businessman, he's just stealing it. And I want to show you how one Democrat is taking this issue that has salience with the public now and using it on the campaign trail. This is Mark Kelly.

[Mark Kelly]

And here's the thing. It's not that hard work stopped mattering. It's just that your hard work, it now makes somebody else rich. You're still generating wealth. It just gets deposited into somebody else's bank account. And the only thing that's going up faster than the price of a gallon of gas in our country is the number of billionaires. And right now, by the way, right now, our country is the richest it has ever been. Let me ask you something. Does that, does it feel that way to all of you?

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, this is just right on the pressure point of Donald Trump's, I think, gravest political vulnerability.

[John Heilman]

Right. So, so many things to say about this, Nicole, when I hear you harking back to us, sitting on set together when Donald Trump was in Scotland talking about thread counts, all I can think of is, man, those are the good old days. You know, before, before, before he was actually, before he was actually president. The first time there was still Obama there. We thought, that's so ludicrous. He'll never get elected president if he's talking about thread counts. Turned out we were a little bit wrong about that twice.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yes.

[John Heilman]

The second thing, the second thing I'll note about that Mark Kelly is about that Mark Kelly thing, which, which gets to. Just not quite rhetorically, but in terms of all of its emphasis thematics and the spirit of it, Mark Kelly and Bernie Sanders sound pretty close to each other these days. And when People ask these questions about some of the more progressive candidates that we've seen come up in some of these primaries and why we're seeing this and how big a deal it is in the Democratic Party, even though there is clearly a lot of factional infighting in the party between various, various quadrants of the ideological spectrum. And that's real. It's also the case that in this moment, where the politics are so obviously in favor of populist rhetoric and where Donald Trump keeps handing issues like that over to his opponents, it's interesting to see how the Democratic Party is seizing on that across the spectrum. Mark Kelly, I will say would, would, would, would, would, would be horrified to think that anybody would consider him a member of the dsa. And I'm not saying he is. But it's interesting how much the Democratic Party, the center of the Democratic Party is now embracing issues that back in 2016, talking about billionaires and talking about this kind of corruption were things that, that the center of the party didn't embrace. The last thing I'll say is in the midterm elections, the most tangible effect of this, because Donald Trump is not on the ballot. And although Republicans are going to get blamed for a lot of things Donald Trump has done, and rightly so, because they've rubber stamped them all, it is the case that Donald Trump is sitting right now on a $400 million war chest. Absolutely. Unprecedented amount of money in his super PAC in MAGA Inc.

[Mark Kelly]

Right.

[John Heilman]

That was in June. It's probably a larger number than that today. We haven't had an FTC report since then. That is the direct result of the policy we're talking about today. And I don't mean in terms of a quid pro quo. I mean that money flows in and the understanding from big business and rich people is that they put that money in Donald Trump super pac and what they get is a total evaporation of fraud investigations and fraud prosecutions against them and people like them. And they are not wrong to think that. And it is the case that if Trump, that money will be a factor in the midterm elections. How much of a factor? We don't know. But it's not nothing. And that's part of what you're seeing here is a transactional element to this that goes beyond the politics. In some ways, it's about the politics. But there is a pure transaction happening here. And Donald Trump has gotten what he wanted from that transaction, which is a pile of cash no incumbent president has ever had in the bank before. To spend on behalf of the Republican Party.

[Nicole Wallace]

I think that's an important point. But I think the, the, the, the question, I guess then about the midterms is how repulsed are Americans. And I think the messages about populism aren't just sort of a dynamic in this maybe uncomfortable process of pushing out the perimeter of whatever the tent is on the anti Trump side. It's also that Republicans are saying out loud that they're the party for billionaires. Let me show you Wisconsin Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman.

[Glenn Grothman]

Don't let anybody tell you that people running Congress right now are looking out for the rich. Actually, I think we should do a little bit. But you know, right now we are doing all we can to help the middle class. Right. If I was designing a fast for the rich, I wouldn't talk about overtime. I wouldn't talk about car loans. Right. We are aimed at helping the average guy.

