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- [00:01]
Michael Popak
Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump?
- [00:04]
Phil Weiser
I know. Have you heard about Phil Weisner in Colorado though?
- [00:07]
Michael Popak
No. Is he different?
- [00:09]
Lisa Graves
Yeah.
- [00:09]
Phil Weiser
A.G. weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs and he even won against Ticketmaster.
- [00:21]
Michael Popak
So he actually gets results.
- [00:23]
Phil Weiser
Exactly as Governor Phil will fight for Colorado.
- [00:27]
Michael Popak
Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent Nana Nasgese. Feel your best and amplify your every everyday look with Thrive cosmetics. Go to thrivecosmetics.com shine26 for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. That's Thrive Cosmetics.
- [00:41]
Karen Freeman McNiff
C A U S E M-E T-I
- [00:43]
Michael Popak
C S.com shine26 this is a Monday.com ad, the same Monday.com helping people worldwide getting work done faster and better. The same Monday.com designed for every team and every industry. The same Monday.com with built in AI scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.com that your team will actually love using the same Monday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Yes, the same Monday.com seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump?
- [01:20]
Phil Weiser
I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado though?
- [01:23]
Michael Popak
No. Is he different?
- [01:24]
Phil Weiser
Yeah. A.G. weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs and he even won against Ticketmaster.
- [01:37]
Michael Popak
So he actually gets results.
- [01:39]
Phil Weiser
Exactly as Governor Phil will fight for Colorado.
- [01:42]
Michael Popak
Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent Nana Nasgese.
- [01:47]
Lisa Graves
If it's Wednesday and you're on the Midas Touch network and it's 8pm eastern time, you must be on legal af the podcast. And I'm Michael Popak and I'm joined today with one of our regular anchors on Legal AF over on the Legal AF YouTube channel, Lisa Graves. Lisa, I haven't seen you since the weekend when we were in Philadelphia for Netroots Nation and did some amazing interviewing including of Jamie Raskin together which is up on legal AF YouTube and doing great. So great to see you on the
- [02:27]
Karen Freeman McNiff
screen, to see you again and thanks for having me on here with you as your co host.
- [02:31]
Lisa Graves
Absolutely, absolutely. Karen Freeman McNiffel. I was traveling today and so Lisa is here. For those who don't know Lisa, that's not just a random book behind her head. She wrote that random book behind your head. It's called without Precedent. It's a takedown of the Roberts court. Doesn't that sound good? Makes you feel just saying those words, a takedown of the Roberts court. And I, I not only spent some quality time with Lisa Graves, constitutional scholar extraordinaire, one of the few people in America that served in all three branches of government. She's a five tool player, as we like to say in baseball. And we sat in on a couple of Supreme Court panels. I was in the audience. Lisa was on the, was up there on the panel about reform, about the United States Supreme Court. And I think at some point during the show today, we'll share sort of what we what what we learned and what we think the proper course is once adults get back into government, which hopefully will be at the midterms. And it was so great to hang out with the court accountability and True north people and just be surrounded. It really re energized me to be surrounded by people who are, whose everyday existence is about voter protection, civil rights, constitutional rights, the Supreme Court and getting corruption out of it, women's rights, reproductive rights, immigration rights, you name it. We were all, you know, yoked together for three days in the Philadelphia Convention center, right?
- [04:08]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yes, that's right. It was great to see you put back in to see so many activists out who are really eager to learn more about what's gone wrong, how we got here and what we can do about it. And we had a great panel with Senator Whitehouse, with two amazing legal scholars from Harvard, with a organizer from Alabama in the aftermath of the Milligan case ruling by the Roberts Court last week. And so it was very exhilarating and it was great to see some of our other allies on the courts panel and see Jamie Raskin and interview him with you because he's working on Democracy Summer and there's a lot of things people can do. So like, very exciting. Despite the hard things happening. There's a lot of lemonade to make.
- [04:53]
Lisa Graves
Yeah, agreed. And I just wanted to kind of impart that to our audience. You know, when I go there, when Lisa goes there, we're your ambassadors, we're your fiduciaries. We feel that way. And we're interviewing somebody or meeting somebody, making a new relationship. That's something that will endure, we hope, to the benefit of our audience on legal I have YouTube channel and of course here on the podcast. And so we've got a couple of we're going to get into deep dive molecular level about voting and about because that if you had to ask me what's the number one thing the audience comments on, ask me questions about on all my various podcasts and shows and videos. It's about popoc. Are we going to be able to vote? Is the vote going to count? Are the attorneys general ready? Are the states ready for all the, all the stuff that Donald Trump's going to try to do to overthrow democracy a second time? And so I wanted to do sort of an all, almost all 75% teaching, you know, brown bag teaching here on the, on the podcast about all things voting. I mean, voting and databases and lawsuits around that and gerrymandering and lawsuits around that. What's going on in California and how that's a blueprint that we need to be sensitive to, but is also informing us on how to fight at the midterm. So that was actually a good thing. And then at sort of the, at sort of the halfway mark, you know, sort of, no, no pun intended, at the, at the, it's sort of like the super bowl show, the halftime show, we're bringing in Mark Elias. Let me repeat that. I want to hear the crowd roar. I will bring in Mark Elias of Democracy docket and a lawyer who's in the courtrooms fighting these very cases. If you don't know Mark Elias, you need to know him. You will know him. Tonight, it's Legal AF meets Democracy docket and Mark Elias at about the halfway mark. Let's kick it off, though, with some breaking news as we came on the air. This is live. Live, you know, and just so you know, Lisa Graves and Dina Dahl do Monday night live Legal AF on the Legal AF YouTube channel. Legal AF podcast, Monday Night Live, 5pm Eastern Time over on Legal AF. This is Live. So if you got questions you want to ask Lisa or me or Mark or any of the three of us, just put it in chat and our team will, you know, our team is standing by to put it up for us to try to grab at, at certain intervals. So let's start with Epstein. Yes, let's, I don't know what Maggie, I don't know who Maggie Haberman sources, but this new bombshell that came out this afternoon in anticipation of her book Inside the White House, freak out over the Epstein files, her coverage and I'll give the overview and then turn it over to you, Lisa. Her report is so at the molecular it it in like quotes, almost as if there is a mole in the Situation Room in February and March of last year about the Epstein file. And she's got the tapes. I mean, I, I I mean, I don't know if somebody surreptitiously recorded things, but she's not doing that. Well, this may have been discussed or not. No, she's going. And J.D. vance said the following. And then in response, you know, you know, this, this guy say, said, you know, James Blake said the following and this. And I'm like, these are like quotes. So leaky administration. Somebody's talking, you know, that's going to piss off Donald Trump. But Maggie Haberman doesn't care. And so the overview is. And we watched a lot of these pieces, but Maggie puts it together in a puzzle and makes us understand what happened. So in and around, if everybody remembers in the timeline, because sometimes you kind of get it out of whack. You've got Trump and Bondi getting a lot of pressure, the administration getting a lot of pressure back in January and February to do something about the Epstein files and to release them. Because people in the administration like Patel, you know, they were all right wing podcasters that were big conspiracy theorists and they were all about the Epstein files. And so there's this big push internally and externally to release it all. According to Maggie Haberman, all the reporting, all Trump wanted to do was not release any documents at all. That was the first thing. His next gambit was to have a sort of a tip of the hat to transparency, a gesture of transparency without really being transparent. And they were trying to calculate how little they could produce. This is a situation room. Little they could produce in order to satisfy what they thought was a story that was going to go away. They were convinced, based on polling and based on people in the room like Susie Wiles and, and others, that this story was going to blow over. Okay? Which of course, huge miscalculation. And they believed it was only being kept alive by left wing podcasters and fringe conspiracy theorists. They didn't say Midas and legal af, but they might as well. And that there was no real voting block that was being represented by these conspiracy theories. That was sort of at the core. Right? And then the reporting is that J.D. vance was freaking out. I mean, that was the words. That's the freak out. That J.D. vance in particular had bought into all the conspiracy theories. And he was like, we gotta come clean. We gotta release everything. In fact, even if it has Trump's name on it, it'll be better if we get out ahead of the story. So he's got a situation room, right, Lisa? That's as, as reported. I'll paint the picture and turn it over to you. You Got Susie Wiles, chief of staff. You got, you've got Carolyn Levitt, press secretary. Stephen Chung, communications director, you've got Todd Blanche and Anne Bondi, Cash Patel, you've got Warrington, who's the White House counsel. You've got. Who's the guy? That's the guy that's in charge of dummy mandering. James. It'll come to me in a minute. Yeah, Blair. You got Blair in there. Blair. This is the quote where I was like, Maggie's got a source there like that taped this because Blair's comment was when they said we need a press conference, I mean, immediately. And he stood up. And the only bright thing in the room, he said, with all due respect, everybody in this room developed the original communications plan that got us into this mess. So I don't think another communications plan by you guys is going to get us out of it. And then lastly, they had to figure out what to do with the problem named Ghislaine Maxwell. And so in the same room, they were considering, should we have Tucker Carlson interviewer, what should we do about it? And the best line. Did you catch the line of Stephen
- [11:54]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Chung about, about, about Galene want to give her something?
- [12:00]
Lisa Graves
Yeah. No, he said he's. Stephen Chung said giving a pardon to a person, convicted girl, girl sex trafficking is, is a PR disaster.
- [12:16]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah.
- [12:16]
Lisa Graves
Nothing about the morality, nothing about the ethics. It's a PR disaster. All right, take it from there. You also have the Epstein birthday book that came with the Wall Street Journal all at the same time. What did you, what did you make from the report? The detail of the reporting?
