D (6:09)

So.

B (6:09)

So don't leave your career to chance. Take action. Own your future with a coach in your corner. Go to Strawberry Me BTC to claim your $50 credit and get started. That's Strawberry Me BTC. Stop settling. Start building the career you actually want. I'm joined now by Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thanks for joining me.

D (6:28)

I'm psyched to be with you, Brian.

B (6:29)

So let's talk about a situation that Republicans are trying to stave off as much as they can, and that is this Epstein situation. We now have enough members of Congress who have signed onto the discharge petition with the newly elected Democratic member in Arizona's 7th congressional district. So now that that's happened, can you walk us through next steps in terms of actually getting some transparency on this issue.

D (6:51)

Yeah. The arrival of Ms. Grijalva is a game changer for us because we now have the votes, we need the signatures, we need to discharge the petition from the clutches of the leadership which doesn't want us to be voting on that bill. There's overwhelming support in the country among Democrats, Republicans, Independents, everybody to release the Epstein files. And this was one little parcel of corruption that we thought Trump and the Republicans would side with us on in terms of exposing the corruption to the world and having some transparency. But of course, after Trump had a thousand FBI agents working round the clock to go through all the files and the videos and the pictures, and they came back with apparently lots of appearances of Donald Trump and they decided to sweep the whole thing under the rug. So we believe that if we can maintain the discharge rules the way that they are, we're going to be all right in terms of forcing the bill onto the floor and getting a vote where it will pass overwhelmingly and then it will go to the Senate. But the Republicans are talking about changing the rules.

B (7:59)

And so what would that look like if they did try and change the rules?

D (8:02)

You know, they could try to increase the number of signatures you need to go from a majority to some kind of super majority. They might bury it in further procedural complexity and convolutions. Who knows what they might do? But we've seen them do this kind of thing before, and we just have to make clear to the public what's going on. This is a cover up. This is a complete cover up. When Cash Patel and Pam Bondi and Donald Trump were campaigning on release of Epstein files and revving up the mega base on this, they were saying that they would, you know, blow the COVID on this international child sex trafficking ring. And now that it's clear that Donald Trump is, if not directly implicated in at least somebody who knew about a lot that was going on, they just want to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

B (8:53)

When you talk to your Republican colleagues, and I'm not talking about Thomas Massie because he's been, he's been consistent on this issue, but is there some, at best, discomfort from these people who recognize that they're putting their all of their credibility, staking their reputations on this new cover up where they just basically try and prevent any transparency on the files or accountability for the people that were involved, is there, is there anything that pushes them away from, from this steadfast inability to move away from this issue in deference to Trump?

D (9:22)

Well, I mean, let's Give credit where credit's due. We've got Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yes, that Marjorie Taylor Greene. We've got Nancy Mace, at least for now. We have Lauren Boebert and we have Massey. All of whom have sided with all the Democrats in saying release the files. Cash Patel said it himself going on podcast. This is totally within the control of the FBI director. Don't give us any nonsense about old cases that had to do with Epstein and Maxwell and a grand jury hearing and a few dozen pages there. That's an absolute distraction and deflection from the more than 100,000 worth pages worth of materials that were collected directly by the DOJ and the FBI. They raided Epstein's home. So we can find out everybody who was involved in this. We know from four banks, including JP Morgan, that there were billion and a half dollars worth of suspicious activity reports. That means this is at least a billion and a half business operation. Don't tell me that was all for just one guy.

B (10:36)

And is it possible, knowing that there are these transactions that might point to certain people who this administration and this Republican Congress are clearly trying to protect? Is there any way for Democrats in the minority to be able to compel some of that information? Or does it solely rely on, on Mike Johnson and John Thune having enough of a spine to defy Donald Trump and actually get this stuff brought forward?

D (11:00)

Well, we've been working with the survivors of the abuse who've really been a motor force here to bring out as much information as possible. So people know. But they also are joining us in the call to release the files. Ultimately, we're not going to be able to get the administration to release the files without a law compelling them to do that. That's why we've got our discharge petition. That's why we're fighting for a vote on the House floor and will be fighting for a vote in the Senate. And I would not want to be a member of the House or a senator of any party or any persuasion who votes against doing it. So I think once there's an actual vote, we're going to win.

B (11:39)

Just to, just to clarify, at the end of this process, though, the discharge petition will compel a vote on the House floor, which is something that Mike Johnson doesn't want to happen because he doesn't want anybody going on record for this thing. He wants this whole thing put to.

D (11:52)

Bed because that's what Trump wants.

B (11:53)

That's what Trump wants. It'll then send it to the Senate where it'll put those senators, Senators in difficult Positions of having to decide whether they want to protect a pedophile ring in deference to Trump or actually vote their conscience and do the thing that they said during the campaign they wanted to do, which was get some transparency on the Epstein situation. But if both of those succeed at the end of the line, this thing does have to get signed into law by Trump himself. So how are you thinking about that part of it?