[Nicole Wallace]

So the Republicans, I don't think we can call it the quiet part anymore, saying, quote, I think we should do a little more in terms of looking out for the rich. We have much more on this. I want to show you an incredible ad that James Tallarico, he's put out today. And it's sort of an adjacent topic of actual theft. When we come back, we'll also continue this conversation on how Democrats across the country are drawing accusations, drawing attention to these accusations of widespread operationalized fraud and corruption. Plus, we'll take a look at the logic and the fact that pattern here on the fifth day of understanding the news that's been covered around the decision to swap Donald Trump off of a second plane, the original Air Force One, and onto a third plane with him having to hide inside a catering truck in between, leaving most of his cabinet, including the secretary of State, the White House press corps and many White House staff members on a plane that again may or may not have had a serious incredible threat levied against it. And later in the broadcast, we'll look at where things stand with Trump and his allies, many efforts to take control of the midterm elections, all those stories and much more when Deadline White HOUSE continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

[Michael Feinberg]

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[John Heilman]

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[Nicole Wallace]

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[John Heilman]

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[Rachel Maddow]

hey, everybody, it's Rachel Maddow here. I wanted to tell you that more than a dozen of us from Ms. Now are going to be in Texas on Saturday, September 26th. I'm going to be there. Lawrence O' Donnell will be there. So will Jen Psaki. A whole bunch of us are all gonna be there in Texas. Tickets start at just over 30 bucks each and if you buy a ticket, you will get access to our new MSNow membership free for a year. Tickets for Texas are on sale now. You can learn more at Ms. Now. Hope to see you in Texas.

[Nicole Wallace]

Texas Senate candidate James Tallarico is out today with a brand new ad highlighting some of the things we've been talking about as well as the extremes of his opponent's self dealing and corruption. The ad about embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton though has to be seen to be believed. Let you watch the whole thing.

[James Tallarico Ad Narrator]

This is Ken Paxton and this is Ken Paxton stealing someone's thousand dollar penn. Here's what happened. The incident happened at the Collin County Courthouse, the same courthouse where Paxton would later be indicted for investment fraud. Paxton walked up to the trays next to the metal detectors, rummaged through them, and came across someone else's expensive Mont Blanc pen. He decided to take it for himself. The pen belonged to Joe Joplin, a local attorney who'd accidentally left it behind. It was a special gift from his wife. When Joe realized it was missing, he contacted courthouse security. This is the footage they pulled. Ken Paxton on camera stealing this man's pen. After the police got involved, Joe got his pen back. He could have pressed charges, but he decided against it. Because Joe's a nice guy, he'd never take someone else's pen. But he also hasn't forgotten who took his.

[John Hudson]

Hi, I'm Joe Joplin and I endorse James Tallarico for the United States Senate.

[James Tallarico Ad Narrator]

Vote for James Talarico. He won't steal your pen.

[Nicole Wallace]

Howman what I love so much about this ad is that I think when you're talking about pardons for one of the world's most wealthy people, it can sound like Austin Powers, right? Like these are amounts of money that most people cannot get their brains around. And when you're talking about looking the other way with white collar crime, you know, I always think of Tom Cruise and the Firm, you know, like all the papers. And how do you catch him anyway? It looks really, really hard. But when you talk about the moral compass, or lack thereof of Trump and Maga Republicans, Trump picked Pax him over Cornyn, who voted with Trump 99.96% of the time. Just cast a deciding vote for Todd Blanche, for Pete's sake. You see that his preference for criminals is so brazen. And you don't have to understand tax fraud. You don't have to understand offshore companies and shell companies, which I barely can get my brain around. This is the kind of person who would steal a pen.

[John Heilman]

Not only the kind of person who would steal it. Not only the kind of person who would steal a pen. A person who did.

[Nicole Wallace]

Who did steal a pen.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah.