- [12:32]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Well, this is really an extraordinary set of reporting. And as you mentioned, this is a preview of the book that Maggie Haberman wrote. They described that they. This, this book is based on over 1,000 interviews, and they only did exact quotes where the person was certain that, that that's what was said. And if, if they had any doubt, they paraphrase or didn't include it. And so it looks pretty rock solid in terms of the documentation. But as you point out, this, this particular story in the New York Times today is based on a meeting in the Situation Room. Now, that's the room, typically where the President of the United States sits with generals and national security advisors on matters of war and peace. But in this instance, Trump wasn't there. He was excluded. Excluded from the meeting because they were. These advisors were so concerned about what was happening in terms of the public response to the failure, basically this administration to be transparent about the Epstein files. After all of the time that so many of them, including Cash, Patel and others, had spent talking about the Epstein files during the Biden administration and during the 2024 election. And so it really is. It's an amazing tale, and it looks to be very accurate on the surface. And there are a couple things that really did stand out for me, you know, based on this reporting. One was, like you said, there's clearly a leak or two or maybe three, who knows, given the number of quotes, verbatim quotes, or someone taking very good notes, or perhaps someone taking very good notes from a recording. It really is an extraordinary set of conversations. And like you said, Steven Chung's comment about Ghislaine Maxwell isn't about the morality of cutting a deal or the immorality of cutting a deal with Glenn Maxwell. It's about how it would look, which is really extraordinary. And so, in essence, part of the story that's told today is how that scheme was hatched, how they decided that they were going to. The idea was that they would interview Maxwell or have Tucker Carlson or someone interview Maxwell and basically count on her saying that Trump did nothing wrong, despite some of the things we know in those files that later came out, despite other statements by other women about how Donald Trump had treated them. And so that was the gamble they were willing to make. And there was a conversation about if they did this meeting with her, would she get a pardon or a commutation or something else. Well, we know what happened next. What happened next is that Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's former defense attorney, inter quote, interviewed. And that's technically true, but, you know, I'm going to use the term loosely for a transcript to be specifically released for this purpose of trying to clear Donald Trump, saying that she never saw him do anything wrong. And immediately after this interview, she was transferred from the prison that she was duly sentenced to for the very serious crime she was convicted of, of sex trafficking and other and sexual abuse as well, to one of those club feds. And so, you know, this went down in some ways how they planned it. But there are a couple of things I want to flag, Michael, if that's all right. Because when you look at the story of what happened here, the part of the story that's told here and then beyond what you see is a timeline. And the timeline in part is, you know, February of last year, Pam Bondi saying, you know, she's got the client list on her desk right here and just getting ready to clear it then. Then on the 27th of February, they released the binders that didn't have anything new.
- [16:05]
Lisa Graves
Oh, I love the binders. I love them. And get, I know you're going to get there. About the fact that. About whether she cleared it or not.
- [16:13]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yes. Which, which. Yeah, which. The White House officials were shocked. They had not cleared it, they hadn't seen them and the influencers felt betrayed because there was really nothing new in there. Then you see a statement, I think it was in June of 2025 where the comments from the just were. The files contained a lot of child porn. A lot of child porn. So that admission, then you have this statement that comes out in July, July 7, 2025, in which this memo from DOJ and FBI in which the memo says, A, there's no client list. Forget about what Pam Bondi said and what we've all been saying all along. B, that they reviewed over 300 gigs of quote, evidence. That was a nice admission. And C, that despite all this there, that there will be no further investigation of any third parties. So you have this admission that there's a ton of child porn in these files, but they're not going to do any further investigation. It was extraordinary. It landed like a bombshell.
- [17:16]
Lisa Graves
Yeah. Before you leave that memoir, I don't have it up. We can't put it up here. But do you remember not only was it two pages and completely, completely cleared and exonerated everybody, but it was. Talk about cowardice. Cowardice. It was unsigned and I. Undated and unsigned. Nothing says, nothing says I want to be associated with this document. Like somebody who doesn't want to put their signature on it.
- [17:43]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah. I mean, an anonymous finding from the Justice Department and you know, they put their, their, their names all over everything else. Right. So then as, as this meeting is happening in the Situation Room with these, you know, nearly a dozen high level Trump advisors trying to figure out what to do in the face of Trump trying to stop anything else from coming about out about the Epstein files. The Wall Street Journal story breaks about the birthday card and Donald Trump's close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and all of the wonderful secret things that they know about each other. The enigma, right. The image of the, of the, of the woman and the breasts and the signature line, you know, you know, standing in for the pubic hair, which Trump has denied. But that, let me just say one of the, one of the pieces that is re emphasizing the story is that that birthday card wasn't just in a book of birthday cards. It was in a leather bound book.
- [18:36]
Lisa Graves
Wait, wait, four volume. Yes. He wasn't, he didn't even make the first volume.
- [18:41]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Right, right, right. You know, and so you, you know, so that part.
- [18:45]
Lisa Graves
That's, and on that note, on that note, there were hundreds of people that, that made submissions to this birthday book that Colleen Maxwell said she, she handled because her mother had done it for her father or whatever. And, and, and it brought down careers all over the world in academia and finance, in the Royal Family and the rest. Not one person of the hundreds of people on either side of Donald Trump on the page or in the vibe has said that's a forgery. That's not mine. The only person who says somebody went back, somebody forged it. About my relate was is Donald Trump.
- [19:25]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah, yeah. It's extraordinary. And then another component of this, they replay, you know, Marjorie, Marjorie Taylor Greene's encounter with Donald Trump. I think that was also maybe in the Situation Room was at the White House or something. And she says that Donald Trump told her that releasing the Epstein files could hurt some of his friends. And my thought was, are those friends John Barron, John Miller and David Dennison, the aliases that Donald Trump has used. But, you know, clearly we've seen other names come forward, Howard Lutnick and others who are mentioned in the Epstein files, when they were finally, a portion of them was finally released as part of the Epstein Transparencies act, where a handful of Republicans joined every Democrat in, you know, voting for their release. And then, and then Trump signed on to say, you know, he just couldn't stop the inevitable.
- [20:11]
Lisa Graves
That was total. That was 434 out of 435. At the end, one guy, at the very end, one guy didn't sign on.
- [20:18]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Right, right, right. Exactly. Once the lemming started like that, they all went over.
- [20:23]
Lisa Graves
Discharge petition.
- [20:24]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah. Initially for the discharge position, they were only like four or five. And in fact, that was when the House speaker was trying to hold off on swearing in. Adelita Grijalva, who we had on the show on Legal AF to talk about this debacle of not being sworn in. Once she was sworn in, they could not hold it off. And then almost every single member of Congress voted for it. But let's talk what happened. Talk about what happened next, because that was just last fall. Then suddenly, in January of this year, January 30th this year, Todd Blanche announces there's going to be no more files released. No more files released. And I really want to be careful about what I say here because there are many shocking things in that press conference, but one of them was he specifically said, of course, any depiction of child pornography was obviously excluded. And then he said quote, anything that would jeopardize an active federal investigation. And finally, anything that depicts or contains images of death, physical abuse or injury are also not produced. Still, we have had no prosecutions of anyone coming out of the files that DOJ and the FBI reviewed. The fact that they had tons of child porn in there and seemingly images of death and physical injury and no consequences for anyone in terms of a criminal investigation other than Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell is itself an outrageous scandal.
- [21:45]
Lisa Graves
Absolutely. And, and our colleague Katie Fang and I just interviewed her, her lawyer, Brendan Ballou from the Public Integrity Project. You know, she filed the first and actually the only lawsuit to on under the Epstein transparency actually as a hearing June 30 in front of Judge Sullivan in which she's saying as a reporter, I've, I have been informationally injured by the fail. Which is, which is a standing, a standing element. I can't do my job. I can't do my job by, by, by continuing to sit back and be spoon fed documents and be told all that's all there is. We know there's 3 million more. And her lawsuit is to obtain the entirety of the Epstein files, including the unredacted, including the Donald Trump documents, including. Get this one, Karen. Karen, sorry. You know who I usually do the show with. Sorry, sorry, Lisa. Including the foreign. They didn't bother if it was in a foreign language. They just went pass.
- [22:47]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Right.
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Lisa Graves
This is an international child sex trafficking ring.
- [22:50]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah.
- [22:51]
Lisa Graves
How do you pass on the, on the, on the foreign language ones? So yeah, you know, we're gonna, they attacked you for not having standing. But let's see what happens come, come June 30th in front of Judge Sullivan.
- [23:05]
Karen Freeman McNiff
That's right. And then you know, on top of that there was a couple of, a couple other things that are worth noting because all of this redaction effort at our exp by the FBI, by different agents or contractors, who knows, and by Todd Blanche reviewing them, he said himself, you know, you have a situation in which the victims names were exposed again on the sloppiness. But the men who were implicated in a number of these exchanges about Snow White and other issues, their names were redacted. And Jamie Raskin and other members of Congress went to the Justice Department to, to have a look at the computers to be able to do a search, sort of a Google search of the files. And there are different reports coming out of those meetings, but the accounts are tens of thousands. Up to a million times. Donald Trump's name appears in these files or Mar a Lago or things related to Trump appear in these files. And that's just these files that doesn't include the files that were released by the Jeffrey Epstein estate that came out last fall that the Judiciary Committee and others have been, have been sharing, where in that instance, the Wall Street Journal did an analysis that showed that in a, you know, decade long period or more, Donald Trump's name appeared more than anyone else's names in those files. And so, you know, Donald Trump is repeatedly referenced in these files. And there are some stories that were reprised in this new New York Times report showing that there were allegations again against Donald Trump. Some of them, you know, some of the allegations have been covered in other reporting. There's the reprise of the statement of a prosecutor in 2020 that Donald Trump had taken far more trips on Epstein's jet than were, than was previously known. And there was a very, you know, sad story about, you know, coming through from Sarah Ransome about one of the women in Epstein's sex trafficking ring, a woman named Jen, who, according to this claim, Jen was someone who Donald Trump had sexual relations with and was very, I don't know if I can say this on the air. I guess I'll just go for it and say, I mean, it's shocking to see a description that Donald Trump purportedly was so rough with this woman's nipples that they were raw and red and sweet, swollen and had made other statements about women's nipples, among other things. And another part of this investigation that we've seen from the reporting, this particular part from the, from NPR, not from New York Times, was how the 302s, which are the write ups of the FBI when they interview someone making an allegation, how those pertaining to Donald Trump had been removed in sequence. And NPR helped break that story. So there's a lot of great investigative journalism going on. We have a lot more to learn from the book. This is just an excerpt of this whole book that Maggie Haberman did. And I think they're going to be more revelations to come.