D (12:19)

Corruption operates on secrecy, and Donald Trump so far has been getting the Republican leadership to follow him in saying, there's nothing to see here, and we just want this whole thing to go away. It's too late. The cat is out of the bag. So Trump would be forced to decide whether or not to sign it. If he vetoes it, then we would be forced to take a vote to see whether we could get two thirds in the House and Senate to override it. A pretty extraordinary thing for this matter. But it does go right to the heart of their operation, which is all about corruption. Most of it is money corruption, which is, you know, the. The pattern with authoritarian regimes that people are in there to take bags of cash, like Homan, like Tom Homan literally did. Yeah, a bag of $50,000 in cash in return for steering government contracts once he got in. But Trump himself has made billions of dollars since January. But what's all that money for? Well, for a lot of people who are that corrupt and that sinister, it's not enough to have that money. You want to traffic in human flesh and exploit girls and engage in international child sex trafficking and so on. And it is part of that political operation to cover up that kind of crime, too. And so that's why this is important. It goes right to the MO of the Trump regime.

B (13:47)

And one. One different instance that we have at play right now is the effort by Trump and his fcc, with the help of FCC chair Brendan Carr, to quash any public dissent of this admin. So, as far as the Kimmel situation is concerned, what oversight does Congress have in terms of. In terms of hauling Brendan Carr in, given the overt violation, the First Amendment that we saw with this federal government trying to get Jimmy Kimmel canceled because they were upset that a comedian said mean things about Daddy Trump?

D (14:19)

Yeah, and this is just pure government censorship. I mean, you could see it very clearly in another country if you had the president of the country ordering the commercial broadcast regulators to shut down a comedian who made fun of the president. And that's basically what just happened. And Brendan Carr, the chair of the FCC, who also was a critical actor in Project 2025, views himself as an instrument of political revenge and retaliation for the president and openly browbeats and coerces his broadcast licensee regulated entities to do the political will of Donald Trump. So if Congress cared, that is, if the majority in Congress, if the Republican, the narrow Republican majority cared, we would haul them in to talk about this outrageous violation of the First Amendment and freedom of speech. But the Republicans, again, are just proving themselves completely invertebrate and unprincipled and just going along with it. Despite all of their increasingly fraudulent rhetoric about the First Amendment. They just don't believe in it. They only support defending the right of free speech for people who agree with them. That's not free speech.

B (15:38)

What was your reaction to seeing some of the old tweets that Brendan Carr had posted kind of extolling the virtues of free speech and lamenting any push toward government censorship, only for him now to be the principal actor and actually trying to do something that's never happened in this country, which is legitimate government censorship. Censorship, the issue that they planted their flags in, purporting to detest.

D (16:02)

That's what it means to them. They defend free speech for right wing speakers. That's it. And, you know, they want to open up a whole investigation and political onslaught against, you know, George Soros and the left and the far left, antifa, whatever they're calling it today. And that obviously is an effort by them to use the power of government to silence and censor people who are their political opponents. Again, that's the opposite of free speech.

B (16:35)

You know, it was interesting that, that there is a very small faction of these Republicans who signed onto the Epstein effort that includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Thomas Massie and Nancy Mace. And there's also a small faction of Republicans who decided to speak up as it relates to this, this Jimmy Kimmel situation. You've got Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, even Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. So strange bedfellows indeed. But, but, you know, bedfellows nonetheless. And so what was your reaction to seeing that this was an issue that is so unpopular as far as Trump is concerned, that he managed to unite Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and the entire left?

D (17:10)

Well, I'm glad that there are at least a handful of people left on the right who are willing to stand up for free speech across the board? I mean, imagine if Joe Biden's FCC chair was castigating particular news networks and saying, you've got to get rid of this person, you've got to get rid of that person. We can do it the hard way, or we can do it the easy way, but you're going to have to do our will. I mean, that is totally what an authoritarian society looks like. It's just mobster talk. And increasingly, it feels like the Trump administration is turning us into a gangster state where they pardon the people who actually commit crimes. Like nearly 1600 people who violently assaulted police officers on January 6th and tried to overthrow the government. They put those people in power, then they don't prosecute people who are their political friends, like Mayor Adams, people who are willing to go along with them. And then they antagonize, they demonize, they vilify, and then they try to investigate and prosecute people who haven't done anything wrong. And that's what's going on with, like, Comey. That's what's going on with Adam Schiff. That's what's going on with Letitia James and so on.

B (18:29)

You know, you taught Constitutional law at American University for years prior to becoming a member of Congress. Watching the overt attacks on the Constitution that are taking place right now, how does this make you think about all of this? How does it make you think about the resilience of the Constitution? Do you have hope that we can see our way out of this? Or do you, you know, are you succumbing to the forces of what I think Trump wants, which is for people to feel despairing and hopeless?

D (18:56)

Oh, no, I don't feel despairing and hopeless at all. I see people fighting back all over the country. I see people fighting back in the law firms against the attempt to censor and subdue the law firms. I see people fighting back in the colleges and universities against the attempt to. To trample academic freedom and have Donald Trump control the universities? I see my constituents at the NIH fighting back against the effort to gut scientific research and to replace science with propaganda and disinformation. People are fighting back in every sector of society, but we are definitely in the fight of our lives, and we need everybody engaged and everybody involved. And it just won't do for people to sit back and say, you know, oh, I'll let the Democrats do it, or, oh, you know, I'm down on the Democratic leadership. I'm not going to do anything. Everybody needs to be a leader in this moment. Everybody.