[John Heilman]

Steal a pen. Which is like. It's even better. It's even better than that. And look, it's. It's kind of like, you know, there's that thing. I know we're going to talk a little bit about the. About the plane swap story, but the other night on this show, there was a moment where John Brennan said this thing about how Trump handled it with the reporters. And he said, you know, there were a lot of ways that Trump could have handled that where he didn't lie to reporters, but he likes to lie. You know that there's this kind of. Like, when you try to understand Trump, you have to. Sometimes you have to go back to these very first kind of primordial kind of reflexive impulses he has, and one of those is given a choice with no benefit or cost. Just here's a choice. You could either tell the truth or tell a lie. He's gonna lie, right. And that's like his. His native instinct. That's what he goes to. In the same way, I think it's the case that his native instinct, between choosing a candidate who is honest and choosing a candidate who is a crook, his native kind of instinct is, well, obviously, that's my kind of guy over there. The crook guy is my kind of guy. And I think that that explains the. The Paxton thing almost as much as anything else. There are some cases where, I mean, that was a case where you could make a political argument either way, honestly. I mean, in the sense that Cornyn was more electable, but Paxton was more maga. So from Trump's point of view, you could have made a case for it either way, but there's no question about what he would end up doing. Because one of those guys, though, we don't like his politics and his policies very much. John Cornyn is not inherently kind of sleazy and scummy, and Paxton is inherently kind of sleazy and scummy. And so Trump is like, well, in the end, if it really comes down to just kind of, who do I like? It's that guy. That guy's the one I like.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah. And I guess what I think has taken, I think nine years for people to understand on the outside of the Department of Justice is that when you have a person as president who turns the department inside out, it's not just about shielding himself and his friends from any criminal exposure, which is clearly one of the driving motivations. It also has the ancillary effect of turning the department into something that equivocates. Right. I mean, here's a crime, here's predicate for an investigation. But could this be a donor? Is this a MAGA person? Did Trump do this? Is this going to make him feel embarrassed? I mean, just talk about that, Michael Fenberg, and if we'll ever really understand the depth to which that infected people's judgment.

[Michael Feinberg]

Yeah. So look, there's a famous quote in the context of international affairs by Clausewitz, which is that war is just policy conducted by other means. And what we're seeing under Trump is that the Justice Department is not an organization to, you know, impose norms on everybody in society to set a level playing field, but rather a tool to be used when electoral politics fail. So you lose elections in swing states, go after the senators and Congress people for reminding servicemen and servicewoman that they don't have to follow illegal orders. The state of Minnesota rises up against your draconian authoritarian attempt to round up every person of color under the guise of immigration enforcement. Well, we'll launch fraud investigations into them and we won't react too harshly on right wing political violence when their state senators are murdered. It's the Justice Department is now a selective tool. It is a bludgeon or a scalpel to be used when eliminating a political obstacle. There's always been corruption in the United States. There's always been corruption in every democracy. It's inevitable feature anytime you get masses of people together. But I am unaware of another democratic nation whose leadership has elevated corruption and put it up on a pedestal as something we should strive for.

[Nicole Wallace]

And I think the pardon process, Liz, was one of the first things that was publicly corrupted. Jonathan Braun is someone who was pardoned or sentenced was commuted. He's gone on to commit physical domestic violence against members of his family and someone else's very young child. I mean, it is everything from a corrupt pardon process that pardons not just rich donors, but political allies convicted or accused of horrific violent crimes. It is the pardoning en masse of the insurrectionist. It is looking the other way or green lighting or taking a trade from a rich donor who committed wide scale corporate fraud. And I wonder your view on how much of this will be unearthed sort of in the After Action Report when this era is done and what happens on the other side to make sure it can never happen again.