- [26:04]
Lisa Graves
Absolutely. And it's their worst nightmare. There's a reason it's called the Freak out, because they were in the timeline, the way you presented it, they were freaking out because it was just one bad story for them after another. But it all starts with Trump. If Trump wanted to do the right thing, which he obviously didn't, and he just, he should have released everything and appointed, had his Department of Justice appoint an independent special council to go after Wherever the files led. But we knew. Right.
- [26:32]
Karen Freeman McNiff
But of course, they don't believe in independent special counsel.
- [26:34]
Mark Elias
Any.
- [26:35]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Let me just say this, it's interesting, like the speculation of the leak is, you know, who the leakers are. Interesting.
- [26:40]
Lisa Graves
They're speculating about the leak already. Who is it?
- [26:42]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah, I mean, is it Dan Bondino? You know, who could it be? But you know, one of the things in there is, you know, I think, you know, I'll just say this, I'll say this on the record. I think J.D. vance was right to say they should just release the files, you know, they should just be released. But I'm sure that someone in the White House is going to read that as betrayal, that the second in line for the president, the first in line for the presidency after Trump is saying let's release all this into the wild.
- [27:08]
Lisa Graves
You know, I think Marco Rubio is good. I think Vance just bought himself being vice president again. I mean running, running for vice president again. Yeah, on that one. But we'll, we'll continue to, we'll continue to cover that story. And then lastly, we all, I think we all know now that once again, Donald Trump, for the eighth time, ninth time, I told the American people that the Iran war and the ending of it was just around the corner. And now we're firing off, you know, new missiles again tonight. And Iran is response is retaliating by firing on US Assets in Bahrain and, and Kuwait and other places. And we're no closer to this end game because this Iran war will end not when Donald Trump says it'll end. It'll end when the Iranians say it ends. And they're not, they're not done yet. And they've realized they can withstand the awesome firepower of the American military and survive that because they're on a different scale. They're on a hundred year. They look at things in 100 years, not in how is this going to affect the stock market and you know. Right. And as a result, the best case scenario, and this is terrible, but best case scenario is that we get the Obama treaty deal that Trump pulled out of, probably a worse version of it and we have to spend billions of dollars in reparations to rebuild Iran without also obtaining regime change. It's one thing to do the Marshall Plan.
- [28:44]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Right, right, right.
- [28:46]
Lisa Graves
But you know, we took out Japan and Germany. Right. But like we're going to rebuild the Islamic Republican Guard. Like I don't understand. And then he's going to declare, you know, and then cue the confetti cannons on know, mission accomplished.
- [29:01]
Michael Popak
We.
- [29:01]
Karen Freeman McNiff
What?
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Lisa Graves
What was the mission?
- [29:03]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah, it really, really, I mean, in some ways, the mission looks like Wall street manipulation and people getting rich off of this war, and also Benjamin Netanyahu getting what he wants in terms of the US Being pulled into this war of choice when it wasn't necessary. And it, and it really was predicated by the utterly foolish withdrawal from the agreement that the Obama administration had negotiated, just like sort of a de facto rejection of whatever this, the first black president states had done in Iran. We are worse off than we were in that agreement. We're worse off than we were last year. Iran, Iran is holding many of the cards. And like you said, we're in a position with Trump's claims that we're going to end up paying, we, the taxpayers, are going to end up paying to rebuild Iran. And also, Iran is getting more revenue because it's able to now put a tax and a toll on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which was not happening before. So we're definitely in a worse position because of Donald Trump's reckless policies, his erratic behavior, his inability to actually negotiate an actual resolution, and his inability to accept that a previous administration did anything right and had, and had a good, a good agreement in place that would have, you know, held back on Iran's nuclear program, had more inspections, and not had us paying them, you know, paying them to rebuild the country that we have attacked. And so it really is, it really is basically an unmitigated disaster. All that is not funny, but I did hear comedians say that Donald Trump has won and lost and won and lost and won and lost the Iran war more than any other president in US History.
- [30:39]
Lisa Graves
Sorry. That's true. I counted it. It was seven until this week. So now it's probably up to about nine when I'm so happy to have you here, and I'm sure our audience is thrilled when we come back from a quick break here on Legal af. We're going to get in to the weeds and the molecular of all things voting, voting protection, voting mobilization, data protection and voter information protection. The Postal Service and what we're learning by watching Donald Trump attack the California vote. We can talk about why that's taking a minute with 16 million votes, 13 million of them mail in ballots, and then, you know, sort of a winning and losing. Right. We're winning on data protection and on maybe on the federal databases and probably on the Trump screwing around with the Postal Service, but we're losing in maps and gerrymandering. And I can't think of anybody better to kind of sort all this out for us in the post Calais world than democracy docket. Mark Elias, which we'll bring in after our break. And he just wrote a great piece on democracy docket about how Calais, the ruling in which the United States Supreme Court gutted Section two of the Voting Rights act and said, yeah, but the last pin standing is intentional discrimination. If you got intentional discrimination, come back to us. And then two weeks later, there was a case of intentional discrimination in the Alabama maps. They said, nope, no, no, you're not giving enough credence and enough deference to the legislature who said it's not intentionally discriminating. And now Mark pulls it forward and says he's starting to see in his cases and in cases that they're using Calais to say any restriction on voting, meaning voter suppression, any hurdle that they put up before you vote, the only way you can tear it down is if you show a Calais like intentional discrimination. So you see how already they're trying to. To. To benefit from the Calais decision to argue that intent about that intentional discrimination. So I want to bring Mark in so many different ways to support what we do here on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, and Legal AF, the podcast is. We've got a YouTube channel. That's what I was trying to say. Come over to legal AF. YouTube got 1.12 million subscribers right now. Amazing content. About a dozen contributors, including Adam Classfeld, All Rise. New Court Accountability Action, and True north, along with Lisa Graves and Alex Aronson. Dina Doll is there as well. And in addition, we have the new Monday Night Live mnl. Yeah. Monday Night Live of Legal af. So if you can't get your fill of Legal AF Monday night, that one's hosted by Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves, 5:00pm Eastern time on Legal AF YouTube. And we have Legal AF, the substack. We come in all, you know, it's like candy bars. We come in all different shapes and sizes. For your. For your viewing pleasure. I do a live report every day. I just did one today with Adam Classfeld. And we have this, this content like filings that you can read for yourself on Legal AF substack. And then, of course, we've got the podcast. Thank you. We. We. Oh, I can show it. We won the Webbies and we. I finally got them here. They're in the back. That's what these coils are. Those are the way.
- [34:04]
Karen Freeman McNiff
There they are. I didn't know what those were. They look great. I mean, I've seen them. I think yeah, that is three of them.
- [34:10]
Lisa Graves
Three of them. We swept them for best news podcast. And really that's all because of your generosity of time and commitment to what we do here. So keep the podcast afloat. Listen to us wherever you get audio podcasts, five star reviews and comments, of course. And then tell people about the YouTube, the YouTube versions. And then we've got sponsors and that keeps the gas in the tank, frankly. It keeps the lights on. And you know, they're pro democracy sponsors. They know what our show is about and they want to talk to our audience. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, so don't, don't change that dial. They got dials anymore. Legal A Here on Legal a podcast, Mark Elias Democracy docket right after this quick break. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack, hydration and coffee sponsor. IQ Bar Protein Bars, IQ Mix, Hydration mixes and IQ Joe Mushroom Coffees are the delicious low sugar brain and body fuel you need to win your day. The Ultimate Sampler Pack is a great way to try all IQ Bar products and flavors. You get nine IQ Bars, eight IQ Mix Sticks and four IQ Joe sticks. All IQ Bar products are clean, label, certified and entirely free from gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs, and artificial ingredients. With over 20,000 5 star reviews and counting, more people than ever are fueling their busy lifestyles with IQ Bars, Brain and Body Boosting bars, hydration mixes, and mushroom coffees. Their Ultimate Sampler Pack includes all three. As someone with a busy schedule, I'm always looking for convenient snacks, hydration and coffee options that fit into my day. And right now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products, including the Ultimate Sampler Pack, plus free shipping. To get your 20% off, text legal AF to 64,000. That's text legal AF to 64,000 one more time. Legal AF to 64,000 message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. We have an important message to share from our friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Trump administration's excessive Christian nationalist rhetoric is only building as we move toward the 250th anniversary of of the Declaration of Independence. AU is highlighting a case involving federal workers caught in the crossfire. A multifaith group of federal employees filed a new lawsuit against the U.S. department of Agriculture for violating the separation of church and state and the religious freedom promised in our Constitution. Americans United received emails from multiple USDA employees saying the proselytizing Easter email sent by Secretary of Agriculture. Brooke Rollins to more than 100,000 USDA employees is an abuse of power that violates the separation of church and state promised in the First Amendment. They are absolutely right. Government employees signed up to work for the usda, not attend Brooke Rollins's Sunday service. The Constitution draws a bright line between personal faith and government power, and this lawsuit says she trampled right over it. Well, the hits keep on coming from this administration and Americans United is doing their best to keep up the fight against Christian nationalism. If you want to help, head to au.org legalaf to learn more about their work and how you can get involved. Americans United supporting everyone's right to live as they choose, so long as they don't harm others. That's AU.org SL legal AF and we are back. And I'm wearing the same glasses as when I recorded that head.
- [38:08]
Karen Freeman McNiff
I'm so glad you have a whole set of glasses.
- [38:11]
Lisa Graves
I do. I have a collection.
- [38:12]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Glasses. Yes.
- [38:13]
Lisa Graves
Thank you very much. I was walking around the streets of Philadelphia and I got stopped a number of times like pop, which is great. So we're back and let's get to our teaching about voting rights. I want to make, I want to look, we don't blow smoke or sunshine on the show. We never have. I want to be, I want to give honest commentary and analysis. But I also want to give people some hope about the voting day, election day, and what people are prepared, whether it's public interest groups and private lawyers like Mark Elias or it's the attorneys general of the various states, Democratic and and others, naacp, aclu, you name it, how they are ready, have already done tabletop exercises to get ready for the worst. They've already thought of the worst. They probably have out thought Donald Trump about the worst of the things that he could possibly do. And they are ready for it. And we're ready for Mark Elias. Let's bring in Mark Elias. Hey, Mark.