B (19:47)

As you kind of watch this process play out and head toward midterms, what should people know about the importance of making sure that Democrats have a House majority and, if possible, a Senate majority as a way to check this President.

D (20:01)

Well, look, we are now up against this extreme gerrymandering that's begun in Texas. All power to Prop 50 and the people of California who are fighting back and not taking it lying down. But they've already moved on to Missouri. They're moving to Kansas to go after my friend Sharice Davids. They're talking about Ohio and Florida. We need to do whatever we can to stop that and to fight back. But ultimately what we need is a huge popular movement to take back Congress and we've got to take back the House of Representatives and cut this reign of terror in half. That's why I'm working with the Democracy Summer Project all over America to galvanize thousands of young people to spend next summer with us, the summer of 2026, in the fight of our lives so that we are winning every swing seat in the country. And we surprise them by winning in even places where it feels like we've been gerrymandered into oblivion. We are going to be fighting everywhere to win back Congress.

B (21:03)

Congressman, I appreciate your help and thanks for the fight.

D (21:05)

Thank you for what you're doing, Brian.

B (21:10)

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E (22:37)

Of course.

B (22:38)

So you've had a busy week. You are embroiled in a public feud with the Vice President of the United States. So I'm gonna put right here on the screen tweets between your interaction with you and J.D. vance. So the Vice President had tweeted this obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE must stop. I'm praying for everyone hurt in this attack and their families. And of course, that was community, not noted. With a note that says, according to ice, the three individuals shot were ICE detainees, not those, not, not ICE agents themselves. So you tweeted to him. The Vice President is not a reliable source of information. This is now the fifth or sixth time he's posted a political take contradicted by facts from his own law enforcement agencies. To which the Vice President, second in line to the presidency, tweeted at you. The gunman had anti ICE messaging carved on the bullets he used. What precisely did I get wrong? Dipshit. So I gotta ask, first and foremost, what is the immediate aftermath of being attacked by the Vice President like?

E (23:36)

First of all, I've been called worse. But also, he's second in line to the Presidency. Doesn't seem like he has much to do. So the immediate aftermath, it was fine. The way I found out is that one of my friends texted me and said, have a good day, John. And I was like, what are you talking about? Never a good thing. And then I looked on Twitter and I was like, ugh, that asshole.

B (23:57)

Yeah.

E (23:59)

But the reason that I got into it with him is I think it.

C (24:03)

Is very.

E (24:06)

At best, unhelpful, at worst, dangerous for government officials, particularly the Vice President, United States, to come up with political takes before an investigation has even begun. The suspect hadn't been identified yet. There was no evidence yet. And it turns out that the suspect who killed himself ended up having messages that were anti ICE and seemed like that. But we didn't know that at the time. And even now we don't know the extent of his motives. And then J.D. vance, right after he was tweeting at me, you know, went and gave a speech and called it left wing violence and blamed Democrats and blamed Gavin Newsom for calling the government authoritarian, for using the word Authoritarian saying that is violent, blamed people for wanting ICE agents to take off their masks so that we didn't have masked agents running around throwing people in vans. And so it really seemed like more of an attempt to silence dissent, to silence critics and to cripple the opposition, because now they're going after progressive groups than it did anything else.

B (25:10)

Well, there's a small faction on the right that is trying to claim that like, oh, we're just looking to tamp down the violence that's happening at the hands of the left. But when you come out as soon as something happens and spread kind of like incendiary rhetoric, isn't that doing the polar opposite of the thing that you purport to want to be done in the first place?

E (25:31)

Yeah, and we can go back and forth on the hypocrisy here, but I think the real, I think what they're really up to is they have been wanting to go after left leaning organizations.

B (25:42)

And just looking for any pretext to.

E (25:43)

Be able to crack down on free speech for some time. We know this because, you know, Stephen Miller gave away the game when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. He said, charlie's last message to me was like, go after those left wing groups. And we've been working on this for a while. So they've been working on it before the assassination. And now every time there is violence, every time there's political violence, every time there's a shooting before we even know the facts, they're just using it as another excuse to engage in this government crackdown.

B (26:11)

One big element of that is that the using an excuse to go after any, any political group is like a small part of a larger whole. We saw that Trump has been pushing his US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia to go after his political opponents. He tried to get his own appointed U.S. attorney in Eastern Virginia to go after Letitia James. They said there was no basis to actually do, do a prosecution. And so that person was just fired. And this again was US Attorney appointed by Trump himself, replaced by someone who was perfectly willing to do Trump's bidding. We have a clip here of Donald Trump being asked about the prospect of subsequent prosecutions. Here's what he had to say. I'm James Comey. Now that James Comey has been indicted, who is the next person on your list in this retribution?

D (26:57)

It's not a list, but I think there'll be others.

F (26:59)

I mean, they're corrupt.

D (27:01)

These were corrupt, radical left Democrats because Comey essentially was a, he's worse than a Democrat. I, I would say the Democrats are better than Comey.

B (27:11)

So there's no list. There is just a number of names in a particular order that may or may not have something to do with.