[Liz Oyer]

Yeah, I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg of this corruption and fraud, Nicole. I mean, thanks to a lot of excellent investigative journalists. Where are we seeing some of it? But there is no transparency in this administration. One of the really striking things that happened this week at the Justice Department on Todd Blanche's first full day as the attorney general is that the DOJ issued a memo that essentially expanded the scope of executive privilege in an unprecedented way to give them cover to try to h communications between the president and anyone he's communicating with who he considers an advisor, even if they don't work for the federal government. That is a way to try to conceal some of these corrupt relationships and very transactional administrations of justice in this administration in advance of the upcoming midterm elections. I think that Trump and Blanche and others are very worried about the possibility of congressional investigation if the Democrats went at the midterms. So they are doing everything they can to try to bury the evidence of corruption, to ensure that it does not see the light in a Democratic controlled Congress. I do think at some point there will be a reckoning, there will be efforts to trace where all of this money has gone. I mean, Donald Trump has drained our government of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars and we need to find a way to get it back.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah. Michael Feinberg and Liz Oyer, thank you so much for starting us off on all this today. Heilman sticks around after the break. This week's biggest and most talked about story got the late night treatment, naturally. We'll show you a bit of how they've handled the plane swap scandal story next.

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[Rachel Maddow]

Yes, the same Monday.com hey everybody, it's Rachel Maddow here. I wanted to tell you that more than a dozen of us from Ms. Now are going to be in Texas on Saturday, September 26th. I'm going to be there. Lawrence O' Donnell will be there. So will Jen Psaki. A whole bunch of us are all going to be there in Texas. Tickets start at just over 30 bucks each and if you buy a ticket, you will get access to our new MSNow membership. Free for Tickets for Texas are on sale now. You can learn more at Ms. Now together. Hope to see you in Texas.

[Late Night Host]

Well, guys, President Trump is looking for a new press secretary after Caroline Levitt announced she's stepping down. Of course, when hiring someone, it's also about personality. You know, you gotta think like, who am I? Okay, being stuck inside a catering truck

[Michael Feinberg]

with, you know that.

[John Hudson]

Now, I'm no security expert, but if I was trying to find Donald Trump, a catering truck is the first place I'd look. Next time, hide his ass in a bookmobile.

[Late Night Host]

He hid in the back of a catering truck. Yeah. Today everyone was like, well, at least he has one exit plan.

[Nicole Wallace]

Late night hosts have feasted all week long on the news that broke at the beginning of this week of Donald Trump's airplane switcheroo. The president carted off his plane, literally in a meal truck cart, taking lower level besties along for the ride amid fears of a potential threat from Iran. But left to deal with that threat were top aides, including two cabinet members left aboard what became a decoy flight from Turkey to the UK Last month. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Scott Besant are fourth and fifth in the line of succession. If anyone's keeping track of that, they apparently rate lower on Trump's food chain than the president's former butler or former caddy. Now White House aides Walt Nauta and Dan Scavino, or his assistant Natalie Harp, who prints out nice things about him from Truth Social, they all made the great escape in the catering truck gang. Tom Nichols, staff writer at the Atlantic, questioned the logic, writing this quote, if the situation was that dangerous, why send up the first 747 at all? Perhaps the threat wasn't quite so dire, or its parameters were not well enough defined and the Secret Service acted out of a superabundance of caution. Or perhaps the president thinks that it's acceptable to Send up an airplane full of innocent Americans as a decoy to draw fire so that he can evade enemy action. I want to bring in Washington Post reporter John Hudson, who broke this story wide open. John Heilman is still here. John, I want to understand some things. Is the White House settled on a description that is a consensus opinion about the credibility of the threat to Air Force One, the backup to the Qatari gifted palace in the sky, but not the third plane?

[John Hudson]

Yeah, it's a good question. I think what they have tried to say and declare is that yes, there was low intelligence, there was low confidence from the CIA about the strength of the Israeli intelligence, about the threat that the President faced. There is an agreement on that. But the timing of when they had that information is basically what everyone is trying to unpick and understand a little bit better. The reality of the matter is what we can all agree on is that the United States had a very short time frame to process the threat that came in. It was really just hours before President Trump was was going to take off from Ankara that the US Secret Service got this intelligence from the Israelis that there was a threat to the President's life. So under that very short time frame, they had to make a very challenging decision of how to react. And what they ended up deciding on was one of the most extraordinary ruses in presidential history.