- [39:16]
Mark Elias
Good to see you.
- [39:17]
Lisa Graves
Hey, you as well. Thanks. Drew. I know you were traveling and busy in your court cases, but you know, our audience is thirsty for your knowledge. I don't know if you know Lisa Graves. You guys probably bumped into I do worlds in the past.
- [39:30]
Mark Elias
I do. Two of our glasses are not like the other.
- [39:36]
Lisa Graves
We'll leave it at that. And for the audio listeners, so the look, I, I've, you know, I'm a voracious consumer of all things on democracy docket. If people don't know about that, they should be going there and subscribing and helping Marx and his cause and all of that. But, you know, why don't we talk about data protection, the federal database that Trump's trying to use, and the. The post office not delivering mail in ballots. We can talk about mail in ballots because we're about to get a ruling from the United States Supreme Court, which. For which, for instance, if they rule against grace periods, what's going on in California, which is waiting plus seven days for ballots to come in, wouldn't be allowed. It is allowed for this election. One of the reasons that they are methodically taking some time, taking a minute to count votes in the mail, in ballot votes, especially in California. Then you got the other area that you're very active with where we're not winning as much, which is maps and gerrymandering, including you just posted in Florida, where I live, you know, the Supreme Court of Florida jurisdiction. We're okay with a map, even though it violates the Florida Constitution. We're not going to enter a writ, which is totally crazy. So why don't I turn it over to you? And you know, what our audience ultimately wants to hear is, is my vote protected? And what can I do to assist voter mobilization, the protection of the vote.
- [41:06]
Mark Elias
Yeah. So the first thing to know is that Donald Trump wants you to be so concerned that you lose hope. And if you lose hope, he wins because then you don't vote. You don't bother participating because you think it's all futile. So we can't let him win. We have to understand that it is all of our jobs to fight for free and fair elections. It is all of our jobs to stand up for democracy. Some of us do it in the courtroom. Some of us do it on podcasts and YouTube shows. Some of us do it by calling our friends, writing postcards to. To strangers we don't know, registering voters. But we all have an obligation. What Donald Trump is trying to do in 2026, that is different. Right? The usual voter suppression, election subversion that we have become used to, that I became well known for defeating Donald Trump in court after the 2020 election for Joe Biden. Right. All of that is still out there. But what is different is what you mentioned, which is that Donald Trump wants to build a national D database of voters so that he and his administration can go through it and remove the people they don't want to vote and then send back to the states a list of who they believe should be eligible to get a ballot and cast a ballot. Now, they have conscripted, or are trying to conscript the states into turning this data over some states are doing. So many states are fighting. My law firm and I, we are undefeated in those cases. We're involved in 30 cases preventing those voter files from being turned over. We are so far undefeated. We're eight. No, those cases are now proceeding through the courts of appeals. The other thing that Donald Trump is trying to do is to try to get the U.S. postal Service to agree that if someone is not on the list, that Donald Trump and his administration turns over to them, to the states and to the Postal Service, that the U.S. postal Service won't deliver that person a ballot or return them ballot. So that is the new sort of scheme that Trump and his cronies are trying to effectuate. And we're fighting them in court. We've already sued them in federal district court in Washington, D.C. that case is now before the D.C. circuit. There are other cases by the state attorneys general, the Democratic state attorney general that are going on in Massachusetts. So this is all going to be like, laid out and played out in court. But what I can't do, what I, what I can't have, is for people to just say, well, the system's rigged and Mark will never win, or the system is rigged and Donald Trump will always get what he wants. The fact is we have a very good track record of beating him in court. He has a long history of losing these court cases. And so while I have eyes wide open about the U.S. supreme Court and particularly the cases that we're waiting to have decisions on, you know, I have, I have belief and confidence that if we all do everything we can, if the lawyers do everything they can, the voter registration groups do everything they can, the voters do their part by checking your registration, making sure it's up to date, making sure you have a plan to vote, you understand what rules may have been changed and then voting. I think if we all do that, I think in the end we'll be okay.
- [44:11]
Lisa Graves
Yeah. And on that, at least, if you don't mind, I'll just, I'll just kind of kick it off there. I mean, Mark's also being humble. I don't know if you're 100 or just the whole group opposing state data being turned. Harmony. Dylan is 0 and 10, I think.
- [44:25]
Mark Elias
Yes.
- [44:25]
Lisa Graves
At least. Right, Right. Okay.
- [44:27]
Mark Elias
We are, we are, we are 9, 0. There was one judge, right, in Arizona who didn't let us into the case. So we are, we are, we are one victory. We have not lost, but we are one victory behind the total number of cases.
- [44:40]
Lisa Graves
That's what I thought and for those that, you know, who, who are kind of joining our democracy in progress, and not something we often think about, except when we're here at this critical moment. The, the, the elections of federal officers and the president was purposely get that regulation, that process was purposely by our framers of the Constitution and the founding given to the states because they didn't trust the new federal government and the power of the federal government to run its own elections. People may forget if, let's say, watch like Ken Burns American Revolution, how, how corrupt the colonial governments were. Right. And governors of states that are now, you know, proud states of ours, but there's a lot of bribery going on in there with the chief executive of some of these states. And they were like, yeah, we're never gonna have that happen again. We barely trust the new federal government. We certainly don't want them running their own election. So they divided the labor on purpose. And what Trump's trying to do is say, no, we're going to federalize federal elections and take the, that power away from the states.
- [45:46]
Mark Elias
Right? Yeah. So the one thing people need to recognize is that the states, as you say, administer elections. Right. So a lot of you out there are saying, actually, it's in my state, it's at the county level. That's fine. States devolve the power down. But the Constitution gives the states the authorities at the time, place, and manner of federal elections, only to subject to legislation enacted by Congress. Now, Congress has enacted very few laws in this area. The one law that people are most familiar with is that Congress set a uniform election day of the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. But there are very few laws that Congress has imposed its will on the states. The states administer their elections. But here's the most important thing. The President has no role. Like, even, even where there is a federal role, it is left entirely in the Constitution to legislation enacted by Congress. And so when Donald Trump says that he believes the states are his agents for counting and tabulating ballots, something he has said and something he has posted on social media, that is wrong, it is a lie. But it's also just constitutionally nonsense. When he says he can issue executive orders to dictate what the states do, that is wrong, it is a lie, and it is constitutional nonsense. Because the only federal player, the only way that there can be federal role in these elections is if Congress enacts new laws. And Congress is not doing that.
- [47:17]
Lisa Graves
Exactly. And so when I know we quake in our boots when he talks about, I think we should federalize the elections. And then anytime I hear the post office involved with my sacred right to vote, you know, the entity that can't deliver my, my catalog or stuff my stuffs my stuffs my, my, my ballot box stuffs my post box with other people's mail, they're going to be responsible for deciding whether I can vote or not in mail in voting and mail in voting. This is the other dirty trick of Donald Trump. You know, one of the greatest tricks is try to convince people, especially in his party and his base, that mail in ballot, mail in voting is a four letter word and a dirty word and it means fraud. 13 million out of 16 million people in California just voted successfully by mail in ballot. In states like Washington, up and down the west coast, all they do is mail in a Dropbox ballot. There is no machine that you go for and they're not rife with fraud. And so this whole, you know, orchestrate, I want to turn to California now, this whole orchestrated attack by Trump hoping people aren't noticing about there's got to be fraud. How is the right wing MAGA podcaster that I, that I endorse not winning the LA mayoral race? Like, are you effing kidding me? You got 6, 13 million ballots. They have a seven day grace period which just expired yesterday to finish the count. Plus they have 20 or 21 days to check signatures. So it takes a minute to open a ballot, double check it against the book and clock it in. And, and they're just doing it methodically. I'm going to have Rob Bonta, the Attorney General on, on Friday to talk about it. But what are you picking up, Mark? And then, I didn't mean to squeeze Lisa out of this conversation. I'm going to ask Mark in a minute. Mark, what do you think about the blueprint that Trump's using against California and what we can do about it? Lisa, get into it, get into a dialogue with Mark. I didn't mean to.
- [49:17]
Karen Freeman McNiff
No, no, it's all good. I just want to say, Mark, it's a real joy to be on this with you and Popak and I'm such a fan of the work of you and your team and the Elias Group and democracy docket. It should be a must read, must subscribe for everyone. And you know, I, I do think that, you know what we're waiting for on this Roberts Court decision on, on how votes are counted. It really is extraordinary. The three of us all went to law school, I would say for me, a long time ago. But you know,
- [49:48]
Mark Elias
he and I, he And I were in law school together.
- [49:50]
Lisa Graves
Right.
- [49:51]
Karen Freeman McNiff
I might be older than you. But anyway, it's the tried and true reality is that, you know, the post, the postmark has been the traditional way for litigation, lawsuits. You file your complaint, is it on time. The postmark has been something that could be trusted. And now Donald Trump is trying to, to, you know, erode and destroy that trust by having that be potentially manipulated by the Postal Service. That has no qualification in this area, no skills, no training, and no proper role by law, you know, by constitution or statute to do this. And yet the reality is, is that America's been voting by mail since the Civil War. That 1964 election of Abraham Lincoln, the reelection was a vote by mail. And so now you have the Republican Party conspiring with Donald Trump in Mississippi to say that you cannot count the ballots even if they're postmarked the day of the election. And so I guess I'm wondering a, what your thoughts are, are about where that case is going. I'm very worried given John Roberts hostility to voting rights, as he's demonstrated over and over again as a lawyer and as a judge, using his roles as a judge to win what he couldn't win as a lawyer. But also I'm very concerned about the fact that that case could implicate early voting, too. That's right, the oral argument. So can you unpack that for us?