E (27:18)

Each other, who he has talked about numerous times, said that they're guilty. The President of the United States now determines guilt or innocence, determines who will be charged with a crime and who will not be charged with a crime. The other side of the coin here is, you know, Tom Homan, who's running ICE for him, as on video and recorded taking a $50,000 bribe. But they're not looking into him. So this isn't justice. This is, the president gets to decide justice. And that's what happens in authoritarian countries.

B (27:49)

Right. And, you know, the fact that this is, on that point of an authoritarian country, I think going back to what we were talking about earlier, using every instance as a way to kind of amplify. Amplify the rhetoric and increase, like, the acrimony in our politics. Like, this is where Trump. There are a lot of people that are saying that Trump's job right now is to lower the temperature. But Trump's goal at the end of this is to be an authoritarian. And the way that authoritarianism thrives is expressly by allowing one person to be a demagogue. And so if he brought down the temperature, he wouldn't be able to accomplish his goals. Like, he doesn't want to preside over this country in a democratic way. He views himself as an autocrat, as an authoritarian. And so. So the way that you do that is by demagoguing your enemies. And so expressly, when we have these scenarios where there's violence, the only job for him is to make sure that he can blame the left.

E (28:45)

If no one complained and no one opposed him and no one spoke out against him, he'd be fine. Right? And everyone could just live their lives normally. But if people start to complain, people don't like the way he's running the economy. If people don't like what he's doing with ice, if people have any kind of complaints about his corruption, well, then he's going to use the power of the state to silence you. That's what's going on. And this idea that we can't call the government authoritarian, that means that if you really did have an authoritarian government, they could do whatever they want, because the only thing you're not supposed to do is call it out.

B (29:24)

Call out exactly what it is.

E (29:25)

Right? And I do think that the government threatening to silence anyone calling them authoritarian is not the most effective way of beating the charge that you're authoritarian.

B (29:36)

That's right. To that end, we had a bit of a weird update. So there was a video that swept across the Internet of an ICE agent throwing the wife of a detained migrant onto the ground in a facility, in a courthouse rather. And that ICE agent we had just found out today has been let go. Has been. He's no longer working for the federal government. And so this, this was striking because it one instance where an otherwise completely untouchable agency saw some small modicum of accountability, which I was surprised at because we've seen so many of these instances happen where there's no accountability, where it's just baked into the cake, nobody can stand up to these people and nothing ever happens. Why do you think this particular instance was different where you have an ICE agent who's done something that we've seen countless times in videos that have swept across the Internet before, and yet in this instance, that particular ICE agent was let go.

E (30:32)

I don't know exactly what happened there. There's a few things that made this somewhat unique. The guy didn't have a mask on so you could see him, who he was.

B (30:46)

They gotta fix that. Can't let somebody's identity be when he's assaulting people on behalf of the federal government.

E (30:52)

It was quite obvious that the person he assaulted was not even someone that they were trying to detain and there was no confusion about who started it. Remember the one where the guy had a weed whacker and he was cutting the lawn and then they tackled him and tased him and then they were like, well, he was running at us with the weed whacker first. There was no question about what was happening here. But I think however this went down, whether it was internal pressure, whether it was someone who decided to, you know, have a modicum of self dignity and respect and the organization they work at, who the fuck knows? I will say this wouldn't have happened, this person wouldn't have been let go if people weren't filming it. And one thing they are trying to do is to make sure that people can't film what's happening with ice, right? So they are trying to chill, not just speech, but protest. And so part of all these orders Trump signed this week about cracking down on antifa and left wing organizations and left wing violence, what they really want is they don't want people to show up and protest ice. They don't want people to film them, they don't want people to know what they're actually doing. And so I think it's a lesson for all of us to keep it up and go out there, be nonviolent. You don't have to get up in police officers faces or ice officers faces, but you can certainly stand by from a safe distance and film what's going on.

B (32:21)

And that's a small part of a larger hole that we've seen thus far where when people are making their voices heard, we've seen that it's having some impact. I mean, and granted this is not some new phenomenon where like boycotting or protesting is gonna have an impact. But it's especially pronounced this week not just with what we just saw with ice, but also with the Kimmel situation. There was a major boycott that resulted in Disney opting to bring Kimmel's show back onto the air, which I didn't think, which I'm virtually assured would not have, which I'm virtually certain would not have happened if it wasn't for that boycott. Because as it stood, Disney felt like the only, the only downside in this whole scenario was, was undermining Trump. And they didn't think about the fact that, okay, if there's a, there's a flip side to that, which is that our consumers are gonna have a say and they're gonna cancel en masse. And I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, we don't know what the numbers look like in terms of how effective the boycott was, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were tens or hundreds of thousands of cancellations. And so when they felt that pain and the only langu is, is financial, then they say, okay, maybe it's actually worse to kowtow to Trump, to capitulate to Trump and to leave, you know, our, our talent twisting in the wind and basically give a big fuck you to our consumer base. But then we just have news as of today that Sinclair announced, and Sinclair is one of the affiliate stations, the affiliate groups that owns these affiliate stations where ABC is broadcast, they announced today, quote. Over the last week, we've received thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives. Our decision to preempt this program, meaning Kimmel' program, was independent of any government interaction or influence and that they will bring Kimmel show back onto ABC stations on Friday. And so this is already a right wing media group. There is a really famous, there's a famous video, I believe Deadspin put it together, of, of all of the Sinclair broadcasters reading from the same script. This is, this is a Right wing company. And so they, they outlasted even Disney. Why do you think, if they had the perfect pretext to be able to say, hey, we're never gonna put Disney back on the air, even they opted to relent. At the end of the day, I'm.