[Nicole Wallace]

Was Marco Rubio privy to the Israeli intelligence?

[John Hudson]

So I am told that there is a high likelihood that he was not only. Well, so yes, he was absolutely privy to the Israeli intelligence. And it's also my understanding that he heard the pushback from the Turks that they had doubts about the veracity of the Israeli intelligence.

[Nicole Wallace]

Do you know if they convened in a scif, a national security meeting, before leaving Turkey to find out if it was safe to send either of the planes into the sky?

[John Hudson]

I don't know whether they met in a skiff to decide on that. I do know that there was an extraordinary amount of action, a lot of last minute meetings that happened in the run up to this to figure out what to do in this case. I am somewhat sympathetic of the really crisis that the Secret Service faced. There had been three near miss assassination attempts that were high profile facing the President. There's really little room for error. So even though we know U.S. intelligence officials doubted the strength of this tip that came in from the Israelis, the Secret Service was in a really difficult position and they were doing kind of anything they could to try to figure out a way to keep the President saf.

[Nicole Wallace]

I understand that and I've traveled the President after 9, 11. But they don't make decisions to save one life and cost the other. So did the Secret Service recommend sending Marco Rubio up in a decoy flight?

[John Hudson]

That is a level of information I just have to be honest. I don't have that. And I think that there are real larger concerns about the breach of trust between the US Press corps and the White House. Those are things that can be managed that didn't have to be managed in the way that it was. You could tell the press corps there's a threat to the president, we're taking every precaution necessary. We feel like the threat to you and the Cabinet, which is staying behind in the old Air Force One, is manageable, things like that. If that were the case, there's ways to maintain the trust of the press corps. Obviously, there's many in the press corps who feel that this was an extraordinary breach of the that trust. And that's something that's going to have to be contemplated with and managed for many months on from here.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, I mean, you can let people take commercial flights, you can let people stay a night. It's also interesting to me that the threat was something that the Secret Service believed to be specific to the backup Air Force One, but not another US Government jet. I mean, the plane he flew on, also to someone who had enough knowledge to target either the Qatari gifted plane or the backup Air Force One would have been potentially suspicious of another military jet that shuttles Secretary of Defense or secretary of State around as well, it would seem.

[John Hudson]

No, John, Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And you also have to factor in that, remember that old Air Force One is a symbol of presidential security. That's the Air Force One that has the defensive capabilities that we learned are in many the views of many security officials superior to the Qatari donated luxury jet, which is why that jet wasn't used in the first place. So you raise absolutely good points. Perhaps there was an advantage scene of having the decoy in and of itself. All of that needs to come out. And that's why lawmakers are really pressing for more information. Journalists are pressing for more information about something that is really extraordinary in presidential history.

[Nicole Wallace]

All right, no one's going anywhere. When we come back, we'll pull Heilman into this conversation. Don't go anywhere. We'll all be right back. We're back with John Hudson and John Heilman. Heilman, I can accept that the Secret Service is jumpy and scared and they made an extraordinary decision. I Just think that these things are mutually exclusive. You don't then take Natalie Harp and the Internet guy and the Diet Coke guy. You take the Secretary of State and the treasury secretary.

[John Heilman]