- [51:08]
Mark Elias
Yeah. So, first of all, I want to make a political point point that I think is implicit in some of what you, what both of you said, which is that, you know, mail in voting is not inherently better for Democrats than Republicans. I mean, you know, Michael, you're in Florida. Florida. Republicans gained control of that state largely because they invested more in mail in voting than Democrats did. So, like, there are lots of states where you could, where I could point you to Arizona is another state where Republicans had a huge advantage and in Florida still do have a huge advantage in mail in voting. So something partisan about this. Donald Trump decided in like mail in voting because during COVID he thought it would benefit Democrats because Democrats were more, were more careful about the health risks of COVID than he thought than the Republicans would be. But here we are. And you know, Trump and the Republican Party are now in a war on every aspect of mail in response voting. They try to ban ballot dropboxes, they try to shorten the periods to get mail in ballots, They've tried to disqualify more mail in ballots. And the latest thing is, you're exactly right, they are trying to say that a federal law, the very federal law I mentioned, that sets Election Day as the Tuesday following first Monday in November. Their argument is that that means that ballots postmarked by Election Day that are put in the mail before Election Day, postmarked by Election Day, can't be counted even if they come in a few days afterwards. I know if that doesn't make any sense to you, it doesn't make any sense to anyone, but that is their legal argument. I have litigated this issue against Republicans in state after state, and we won and we won and won. Finally, the RNC decided to bring a lawsuit against Mississippi. Yes, Mississippi, which, by the way, does not have no excuse mail in voting. And I don't think they sued Mississippi because they thought that, you know, there was fraud in Mississippi or because the elections are closed. They thought it was a. I think they brought the case because they thought they'd get a hometown treatment. Right. They'd be suing the Republican state of Mississippi. Well, me and my law firm, on behalf of our clients, we intervened in that case and we have been defending that case, essentially defending the Mississippi law now in the US Supreme Court, and we're waiting on a decision. You're exactly right that if the Republican National Committee wins this case and we lose this case, look, they're going to say it's not just ballots in the mail that come in after Election Day. They're going to say it's early voting. Right. I mean, I mean, they're going to say, well, if it's, if Election Day means Election Day, then you can't vote early. They're also going to say that you can't cure provisional ballots because after all, the provisional ballots are not counted on Election Day if they're cured afterwards. And so this is just the first step in them trying to institute what Donald Trump says he wants, which is in person on Election Day only voting. And that will disenfranchise lots and lots of people. He thinks that if you disenfranchise all those people, it helps Republicans win elections. You know, this is kind of an insider point, but if you look at why it is that the RNC believes it have standing in this case. Go back to the original complaint. It's because they said, we think that this will disenfranchise more Democrats and help more Republicans. So, like, they're pretty upfront about why they're doing this when they have to for standing purposes. But, you know, we're waiting to see what Supreme Court rules.
- [54:23]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Can I just ask you a Quick follow up on that, which is, you know, one of those pieces is that Donald Trump, I think, went to court. You may have been on the other side of this in 2020 to try to stop Pennsylvania from, from counting the ballots that arrived early, ahead of time. And so that pushed all that counting till after the polls closed, like it 8 o' clock or 7 o' clock whenever it closes. And then there's this surge when those votes are counted and Donald Trump gets the claim he won, but then it was stolen. Because somehow in the middle of the night, things changed. What changed was those ballots were counted. Can you talk a little bit just about that component? Because that's what's going on in California too. This idea that they weren't counted that night and couldn't actually be counted that night, that somehow this is a fraud.
- [55:05]
Mark Elias
Yeah. And this makes my blood boil. I mean, I gotta tell you, the New York Times, people wonder why people don't trust the legacy media. They don't trust the legacy media because the New York Times of all publications today, had an editorial in which they are basically critical of the state of California and essentially mouthed the same talking points that Donald Trump and the Republicans have been mouthing about California. And if you think it ends and begins in California, you are wrong. Because in 2020, when I was representing Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in beating Donald Trump in court more than 60 times, you are exactly right. Remember the stop the steal slogan? They wanted to stop counting. And the state of Pennsylvania took several days. The state of Arizona took several days. The state of Nevada took several days. Georgia took several days. And so it has been Donald Trump's talking point that we should not be counting ballots past Election Day. And why the New York Times would associate itself with this crazy argument against California is beyond me. But here's the deal with California. California counts slowly for three reasons. Number one, it is a very big state with a lot of jurisdictions and a whole lot of ballots. It's got a long ballot because there's a lot of races. It has multi languages and it's got a lot of jurisdiction. Number two, as you point out, it gives people more time to ensure that their ballot has been received and that it is processed. And if it is rejected because the signatures are deemed not to match, it gives voters an opportunity to cure it by proving that, in fact, it was their signature both times. Okay? So that takes time. Now, I have argued for years that states should not be doing that signature matching. In fact, I sued Florida years ago and I won. I sued Georgia years ago and I won because they had very high rejection rates in that signature matching. And Florida's signature matching program, though I still don't think it's entirely right, it is much better. The rates of rejection are much lower. So my answer to California is, if Donald Trump and the Republicans want you to speed up, let's stop the junk science of signature matching. And it is junk science. There is no court in America that would allow a person to testify whether a signature on one document matches a signature on another document. In fact, as you all know as lawyers, there's actually a federal rule of evidence that prohibits that. That prohibits lay handwriting analysis.
- [57:45]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Exactly.
- [57:46]
Mark Elias
I don't think not every state does signature matching. I think California should get rid of it. But, but why does California have it? They have it to satisfy the same right wing zealots who claim that there's fraud. Right. So they do this whole kabuki theater that takes all of this time in order to contend with the fact that people say, if you don't, signature match is going to be fraud, and then they get attacked for taking the time to doing that thing. So, like, to me, this is something we need to stand tall and not give an ounce for at not give an inch. You know, the fact that the New York Times, you know, thinks there's a middle ground here, here's my message. I don't compromise with Republicans because there is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist. And they are trying to burn down democracy. So every time someone says, well, maybe California could do it a little bit this way or a little bit that way, all you're doing is making Donald Trump's claims more effective. And it's not going to begin and end in California. He'll be making those claims in all the other states as well.
- [58:46]
Lisa Graves
Right. And using his. Well, he's not the U.S. attorney. He made himself the deputy. Whatever he is, couldn't get confirmed, you know, then declaring, well, right on cue, oh, there's fraud. It's got to be fraud. We've opened up fraud investigations.
- [58:58]
Mark Elias
And you saw, and you saw the U.S. attorney in California.
- [59:01]
Lisa Graves
Right.
- [59:02]
Mark Elias
The most shameful thing is, what the hell is Clayton, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of York, he was on CNBC saying, yeah, he has concerns. I'm thinking, don't you have enough bank fraud, don't you have enough crypto schemes with the Trump family going on for you to be paying attention? What the hell are you opining about California?
- [59:20]
Lisa Graves
Well, let me use my prior life, Jay Clayton was a notorious golf buddy of Donald Trump and Howard Lutnick back in the day. The reason that Jay Clayton became the head of the SEC is because Howard Lutnick wanted him to be the head of the sec. He really, he. They first wanted him to be Attorney General in the first administration. He didn't want it. He wanted SEC this time around, he didn't want to be in the government at all. But when the, when they left the U.S. attorney, the once proud U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan in shambles after the Mayor Adams indictment and Amel Bovey, they needed somebody. They needed some adult. And he looks like he's from central casting, right?
- [60:01]
Mark Elias
He does. He does.
- [60:02]
Lisa Graves
Got the suits, got the voice, but he's a political hack. And he got, he. They pushed a button like they do with Jeanine Pirro. He just comes off less greasy. And he pushed the button and said, jay, you got to go on CNBC and you got to all over California now.
- [60:15]
Mark Elias
He's.
- [60:15]
Lisa Graves
Well, okay, so that's it.
- [60:17]
Mark Elias
Is he a big law guy from New York or what? Where is he?
- [60:20]
Lisa Graves
Yeah, he was a big law guy from New York. And he's not suited for, I think Berman, when he wouldn't leave the office, said out loud, I'm not good. Right. I'm not going to leave the office until I don't want. No, Jake, no. He has no experience. He'll dismiss all of my, all of my criminal cases. And he does this, this is. He's a reluctant war happy warrior. He doesn't really want the job, and they shove him out to do it, but he does it. I'm not, I'm not making any excuses for Jay Clayton whatsoever. And to Mark's point, for those that want to go to see the editorial board today, California's excuses are damaging faith in government. Here's the, here's the line that I'm sure this is where Mark's blood started to boil. There's no good reason that California takes so long to count votes. Most democracies around the world count votes quickly. So do most large US States. California has since adopted an approach to election administration without meaningful benefit and with substantial downside. It makes the state government look incompetent. And we're like, we need that.
- [61:21]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Right? I mean, and Mark's exactly right. The idea of signature matching is not allowed in federal court at all.
- [61:29]
Lisa Graves
Look, look, look, look, look. If the penalty of perjury signature is not enough to make people honest. Okay.
- [61:37]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yes.
- [61:37]
Lisa Graves
As if they're. Trump wants people to believe there are Roving bands of people who want to vote more than once or vote when they're not able to vote, and they want to go to prison for it. Because we have a way after the election to go after the hundred cases that I've, out of 300 million of people that could you imagine the prison scene, you know, a couple of murderers, a couple of, you know, other, you know, what are you in for? Oh, I voted twice.
- [62:03]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Well, the reality is, right.000,000, maybe one more zero percent, right?
- [62:10]
Lisa Graves
Yeah.
- [62:10]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Out of hundreds of millions votes cast. And this playbook is old. I'm old enough to remember the playbook when calling Karl Rove was trying to pedal it back in 2004 and push those US attorneys to claim that there was voter fraud when there was not, when demonstrably there was not. And ultimately some of those US Attorneys got fired when George W. Bush won election in 2004. And they removed them because they wouldn't play ball and make these claims. But now Donald Trump has surrounded himself with people in U.S. attorney positions and the Civil Rights Division of the United States with Harmony Dhillon, who have no, you know, no business being in those roles because they're not actually protecting our interests. They're just using those offices in an almost, in my view, an almost Hatch act violation like way to help Donald Trump's electoral ambitions and his ambitions for retaining power in Congress despite his utterly sinking popularity ratings.
- [63:03]
Lisa Graves
If I can. Mark, can you indulge us for a few more minutes?
- [63:06]
Mark Elias
Of course.
- [63:07]
Lisa Graves
What did you, what have you learned? Because you're the one in the trenches, right? I, I hung up my spurs. What have you learned from the playbook being run against California right now by Donald Trump and U.S. attorney and all the others? Because, you know, we're not AI, We're. I, we've learned. What have you learned?