E (34:31)

Sure they had pressure, right? And they're affiliates and, you know, they lose that programming and they just put something else in there that, you know, maybe, maybe they wouldn't get the same ratings. Maybe they felt, you know, public pressure. I also think that, that in the case of Disney, we don't know what kind of effect a boycott or people canceling their subscriptions may have had. One thing about elites capitulating to Donald Trump is that they're elites and they care about elite opinion and they care about the media and politics and what they're hearing from even people that they know and their friends and other people in the business community. And I think that matters. And so I think that it. The more people make their voices heard, sometimes there are economic levers that we can pull, which is like saying, I don't want to subscribe anymore. But it's also just making noise like the people who are making these decisions and making them often from a place of cowardice. I think that bucking them up and letting them know how you feel, it does matter.

B (35:35)

Bob Iger, making his legacy that he capitulated to Trump, he doesn't want that. Not once, but multiple times.

E (35:42)

He doesn't like Donald Trump. Right. He can, he can make business decisions and this and that, but like, yeah, he's thinking about his legacy. He doesn't want this shit.

B (35:50)

And also, it's. It's worth noting too, that, that I think, I'm curious your thoughts on it, but it feels like these companies are beginning to have some begrudging acceptance of the fact or acknowledgement of the fact that when, when they negotiate, when they engage in some negotiation with Trump, you don't placate him. Like, you don't satisfy him. ABC News paid him $16 million, I guess, in hopes that, that he would leave them alone. And instead of leaving ABC alone, he basically just smelled blood in the water, attacked them. Once, realized how weak they are, realized how willing to capitulate they were, realized how easy it was to exploit them, and threatened to do it again publicly after they decided to bring Jimmy Kimmel back onto the air. And so you gain nothing by negotiating with Trump. He is not a good faith negotiating partner. He will roll you the second it becomes politically convenient or financially advantageous for him to do so. And so do you think that there's some, some acknowledgement from these companies that engage in these, in deal making with Donald Trump that it doesn't buy them the thing that they think they're buying?

E (36:48)

I certainly hope so. I mean, that was my first reaction when I watched Jimmy's monologue the night he came back is I was like, you know what? We needed this. The country needs to hear someone with a big platform talk about how this guy is not fucking scary and you can stand up to him and you can still make fun of him and nothing's going to happen. And I hope that Jimmy's monologue and even the actions of some other people, I hope it's giving people more courage and also just courage or not the recognition that you just said that Donald Trump just wants more control and more power and he's not going to stop. And so giving in is not going to fix this and hiding is not going to fix it. Because you might think that you will be able to avoid Donald Trump and his reach and the reach of the federal government, but at some point, if we don't stop it, it's coming for everyone. Unless you bend the knee and pledge loyalty to Donald Trump. And even then, he doesn't even take care of his most loyal supporters that well either. So it's uncomfortable. But we all gotta fight and we all gotta pay attention and we all gotta get involved because if we don't, it's gonna be a country that we don't wanna live in.

B (38:03)

Perfect place to leave off Favs. I appreciate your time. For everybody who's watching right now, if you are not yet subscribed to pod Save America's YouTube channel, I'm gonna put that link right here on the screen. Also in the post description, if you're listening on the audio podcast, of course, follow Pod Save America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get podcasts. Faz, appreciate your time.

E (38:19)

Thanks for having me.

B (38:22)

No lie is brought to you by Prize Picks. You and I make decisions every day, but on Prize Picks, being right can get you paid. Don't miss any of the excitement this season on Prize Picks, where it's good to be right, right? I'm especially excited about Prize Picks because with politics being as grim and heavy as it's been, football has been the one thing to actually get my mind away from this stuff. And there are some especially exciting parts of Prize Picks that I've been focusing on lately. The first week has a few player call outs, so for example, Saquon Barkley. They're offering up more or less than one rushing touchdown. Anybody who knows Saquon Barkley knows that it's very likely that he'll get more than one rushing td. So so that's an easy call in my book. And there are other ones exactly like that. Prizepix is simple to play. Just pick more or less on two to six players stat projections. If you get your picks right, you could cash in. Prizepix is also the best way to get action on sports in more than 40 plus states including California, Texas and Georgia. And they put their users first so all withdrawals are fast, safe and secure. They offer venmo, Apple Pay, MasterCard and more for quick and easy to pop into your account this football season. Make your picks in less than 60 seconds and turn your takes into cash all season long on Prize Picks. So download the app today and use code BTC to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code BTC to get $50 in Lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize picks it's good to be right. I'm joined now by the President and CEO of Democracy Forward, Sky Perryman. Sky, Democracy Forward is in the news right now because you just submitted a Freedom of Information act requested, a FOIA request to compel the release of video evidence that would show Tom Homan, who reportedly accepted $50,000 in cash during an undercover FBI operation last year in 2024 where he promised to steer government contracts to people who were posing as business executives. And of course, the federal government is not doing anything to help shine any spotlight on this investigation because Tom Homan is an operative in this administration. But your Freedom of Information act request would compel the release of any video evidence that exists. So first and foremost, can I have an update in terms of the status of this FOIA request?