Right, for sure. And of course, in the most extreme cases, if the Secret Service was that jumpy, there was another option, Rich, which was to keep Trump on the ground. And if the threat was that serious, it would have created a lot of complexity. They would have had to explain or lie about a bunch of things like why he was staying in Turkey an extra day. But they had to lie in this instance, too. And they've had to explain a lot of things in the way they did it here, too. So, I mean, again, I feel sympathy for the Secret Service having to deal with this on short notice and under a lot of pressure, both, I mean, to keep the president safe and to keep the president happy. But, but, Nicole, when it comes to White House staff, I thought it has been, you've been great on this all week. And I know this strikes you in the same way as it strikes me. I mean, I traveled on Air Force One with President Clinton, on multiple occasions, with President Obama, on multiple occasions with President Biden at least once. I can't get, like, if I were in the press corps that traveled with Donald Trump right now, I would never travel with Donald Trump again. I think to me, the breach of faith there is so great because this kind of thing would never have occurred to a reporter in any previous presidency and certainly not during your time in the White House where you would have thought, yes, if gave you, somebody gave you a hypothetical about this, would the president and the White House ever do this to you? There's no reporter I know would have said, yeah, that's plausible. That could happen. I think, like, literally no one thought that was possible under any of those previous administrations, Republican or Democrat alike. But for the White House staff, do we know at this hour how many of them who are on the, who are, who stayed on Air Force One knew that they were being. That they were decoys in that moment, knew that Trump was no longer on their plane and that they were decoys? Do we know that factually yet, John?

[John Hudson]

I mean, what I can tell you factually, as I was trying to confirm this story, I did talk to some White House officials, some administration officials who were on the plane. And I said, this is our understanding that actually Trump got off the plane and he was smuggled out through a catering truck. And what they said was, are you serious? Are you kidding me? They had no idea. I do think that There were some officials who were on that plane who had an understanding of what was going on. But I can guarantee you there were some officials who did not know this and found this to be extraordinary and perhaps have a renewed faith in the strength of Washington Post reporting because it was fully vindicated in this case, which

[Nicole Wallace]

is a good thing.

[John Heilman]

Nicole.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yes.

[John Heilman]

Nicole, can I just ask you this question? If you had, if you were in the, if you were on White House staff and George W. Bush did this to you, would you stay and work for him or would you be like, I think I gotta go.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, look, I was thinking about, no, no, I would never stay. But it was a different time. And I mean, after 9, 11, when you travel, I would say a lot of people felt scared and we took an opposite approach. I was often when we traveled overseas and there were protests because a lot of the things George Bush did were very controversial. They would throw, I would get thrown in the limo with the president sometimes and Condi, sometimes to her surprise and sometimes squished in. I mean, there was the opposite instinct. And you could, you know, I hate to trot out my old George W. Bush was so great stories, but, but there was never an instance where I can recall putting any journalists on a decoy flight and sneaking the president out. Now, groups snuck out, they snuck to Andrews Air Force to go to Iraq. I mean, there were secrets kept from a broader press corps, but the press pool was always in on them. In on them. So, yeah, different times.

[John Heilman]

But neither the press corps nor the White House staff were ever used as decoys. This is not just lying to people. I just can't imagine you could keep working for someone who would put you in that kind of jeopardy. It doesn't make any sense to me without telling you. Without telling you.

[Nicole Wallace]

Right, right. Without giving you a choice. Yeah. This story is incredible. Your reporting is incredible. Don Hudson, thank you for coming back at the third or fourth day to talk to us about it. And thank you, Halman, for being here for the whole hour with me and my friend. When we come back, what could be the last, last word on Donald Trump's ballroom? The administration's desperate and rather whiny request to the United States Supreme Court is our next story. Have you heard of a ballroom emergency? Yeah, me neither. But that is what Donald Trump is telling the Supreme Court today. In an emergency appeal, Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court. Supreme Court. To allow him to continue construction on his $400 million ballroom while the White House appeals a lower court's order to stop all work on it. The Trump administration is arguing that stopping construction on the ballroom will undermine national security and create an eyesore at the site where the East Wing once stood before Donald Trump unceremoniously bulldozed it. Solicitor General John Sauer. Yes, that John Sauer who argued that a President could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival wrote this in his filing. Quote, no bystander could plausibly prefer to view an unfinished 70 foot tall superstructure to the finished project. Well, maybe someone should have thought of that before they knocked it down. We'll stay on top of the story after a break. All the ways Donald Trump and his allies are still fighting to prove election fraud that never existed. The next hour of deadline White House starts after a quick break.

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