- [63:26]
Mark Elias
Yeah. So I think two things. The first is there's a lot of attention right now on whether the U.S. postal Service will capitulate and cooperate with whatever scheme that Donald Trump has. I am worried about that. And like I said, we're litigating that. But the thing I think I've learned is that what Donald Trump's going to do is say that if you are voting and you're not on the approved list or you're an election official and you're not disenfranchising voters the way he wants you to, that right off the stage, like right in the wings waiting will be a criminal prosecutor. Right. I mean, there was a federal prosecutor that was sent to observe the vote counting in la. I mean, why on earth would that be the case? Like, why, why would a federal prosecutor be observing the primary vote counting? And I think that, like, what we were talking about, about, you know, the, the Southern, the, the U.S. attorney for the New York opining here and what we've seen from some of the comments from, from the federal prosecutors in California and what we've seen from the Department of Justice is I think that we are going to see these soft forms of intimidation, maybe not so soft that there is a threat of criminal prosecution if the wrong person wins or if votes are counted that Donald Trump doesn't want counted. I mean, I think Todd Blanche in some respects gives away the game. Pam Bondi, when they would say, is Donald Trump misusing the Department of Justice towards political ends, she would say, no, no, no, of course not. And I think she did that because she's like a politician and she was a state attorney general, but really more political. And I think Todd Blanche, because he's a criminal defense lawyer, he's used to having to embrace unfortunate facts. Right. Rather than telling the jury, no, my client didn't have a bloody knife. He's used to saying, yes, of course he had a bloody knife. He should have had a bloody knife. Who wouldn't have a bloody knife? And so his answer is, of course, Donald Trump is having us go after his political opponents. That's what the President should be doing. So I think Todd Blanche will be quite happy to say, yes, of course, we're, of course we are threatening criminal prosecution for people vote counting votes that we don't like. And that is a different level of shamelessness.
- [65:37]
Lisa Graves
How. I totally agree with you. I want to go back to. I never thought I'd say this. I want to go back to Pam Bondi. He's doing things he would. He's doing things that would make Pam Bondi blush.
- [65:46]
Mark Elias
I feel like you probably don't blanch also from here.
- [65:48]
Lisa Graves
Yeah. I mean, and I know people that are friendly with Blanche and they don't know who. They don't recognize this guy.
- [65:52]
Mark Elias
Yeah.
- [65:53]
Lisa Graves
You know, at all. I mean, I did because I read that New Yorker or New York interview where they were like, why would you leave a cushy white shoe firm and take on a single client? Are you kidding? Why would I turn down the opportunity to make new law? You know, and he's, you know, he's been the bridesmaid three times. He finally got the nominate. Finally got the nomination. He had a kid a step over the Body of Matt Gates at one time was leaked as being right. She was leaked and nobody denied it during the transition. AEN Cannon.
- [66:23]
Mark Elias
And then also also wasn't Lee Zeldin gonna get it.
- [66:26]
Lisa Graves
Oh, then Lee Zeldin and Bondi and then, then oh, oh, oh, there he is. How low will you go, Mr. Blanche? Oh, you're going pretty low. Okay, you got the nomination. Let me ask you though here to kind of wrap it up for us and for you. And I really appreciate the generosity of your time here. I know our audience does too. Let's be a little hopeful here. I know we're doing a lot of doom scrolling. How confident are you that the combination of your law firm democracy docket, the public interest groups that are shoulder to shoulder with you, the attorneys general for the democratic states and the rest are ready, you know, both long game and short game day of election and leading into election to protect democracy and to make sure our audiences vote is counted.
- [67:13]
Mark Elias
Yeah. So I think it's a three legged stool and I want to make sure I get to the third leg because I think you left out the role that you play and the role that progressive pro democracy media plays. But on the legal front, on the pure like legal front, the private lawyers, the private, the public interest efforts, the state attorneys general. Look, I don't think you could ever say that you're 100% prepared. I've never felt like I am 100% prepared for elections because they are operated at the local level and the hyperlocal level and there are always new twists and turns and trying to keep track of everything everywhere is hard. You know, right now my law firm of 60 plus lawyers, we are litigating 83 cases in 40 states. So like we are already stretched and we will be more stretched. And that is going to be true for a lot of the groups that are in this space. In part because big law firms have taken have walked off the playing field. Like one of the most underreported stories right now is just how cowardly big law firms remain even now and how they refuse to be engaged in these pro democracy issues in the ways that they have been in past elections. But I feel, but, but that said, I feel good. I feel prepared, but I'm never 100% prepared. But I, but I think we will win those battles more than we lose and certainly enough I think to protect free and fair elections. The second question though is whether or not the institutions, this is the election officials, the government workers, the civil society groups that do voter registration and help people Keep educated about how to vote. Like whether or not that process of people feeling confident in the election and feeling like they know where to vote, how to register and that they turn out, I think that that is something that we have to constantly be bolstering and ensuring that they have the resources so that voters feel like they can turn out to vote and that their vote will count, so that they go through the trouble of combating some of these voter suppression efforts. And that brings me to the third leg of the stool. And this is where I don't want you to sell short the work that you do. And it is why I started democracy docket in 2020. It is why I do podcasts like this. It's why you people subscribing to your channel is so important. So by the way, if you are watching and you have not yet subscribed to Legal af, go ahead right now and hit the subscribe button. Then hit the bell that's right in front of you. Make sure that you are alerted when there is new content, which is critically important because content is king right now in the democracy arena. You need to know when there are updates. And one of the ways you will do so is by making, making sure you are subscribed to this channel and that you're alerted when there's new content. And the reason why I say this, the reason why I say this is because the New York Times is spewing the nonsense that they do. And they are better than the Washington Post, and they are better than CBS News, and they are better probably than 90% of the other news outlets. And so what we need to do is we need to have a vibrant pro democracy independent media ecosystem. And this is a win, win. Like anybody who tells you, oh, watch this person, because they're better than that person. No, we need to support the entire progressive ecosystem. We need to support all of the pro Democracy news outlets. And so everyone can start today with, with subscribing to this channel, you can subscribe to Democracy Docket, which is the news outlet I founded, puts out great news information. You could choose any of the other Pro Democracy newsletter outlets or you could choose all of them. But we need to have it because that is going to be the place that keeps the public informed when the legacy media decides, you know what, we have an FCC approval. You know what? We want to land an interview with, with someone in the administration. So we're going to kind of both sides.
- [70:58]
Lisa Graves
It our parent company has government contracts.
- [71:01]
Mark Elias
There you go.
- [71:02]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah. Oh, or your children
- [71:06]
Lisa Graves
of that mark I want to make this a regular gig. I know you and I committed last time I came on your show to collaborate more.
- [71:13]
Mark Elias
Yes.
- [71:14]
Lisa Graves
Yeah, we're going to do it because as you said, you and I recognized it immediately. About what? How you just framed it, that it's the entire ecosystem that needs to be lifted up and it in. And I do. I mean, I said before you got on that the way that I orient myself every day and for when I started this Legal AF gig is that I consider myself an ambassador for my audience and a fiduciary for my audience when I do an interview, when I meet somebody. Lisa and I were just that netroots nation over the weekend in Philadelphia. Anything that I did, anything that I said was always in furtherance of our cause here, of protecting democracy and the rule of law. And so that once you have that as your polestar, you know, you really, you don't go wrong. And I think that's why people keep coming back to democracy docket and Legal AF in this show. So, Mark, a really great. What's coming up? Anything we should keep it on. You think we should keep an eye
- [72:08]
Mark Elias
on Supreme Court decisions. Right. Tomorrow. And then between now and the end of July and finally go Nick's okay.
- [72:17]
Lisa Graves
I like all that, including the booze that rained down from the 500 section all the way down. And my favorite. You'll appreciate this, Mark. I don't know if you. So I'm reading the New York Post because I like to sports section and the New York Post says this is how they framed it. Donald Trump salutes crowd Right. Some. Some booze heard.
- [72:38]
Karen Freeman McNiff
I mean, some booze heard.
- [72:41]
Lisa Graves
He brought his granddaughter as a human shield. He's such a coward. Okay. Anyhow, Mark Elias Democracy docket, if you're not already subscribed and don't read him every day, every hour. And get that reminder thing. Go. Making a big mistake. Mark, thanks for being here on Legal af.
- [72:58]
Mark Elias
Thank you.
- [72:59]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Thanks, Mark.
- [72:59]
Lisa Graves
You're welcome.
- [73:00]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Thanks.
- [73:02]
Lisa Graves
And if you like what we're doing and the kind of content that we do, couple of things you can do for us. You can become a subscriber to the Midas Touch network, which of course is our. We collaborate and we stand on the shoulders of Midas Touch and come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel as well, where. There we go. And set as Mark. I couldn't put it any better. No, I didn't put him up to it.
- [73:25]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yes.