A (40:32)

Right. So as soon as the reporting came out, we filed a Freedom of Information act request wanting to see the tapes as well as other documents and information around. What is going on with this probe? Why was it stopped? This is very concerning, should concern all Americans and we are waiting for the government to respond. They have not responded and if they don't respond adequately within the next 20 days, we will go to court.

B (40:59)

And how confident are you that the administration won't try to use some exemption to prevent these tapes from being released? And on top of that, how confident are you that the administration hasn't or won't just destroy the tapes if they do have them in their Possession.

A (41:15)

We filed thousands of these types of requests since Inauguration Day, and it brought hundreds of cases in court. And this administration tries to use every tool they have to stymie the American people's ability to know what they're doing. So I'm quite confident that the administration will try to use every tool it has to keep this information from the American public. But what we've been able to see is that our strategies of using the courts, forcing the process has been able to produce good information. And so we're going to fight whatever they come back with. They really don't have a basis to deprive the American people of this information. And we're confident that the courts would see it that way.

B (41:53)

Why is it important that there be some transparency into Tom Homan accepting $50,000 in cash in a bag to do the bidding of these folks who paid him?

A (42:06)

You know, this is basic stuff. It's Corruption 101. And people distrust our government right now, but they will distrust our government a lot more. Right. If you have this rampant corruption that is running rampant and transparency shines, shines a light, and people need to know what their government's doing. People need to be able to hold their government accountable. This is the type of corruption that is unlawful. It's something that we understand. People of all political persuasions, whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, not political. No one likes the idea of their government wheeling and dealing in corruption. And so we think this is critically important, and that's why we're after it.

B (42:47)

You know, Tom Holman was actually asked about this on Fox News. Here's a clip of that exchange.

C (42:52)

You took $50,000 in cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent to help them win government contracts. In Trump's second term, the DOJ said they concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing. But nevertheless, that story is out there. And I imagine you want to respond to that.

F (43:13)

Absolutely. Look, I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. And it's hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. And I'm glad the FBI and DOJ came out and said. And, you know, said that nothing illegal happened. Nothing, you know, no criminal activity you're talking about. Guys spent 34 years enforcing the law. I mean, I left a very successful business that I ran to come back and work for a government again. I'm back on a government paycheck. Not only did I sacrifice my family sacrifices, I make sacrifices every day. I got more death threats than anybody. I got a security team around me. But guess what? My Kids don't. My wife don't. I mean, I haven't lived with my wife in months because I don't want her to be here right now with all the threats. So after all the sacrifices, after serving my nation all these years, they want to come out and dirty me up. It's not going to end. There's a hit piece on me every two weeks. But keep coming, because you know what? Tom Holman isn't going anywhere. Tom Holman isn't shutting up. And Tom Holman is going to keep you doing what he's doing, because working with President Trump's the greatest honor in my life. We're making this country safer again every day, and we're gonna keep doing it.

B (44:14)

So, notably within that exchange, there was no denial. He just suggested that what he did wasn't illegal or that he didn't commit a crime. So can I have your reaction to this kind of sidestepping, this obfuscation at the hands of Tom Homan? Yeah.

A (44:26)

When I used to try cases, we would say what's important is not what they said, but what they didn't say. And you see that, you know, he's not denying this. He is trying to, you know, it seems like, communicate in some type of technicality. The main thing that we want listeners to know, that we want every American to know, is that people do have tools. We've seen this with Jimmy Kimmel this week, where people push back. People do have tools. They have the ability to use their voices, and we're going to use one of those tools here to uncover the truth.

B (44:53)

You know, I think what's notable here is, is that Tom Holman really couches his whole argument as to whether he's done nothing wrong on this idea that. That he's not going to be charged by this doj. But of course he's not going to be charged by this doj, because this DOJ is not looking to hold people to account for criminal behavior. They're looking to protect their allies and go after their perceived enemies. And so can you speak to this new system of justice at the hands of the Trump administration and their officials, where the bar here is whether or not a broken Department of Justice is gonna hold their own allies to account?

A (45:27)

Well, that's why this transparency is critical. Right. The Department of Justice doesn't seem interested in doing this for the American people. So we are going to to force the truth out. But Tom Homan should be worried, as should any corrupt official. Corruption is not just something that can be prosecuted in one administration. It can be prosecuted in the future. And the American people are also going to have a say here. This is something that people of all political persuasions reject in this country. I think that you will see a lot of political pressure when you start seeing these, these overreaches by the administration. We've seen it in the free speech context, another thing that people just outright reject. You're gonna see that in the corruption context, too.

B (46:08)

I'm joined now by All Rise News, Adam Klassfeld. Adam, we have a major update here as it relates to James Comey, who is the latest target of Donald Trump's political prosecutions. This weaponized government specifically focused on the, the indictment itself. So can you speak a little bit about the breaking news that we just found out about this indictment?