- [73:26]
Lisa Graves
Hit the reminder. But hit the bell and the reminder and become a subscriber. We do 12 fresh videos every day, if you can believe it. You should. And then so you want to become a card carrying member of the legal AF community as and and we have some great programming. Senator Whitehouse is going to be coming on with me, Lisa, maybe you can join me for that soon. Rob Bonta is coming on with me on Friday. Don Lemon is joining me on Friday. You'll be seeing these videos over the next couple days. I'm gonna be joining the weekend show with Anthony Davis for his this weekend version. I'll be the guest on that particular weekend. I got Paul Blumenthal, senior writer at HuffPo and Cindy Blumenthal's son who just wrote a great scathing piece. Maybe you can join me on the United States Supreme Court. Join me for an interview there. So that's the kind of content that we keep coming sub stack Legal AF substack. You not only get live reporting that I do and bring in other people like Adam Classfeld, All Rise News today, but you get filings, legal filings, we call it Filings af. And you can find all the source material and become a member there as well. And then you know, of course the podcast hit the if you're not already subscribed there and on audio and video. And then of course we've got our pro democracy sponsors. We're going to take another quick break for them now. Summer is always better when you plan ahead. Whether it's a vacation or family time or just staying organized, a little prep goes a long way. The same is true for estate planning. A lot of people don't realize that a will doesn't cover everything when it comes to protecting your loved ones. Trust and will can help ensure that your loved ones are covered when it comes to things like medical decisions and power of attorney. Attorney. As I've thought more about making sure my family is protected and my wishes are clearly documented, I've come to appreciate how important it is to have an estate plan in place. What stands out to me about trust and will is how simple and straightforward the process is. Their website is easy to use and it provides peace of mind knowing you can create a plan that helps protect the people who matter most. We can't control everything, but trust and will can help you take control of protecting your family's Future. Go to trustandwill.com legalaf for 20% off. That's 20% off@trustandwill.com legalaf oh, have you ever actually looked at the ingredient list on your dog's food after that first ingredient? Well, good luck. You see, kibble is made using extreme high heat to keep its shelf stable and and inexpensive. So brands have to add back synthetic vitamins and minerals in the form of strange chemicals whose names you don't understand and definitely cannot pronounce. Is that really what you want? Your dog Eating Sundays for dogs is different. They start with more than 80% all natural meats and then finish with superfoods like kale, ginger and blueberries and gently air dries them instead of using high heat. Sundays doesn't look or smell like dog food. It looks like high quality human grade jerky. No fillers, no nutritional blends, no chemicals, just simple complete nutrition. Founded by Dr. Tori Waxman, Sundays was created to meet her high standards as a veterinarian and as a dog parent. And the best part, Sundays requires no fridge, no freezer, no prep, no mess. You get the quality of a home cooked meal with a scoop and serve. Ease of kibble. It's what dog food should have been all along. Over 100,000 dogs or are eating sundaes. And the reviews speak for themselves, especially from owners of picky eaters who had never seen their dog get this excited about mealtime before. Like my Lily. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to Sundays for dogs.com legal af50 and get 50% off your first order. Or you can use code legal af50 at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at sundaysfordogs.com/legal af50 one more time Sundays for dogs.com Legal af50 or use code legal af50 at checkout. And since I cut that ad earlier this week, I have a second dog.
- [77:45]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Oh, wow.
- [77:46]
Lisa Graves
Yes. We, we got a Lola to join the Lily because my wife, because my wife decided a toddler needed a puppy.
- [77:54]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Oh, that's nice. You know, Lola, I always think of the damn Yankee song what Lola Wants, Lola gets.
- [77:59]
Lisa Graves
Yes. And the great song by the Kinks
- [78:02]
Karen Freeman McNiff
by the Kings,
- [78:06]
Lisa Graves
something we hope my, my daughter will be able to walk because it's wonderful. Hopefully comes in at £15 or less. So let's, let's pick your let's use let's take advantage of you being on the show with your Supreme Court knowledge. For those who don't know, great new book written by Lisa Graves. The COVID of it's right behind her head there. It's called without precedent, a takedown. My words of the Roberts court. You know, and, and Lisa has been sounding the alarm about John Roberts since he at least since he was on the the Federal what the D.C. when
- [78:43]
Karen Freeman McNiff
he was nominated to the D.C. circuit. Yes.
- [78:45]
Lisa Graves
When he was nominated to the DC Circuit, which is the training academy feeder school for the Supreme Court, saying no. You know, you, you're like Cassandra, nobody believed you. Right?
- [78:55]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Right.
- [78:56]
Lisa Graves
You're yelling out, hey, somebody believe me.
- [78:59]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Because I did ask for there to be no recorded vote on John Roberts because I was convinced that he was going to be the nominee. And Senator Leahy and Senator Reid let that go forward by unanimous consent to preserve the opportunity. But, but I'm not sure that anyone actually really believed me that he was for sure gonna be the one. I was convinced that Roberts was going
- [79:18]
Lisa Graves
to be their nominee for the Trojan horse. And you've been, you've been yelling out about it for a long time. And, and here we are. So we're at the end of what would normally be the end of the term. No more oral arguments except for emergency petitions and things which are still being filed or requests still being made. But the, the traditional writ of certiorari and the rulings, we're still waiting on hear drips and drabs. They announced that tomorrow. They, they're probably dropping some opinions. They're usually by the middle of June. Do they ever go later to the middle of June?
- [79:55]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah, they went right up to the eve of July 4th for that, that immunity decision. July 4th, or was it July? That was a July ruling before the July 4th holiday. Yeah.
- [80:06]
Lisa Graves
Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. All right, I forgot that it went that late. All right, so.
- [80:10]
Karen Freeman McNiff
But it usually usually ends in June. But the dormant could, could continue to that first week of July.
- [80:16]
Lisa Graves
So the ones that I'm looking at that you can, you can weigh in on, of course, is the mail in ballot, which is about whether there can be grace periods after election Day where votes continue to be counted if, even if they're postmarked on or by election Day, you know, like when you file your tax return, go get the stamp. Doesn't have to show up on the 15th of April, just has to have the postmark on it. Or whether whether any states, including Republican states, is grace periods are consistent with the Constitution about setting an election day or not. So we got that one which is Mar El is involved with. That's the Mississippi case. We've got. We're waiting to see birthright citizenship, whether Donald Trump can rip the beating heart of birthright citizenship out of the Constitution by way of an executive order. We've got the independence of the Federal Reserve. Can Donald Trump just fire Lisa Cook? Because Bill Pulte, who's now going to be our acting temporary part time acting head of National Intelligence because he posted a couple of social media posts using documents he probably shouldn't have had access to, cut and pasted them and said, look, signatures match on these two loan documents. She's committing loan fraud. She needs to go, you know, is that going to be allowed? And, and then there may, there may be some other ones that are near and dear to your heart too. Why don't you do, why don't we do a little wrap up of what, what to expect because some of these might be coming out as early as tomorrow by 10am that's right.
- [81:42]
Karen Freeman McNiff
This is decision month for the Roberts Court, for the Supreme Court. And tomorrow on Thursday, there will be some decisions issued. We don't know what they are. They don't tell us in advance. And so it'll be a surprise. And as you mentioned, there are a couple of major cases that remain to be decided, including the Mississippi case about, you know, whether if your ballot is marked as postmarked by election Day, whether it can be counted. This is in response to a federal law that actually wasn't focusing on this issue at all. It was just setting a uniform day of election so that it is that first Tuesday in November. But no one thought that that would mean that therefore you could not have early voting or you could not have ballots counted if they were postmarked in time. And I, you know, I think one of the things that doesn't get mentioned enough about this case is that a lot of our service members, people who serve in our military, in the Navy and the army and Marines abroad, vote by mail. And the Postal Service is the carrier of that mail. And it does take time sometimes for the mail to get to the United States. We know that Republicans have targeted military ballots. We saw that happen in North Carolina last year when Republicans were trying to stop the votes from being counted for the winner of the North Carolina Supreme Court race. And so this is not new for them. But it is, I think, particularly despicable to try to deny the counting of the vote of people who really do want to have their ballots counted and to do so, to take it to the Supreme Court and have the court seriously consider this issue. By seriously, I mean decide to take this case when I think it's a case where they could have summarily reversed and said we're not going to intervene in this election process, particularly in the middle of an election year. But all bets are off because we know the Roberts Court has been actively aggressively intervening in our elections while elections are underway to put their thumb or their fist on the scale of justice on the side of Republicans. I think not just because Donald Trump has wanted to change the maps and create some basically cheat to get an advantage in this midterm election, but also because John Roberts has a multi decade antipathy for the Voting Rights act. And he's joined in that by people like Sam Alito who have been opposed to the apportionment cases and more. And also it cannot go unmentioned by me that if Congress were to become controlled by Democrats, there would probably be robust investigation of this Roberts court. So they have a self serving interest as they are moving, you know, trying to move the law to aid what the RNC wants or what Republicans want.
- [84:20]
Lisa Graves
Well, stop words stop right there because that's going to interest our audience. You believe that when the Democrat, if the Democrats get control of the, of the House and the Senate, that there'll be investigations of the United States Supreme Court?
- [84:33]
Karen Freeman McNiff
JOHN Roberts COURT yes, because there were significant substantial investigations by investigative reporters that were thwarted by Republican control in the House and the Senate. And so the full details of the millions of dollars of trips that, that Clarence Thomas has taken have not been investigated. The tax situation that Senator Wyden and Senator Whitehouse have worked on to try to uncloak whether Clarence Thomas ever even paid taxes on the benefit of that huge, you know, super expensive, six figure, six figure rv. And there's more. There are all these trips, there are trips that Alito has taken. There are other controversies that have arisen because of the role of Jenni Thomas in trying to subvert the 2020 election, including she herself emailing legislators in Wisconsin and in Arizona to try to get a fake slate of electors put forward. Then there are bigger issues. Like we now know that Clarence Thomas wife accepted a $500,000 donation from billionaire Harlan Crow just weeks before the Citizens United decision was issued. And he still sat on that case, a 5 to 4 ruling. He did not recuse. And in fact he had the audacity to write a concurring opinion in which he claimed that if money is speech, then anything that chills speech would be unconstitutional and so therefore disclosure rules would violate freedom of speech, knowing that his wife got a half million dollar gift from his billionaire benefactor on New year's Eve of 2009, just weeks before that decision came down. So there's a lot of investigations that need to take place.
- [86:12]
Lisa Graves
For those that don't know, Lisa's not talking through her hat. She's also, she's also the founder of True North Research in Collaboration and does collaborations with Court Accountability Action. Tell, as long as you're here, sell that a little bit. Tell the audience a bit about what True north, why was founded, and what does it focus on.
- [86:33]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Yeah, so I launched True North a few years ago as a, you know, follow on to the other nonprofits that I either led or incubated. And I named it in tribute to Frederick Douglass's newspaper, the North Star. He's the great abolitionist. He wrote so passionately about human freedom, and he's one of the men who signed the Seneca Falls Declaration in favor of women's rights. And so I really wanted to have a center, a real North Star, but I didn't want to obviously take the name of his paper. And so I called my organization True North. We're a watchdog group that works to expose corruption. And we've done a lot of investigations around the Supreme Court, including around. Around Clarence Thomas and Jenny Thomas and Samuel Alito and more. And we've also then joined forces a few years ago with Court Accountability, which was founded by Alex Aronson. We co founded Court Accountability together, but he spearheaded that because we wanted to join that investigative work, that exposure of what's happening. How do we get in this mess with exploration of policies and solutions? How can we fix it? And so these two groups work together to really help understand this crisis, this authoritarian, competitive authoritarianism that we're facing with a Supreme Court, a Roberts Court, that really is out of control and has been captured, as Senator Whitehouse has described, captured by these billionaires, a handful of billionaires, in order to roll back our rights. And we are not powerless. We just. They want us to think we're powerless. John Roberts, at one point, shortly after he was confirmed, a couple years later, gave a interview with C SPAN in which he said, if people don't like it, it's just too bad. Well, I don't know about you, but I know the Constitution starts with we the people, not we the court and the court. This court was chosen not to interpret the law fairly, but specifically chosen to be no more suitors, chosen to roll back our rights. And it's just intolerable what this court has done with the immunity decision and more and this kalay decision and the Milligan case out of Alabama, where John Roberts handed the pin to Sam Alito to use it like a dagger to destroy the Voting Rights act, an act that was purchased with the blood, sweat and tears of. Of thousands and thousands of Americans who risk their lives to secure the Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights act of 1965 to actually secure the right to vote and have that vote be counted. And so that's the origin story there. And as a consequence, we pay close attention to the Supreme Court's docket, what's happening, and also who's weighing in. Because what's happened is that not only did Leonard Leo get chosen by Donald Trump to choose the people that were on the list for the Supreme Court to choose who got on the Supreme Court in the first Trump administration, but he also is fueling a multifaceted set of interest groups, special interest groups, that are writing amicus briefs, briefs to the Supreme Court in order to sway the law or justify the law as it's being changed. And these people, many of them have claimed to be originalists. That's a term of art that was created, created to sort of claim that they're just going to follow the plain language of the Constitution or history or supposed intent. But when push comes to shove, at almost every turn, they ignore that. So they ignored the fact that the Constitution specifically does not give presidents immunity. It has immunity only for one thing, which is for Congress, for their words on the floor. No immunity for presidents. In fact, it's antithetical to our Constitution, which specifically says the job of a president is to faithfully execute the law. And nothing could be more faithless than filing that and engaging in criminal conduct through the official acts, like pardons, if they're given for bribery or to advantage the president or his family. And so, anyway, that's probably too long of a summary of what we do. But as a consequence, we're following these cases, including the birthright citizenship case. Again, an outrageous assertion by Trump that he can just unilaterally set aside the language of the 14th Amendment, which specifically says that if you're born in the United States, you are a citizen. Trump calls that stupid. I call that constitutional. If he doesn't like it, then he shouldn't have run for president and shouldn't have taken an oath to uphold this Constitution. We'll see what happens in that case. There's a real debate about whether the court will go along with Trump or not, since it's gone along with so many things. But I would say to you, Michael, that my concern is that there are no rules left for this court. It's making it up as it goes. And if it decides not to go with Donald Trump on birthright citizenship, I think that will just be a PR tactic that they don't need to do. That given everything they've given Trump with the Calais decision and with the rigging of the maps or the attempt to rig the maps and make it harder for Americans to vote, they don't need to give and they can use that as a talking point basically to say, look, they don't give Trump everything, so therefore they're not out of control.
- [91:37]
Lisa Graves
I think you're totally right. I think birthright citizenship, they're not going to, they're not going to rip that apart. We'll find that out. They'll leave that in the 14th Amendment. I think they're not, they're going to at least a cook holder job, at least for now in the federal. But these other things, mail in ballots, I think are in jeopardy. And, and the rest and just let's, let's end it this way. A hopeful note about not just court reform, but the United States Supreme Court reform has, do you think this Supreme Court, by being so rogue and being so reckless about being so rogue, has effectively invited the Supreme Court reform that they so fear? In other words, you know, the, in, in other times, you know, you, you'd say, well, you have to, we have to have a blue ribbon commission. Got to think about this. And you know, Joe Biden will all this and that. Okay, aren't we sort of post that at this point is, do you think there's enough momentum that if the Democrats get the, the Senate in the House that we can have real Supreme Court reform, including adding a few more seats, having a binding ethics rule, having term limits? Do you think there's political will now, enough public outrage, voter outrage, to give these elected officials the backbone to do real reform? And is that the natural consequence of this Supreme Court so out of control?
- [93:05]
Karen Freeman McNiff
Well, that's exactly right. I think this court has, the Robert's Court has created the ingredients for its reform for the conclusion of this period with a court that's so out of control we've never seen more members of Congress embracing reforms. The public is even farther ahead in terms of their embrace of court reform of a variety of reforms that would boldly address the way this court has, has been using the judicial power in a way that is contrary to how fair judges would behave. And with that, you know, what we have is momentum, enormous momentum. And that momentum in the next two years could grow and be built upon, you know, through hearings and oversight by the House and by the Senate as well as other outreach and public education. Because a lot of people don't realize, for example, that Article 3 of the Constitution, which is the section that, that specifically addresses the power of the judiciary. It specifically says that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over a certain set of cases, like when one state sues another state over a common river. You know, so there's a battle between two states, but that Congress can set the jurisdiction of the Court in all other respects. And in fact, previous Congresses have limited the jurisdiction of the Court. We have that power without a super majority, without a constitutional amendment in the Constitution itself. And of course there's no number of justices set in the Constitution. That has changed over time. Over many years it's been eight or nine or ten. And the Republicans were more than happy to have it be eight while they were blocking Scalia's seat from being filled and waiting to put Neil Gorsuch in that seat. So there's a lot of opportunities for reform. And I would just say on the big picture, people know that this system is broken in many ways and they recognize what this Roberts Court has done to voting rights and the type of corruption that it has unleashed through that immunity decision. Claiming that Donald Trump can do no wrong in terms of criminal law in his so called official acts separate from civilization, civil litigation, but actually to break the law. And you know, people get it and there is just an, a real determination and an increasing understanding that if we do not reform this court, we, it will continue to dismantle our rights and we will not be able to have a new Voting Rights act survive the gauntlet of this Roberts Court's hostility toward our voting rights. And this court should not have the final say when it comes to, to whether we can vote and have our votes be counted. We're going to have to retake that field. And the polling is strongly, strongly on our side. But beyond that, the moral call to secure our democratic rights, our rights, our republic is on the rise and growing. I am very hopeful about where things are headed in that way.
- [95:52]
Mark Elias
Yeah.
- [95:52]
Lisa Graves
And I'm going to, I'm going to butcher it. But when we were watching, when you're on the panel that I watched that you were on the Senator Whitehouse sponsored by a court accountability action at Netroots about the Roberts Court and Supreme Court reform to the two Harvard authors there with their new book Supremacy, that's going to be coming out, they'd be great to interview. We should bring them on, on legal AI. And I think it was Alex that put up a slide of a comparison between a quote of Abraham Lincoln, maybe in his second inaugural or first about, at his first inaugural, first inaugural about a democracy that that cedes itself to the Supreme Court compared to a quote from John Roberts. Do you remember? Can you, can you paraphrase? Yes.
- [96:40]
Karen Freeman McNiff
The paraphrase was Abraham Lincoln contending with the out of control Supreme Court at the time, led by Roger Taney, that issued the Dred Scott decision that rejected the power of Congress to, to create rules in terms of territories and which states would be slave holding and which states would not. What Abraham Lincoln said to paraphrase in that first inaugural address was that if the people concede that a court, an unelected court, has the final say on its rights, they will cease to be, we will cease to be our own rulers. And then the contrasting quote was from John Roberts, the C Span quote that I mentioned earlier.
- [97:19]
Mark Elias
John Roberts.
- [97:21]
Michael Popak
Yeah.
- [97:21]
Karen Freeman McNiff
John Roberts says if people don't like what we do, it's, it's quote, it's, it's just too bad.
- [97:25]
Lisa Graves
Right?
- [97:26]
Karen Freeman McNiff
And I'm here to tell you it's not just too bad. We have a lot of work to do and we have a growing number of allies and friends both in the policymaker world and across the country, organizers, activists who understand the, the deep destruction that this Roberts court is engaged in and that are, who are determined to restore and expand our rights.
- [97:47]
Lisa Graves
Great. We're going to reclaim the democracy. We're going to reclaim Abraham Lincoln and his criticism of the United States Supreme Court. And we, and we're going to, we're going to march together. I mean this is, that we all vibrate on the same frequency here. That's what Mark Elias said about lifting up progressive independent media. You're on it, you're on, you're at the epicenter of it here on Midas Touch, an illegal af. And I'm so pleased to have met Lisa Graves to be able to call on your, your, your talents both on the Legal layout podcast on Monday nights. If you love what Lisa Graves is doing and, and what, and how she puts it, you're gonna love Monday Night live on Legal AF YouTube channel, 5pm Eastern Time. They take questions, they're, they're unplugged. You know, it's Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves and of course, to be able to pick your brain about these weighty constitutional issues and have the great Mark Elias join us as well. What a great treat here. Thank you all for joining us. And we did a little bit of longer version because it needed it. You know, we, we wanted to do this teaching about voting in the United States Supreme Court and, but thanks for, thanks for the, the generosity of your time. Your spirit. And in the case of our sponsors and memberships, your your money where where that comes into play as well. You're on Legal AF the podcast. Hit the free subscribe button here on Midas. Come over to Legal AF YouTube channel and do the exact same thing. Hit set the little bell for reminders. And that bell will be going off 12 times a day on legal AF YouTube channel. But you will appreciate each and every one of them keeping you informed and up to date. So for Karen Freeman, Nifo who's traveling, Lisa Graves and Michael Popak, thank you for being here on Legal af. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A Fers.
- [99:42]
Michael Popak
Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump?
- [99:45]
Phil Weiser
I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado though?
- [99:49]
Michael Popak
No. Is he different?
- [99:50]
Lisa Graves
Yeah.
- [99:51]
Phil Weiser
A.G. weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal legal tariffs and he even won against Ticketmaster.
- [100:03]
Michael Popak
So he actually gets results exactly as
- [100:06]
Phil Weiser
Governor Phil will fight for Colorado.
- [100:08]
Michael Popak
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