C (46:27)

So what is being reported right now is that the theory of the case, the government's theory of the case is that Comey leaked information to Daniel Richmond, his close friend and former personal lawyer who's a law professor. And this was part of a theory that you saw floating around in right wing media for a while, that Richmond was the go to source intermediary between the press and Comey. But here's the problem with that theory. One, the FBI had released their records about an investigation into the leak called Arctic Haze. If you look at those records, it says point blank, Richmond claimed Comey never asked him to talk to the media. So they'll have to deal with the FBI's own record contradicting core theory of the case. They will also have to contend with the fact that the New York Times reported earlier this month that prosecutors subpoenaed Richmond and Richmond's statements did not help their investigation. And that could shed light on why there is no other prosecutor. As we speak right now, Ryan, there is no other prosecutor on this case other than Trump's former personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience. Only her name appears on this indictment. Only her name appears on the docket. She, according to another breaking report, was the only person in the grand jury room, which one assumes is the only time in her life she may have stepped into a grand jury room unless she had grand jury service. This is a case that it seems no one in the Eastern District of Virginia wanted to touch. And to take a step back here. What makes this case so extraordinary is that it is everything that came before it, everything before the indictment, because we had the Eastern District of Virginia's U.S. attorney, Eric Siebert, refusing to move forward in the case and gets forced out, he is quickly replaced by Trump's personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan. And Lindsey Halligan is informed by career prosecutors in that office that there is not a case, forget about beyond a reasonable doubt. They advise her there isn't probable cause of a crime. And here's more breaking news. Ryan it is now being reported that only 14 of 23 grand jurors wanted there to be any signed off on this indictment. Which is, which is all that prosecutors needed to be. To be clear, they only need a simple majority. A simple majority in this case would have been 12, but they got a razor thin majority and they didn't even get it on all three charges that that majority held only on two of the three counts. And it is very to give the kind of folks an idea of what happens in a grand jury room. They there is a one sided presentation of the evidence if these reports are accurate. Only Lindsey Halligan was presenting her view of the case to them without any sort of counter argument from defense attorneys. And even under those circumstances, even under a standard of probable cause that she got a razor thin majority of the grand jury pool to endorse two of the three charges. Now she has to prove reasonable doubt. And you have an experienced prosecutor, at least as of this moment, doing this case on her own.

B (50:36)

In a situation where you're just getting, where you're just a prosecutor trying to get a grand jury to vote out an indictment, you only have one side making the argument. And so that's why it's, it's easier for these prosecutors, prosecutors to get this indictment at least. And of course, the saying is a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich because again, it's only them making the case. There's no party on the other side giving the counter argument. And so in your extensive reporting of legal issues, how unorthodox is it that you would see a prosecutor fail to achieve anything even close to unanimity in the grand jury?

C (51:16)

Well, very often the vote count isn't known, but I would say that it's extraordinary that they would fail even to obtain charges and that there were 91 criminal charges against Trump that were approved by a grand jury. I don't remember hearing any report that a grand jury rejected any one of those. The fact that any of the charges failed in this very favorable standard to prosecutors. You know, as you said, that's the expression that a prosecutor can indict, ham sandwich. But grand juries are showing that in the Trump era, they are having much more difficulty than anyone previously before. You have eight grand juries in the District of D.C. returning no true bills on cases. And the fact, you know, I think folks can say, oh, well, the grand jury approved the case against Jim Comey, if folks are inclined to view it that way. But it's extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary that the grand jury said no on a third of the case, given the conditions in which a grand jury operates.

B (52:32)

Right. How unorthodox is it also in your reporting that you've seen no prosecutors sign onto this thing other than a U.S. attorney, notwithstanding the fact that this particular U.S. attorney to your existence exact point, is someone who has no prosecutorial experience and in fact was brought in solely because she was willing to do the bidding that Even a previous U.S. attorney appointed by Donald Trump wouldn't do.

C (52:55)

It's a flashing red light. Oh, and it always has been throughout my tenure as a legal journalist. You always know something is up when the line prosecutors won't go anywhere near the case. That's how you knew something was up when Eric Adams and you know, the place where I live, New York City, who was there? It was Emil Bovey. And no one else at the prosecution table, who's leading the case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the acting U.S. attorney in that district when. And these are known as political appointees who, who pushed forward on the Epstein grand jury. Nonsense. They were the political appointees, including the the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton. Here. We're seeing the same thing with Comey. As of now as we are speaking, there is not a single line prosecutor on the case. There is an insurance attorney who was Trump's employee. And it looks like a Trump fixer. We will see if any line attorney signs on to this case. He eventually, Jim Comey will be arraigned in October in the Eastern District of Virginia. I hope to be there myself covering those proceedings. That is my plan. But the fact that we're a day in and it seems like not a single line prosecutor wants to touch the sa potato of a case speaks volumes.

B (54:29)

Do you think that Lindsey Halligan, in her decision to go ahead and prosecute a case that, that we all know is being done at the behest of Donald Trump as a vindictive prosecution, this idea of whether she herself shoulders any legal exposure by virtue of doing it.

C (54:45)

It's a very good question. And the legal experts who I've spoken to, including a former prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, said yes, because here's the reason. There was reporting before this indictment went public that career prosecutors in her office wrote a memo, they memorialized it in writing saying there is not probable cause of a crime. She has an ethical obligation to bring cases that she believes she can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. I would not be in the least bit surprised if people refer, refer this to bar associations or something like that. I had a legal expert tell me in an on the record interview that, that anyone whose name, whose signature appears on this indictment could face serious sanctions and potentially lose their law license because of that memo, which that legal expert spoke, who spoke to me called incendiary.

B (55:55)

The reality is, though, there is a whole new class of people in the doj, in these US Attorney's offices, just in Trump world more broadly, who are basically perfectly content to shed any legitimate credentials in deference to Trump. I don't know whether it's because they value proximity to power higher than their own ability to get a job in the legal profession afterwards. We've watched people lose their law licenses in deference to Trump. We're watching Lindsey Halligan right now engage in a process that is virtually assured to get her sanctioned, if not disbarred, if not found liable for political prosecution. Because again, this is not something that the federal government would be able to protect her on, because this is outside the realm of her oath of office. This isn't. Part of the job is not engaging in political prosecutions on behalf of, of the government. The job is adhering to the Constitution and not abusing your position or the oath of office. And so this is really a recurring theme for folks that we've seen in the Trump administration to just say, you know what? Like, screw it, I'm here because I wanna be a hero in the MAGA movement, future ability to gain a job be damned.

C (57:20)

Well, there was that famous line from one of the prosecutors who quit in the Eric Adams case. You might find someone, someone who's enough of a fool or enough of a coward to sign your document, but it was never going to be me. One wonders how many prosecutors inside the Eastern District of Virginia whether this explains why there isn't a line prosecutor on this case. One day in. We know there is a memo, there's been reported from numerous outlets a memo saying that they think that this case is a dud. Essentially. Essentially that there is no probable cause, let alone reasonable doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that that memo exists from career prosecutors in that office shows that there are people in that office who think that this case is, is a dud. And we'll see whether that memo comes out, whether that incendiary memo comes out and who it will torch in the process. Will this be another long line line of Trump attorneys who have faced sanctions, fines, disbarment because they went along with a scheme by Trump? So that's one of the things that I'm absolutely going to be watching out for as the case progresses. What comes of this memo? Will it become public?

B (58:46)

Adam, let's finish off with this. You've done, again, extensive reporting in the legal world. How does it strike you when you see Donald Trump call for political prosecutions against his opponents like Letitia James, where even his own appointed U.S. attorneys are like, this is a step too far for me, and then replaces that person with somebody who will a lackey, a sycophant who will engages in another political prosecution? So we saw Letitia James, we saw James Comey, and he basically seems to be going down the line at the same time that he's using his office to quash dissent from comedians. Like, we're not even talking about political opponents right now. We're talking about comedians, people making jokes. He's done it to Kimmel, he's done it to Colbert. Also, at the same time, used the levers of the presidency to go after, to go after universities, to go after law firms, to go after media outlets, to sue anybody who expresses any form of dissent, whether it's ABC News or Simon Schuster or 60 Minutes or CBS or the New York Times. I mean, how are you looking at this right now, having dedicated your career, spent your life reporting on this stuff and seeing the extent to which we are so far through the looking glass right now?

C (59:59)

So there is some of this that is a continuation from Trump 1.0 and some and one huge difference for Trump 2.0, this is the first one that I would call as an objective fact a Trump ordered prosecution. During Trump 1.0, Trump had agitated, openly agitated on Twitter. I mean, we forget this. There's a big case of historical amnesia where Trump would go out and say that he wanted Clinton investigated, he wanted Comey investigated. As a matter of fact, I urge people watching this video to, when they're done watching this video, video, Google Comey and Clinton. New York Times, 2018. There's an article about him wanting to order the prosecution of Comey and Clinton back then. What's different now, what is absolutely different is that Trump isn't taking no for an answer and he's ordering the prosecution. He forced out the U.S. attorney who stood in its way. He appointed his own personal attorney who has no experience to overrid the view of her career prosecutors and find a way to get an indictment, come hell or high water. That's the difference. We'll see what happens with the case. Comey is very well represented and this will possibly go to a jury if it's not dismissed before then. But everything that precedes it means that this case is a startling example of a Trump ordered prosecution. And it's a new animal and I don't think it'll be the last of its kind.

B (61:43)

Well, look, I know that you will be at the arraignment when this takes place in a couple of weeks from now. So just, just a quick note for everybody who's watching Adam and All Rise News, this is an independent outlet that he started and all of this stuff that he, that he covers when he goes across the country, whether he's covering Kilmar Breco Garcia or the prosecution of James Comey, this is all on his own dime. And so one small step that we can all take to support him and independent media more broadly is to subscribe to his substack. So I'm gonna put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video, that's for All Rise News. It is a great outlet that I rely on heavily here and I think it would definitely benefit the independent media space for everybody to support it. So with that said, Adam, thank you so much for your time and thanks for the reporting that you're doing.

C (62:28)

Thank you so much, Brian. Always love appearing on your show.

B (62:32)

Thanks again to Jamie Raskin, Jon Favreau, Sky Perryman and Adam Klassfeld. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to no Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graeber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicoterra. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me Rienteller Cohen on all of my other channels. Channels. Or you can go to briantylercohen.com to learn more.