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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Alex Wagner. I know some of you may be tuning in today, expecting our conversation with the Michigan Senate candidates on the Democratic side. Well, unfortunately, you're going to have to wait just a little bit longer. We had to reschedule that conversation to accommodate for an unexpected change in candidate schedules. But do not worry, we are setting a new date and we will have more on that very, very soon. So stand by today. Instead, I wanted to focus on the avalanche of corruption some folks might just call it theft coming out of the White House, the $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off January 6 rioters, the announcement that the president and his family are now immune from IRS investigations, the ballroom bunker money pit, the reflecting pool, the president's 3,000 plus stock trades while in office, the self enrichment, the cronyism, the taxpayer abuse, all of it has hit new heights, or should I say new lows. And I wanted to talk to someone who could help me make sense of all of this, but also about what Democrats in Congress and lawyers outside of it can do to fight back. Joining me for that conversation is the incredible Norma Eisen, founder of the Democracy Defenders Fund and former special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform in the Obama administration. There is truly no better expert in America on White House corruption than Norm Eisen. We are going to get to that conversation in just a moment. But before we do, I want to remind you that Crooked Con 2026 tickets are on sale now. Come hang with us November 5th through 7th in Washington, D.C. for live shows and panels and meetups and more. I will be there and you should be there, too. Get tickets@crookedcon.com and if you like what you hear today, please do check out my show also on Crooked called Runaway country, where every week I talk to people at the center of the headlines. We just published, I think a pretty awesome if disconcerting episode where I talked to one of the police officers who was at the Capitol on January 6 about his reaction to the new that he will be funding payments to the people who beat him unconscious that day and gave him traumatic brain injury. Check it out. Okay, here is Norm Ison. Norm, thank you for doing this. I have so many questions. I think everybody has questions, but I have like many, many, many, many questions. For someone who really knows what the hell is up with all of this or has a sense of the law, at least, let's just start at the beginning. On Monday, the DOJ announced that it made a settlement agreement on Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, which he filed over the 2020 leak of his tax returns to the New York Times and ProPublica. As part of that settlement, the DOJ announced they would establish a 1.776 billion anti weaponization fund to compensate individuals who claim they were victims of government weaponization during the Biden administration. Norm, was your reaction the same as mine, namely, what the fuck?
- [03:37]
B
Yes, Alex, it might have even earned a what the double fuck technical legal term. You know, when I was the White House ethics czar, I would not even allow Barack Obama to refinance his modest family home in Chicago because it was the Great Recession and he was regulating the banks. The thought that the President of the United States can in essence sue himself and throw that case out as set up by $1.8 billion slush fund. It's an endowment for January 6th insurrectionists, including those attacked the police and were convicted by juries. It's just inconceivable. We filed an immediate legal objection on behalf of 93 members of Congress. The very first. And there's been a tsunami of other opposition that has developed since. And like the Epstein files, this is one that is not going away because also like that scandal, it's such an outrageous corruption situation and there's a paper
- [05:08]
A
trail explaining just how first of all, utterly unnecessary and totally corrupt it is with that paper trail exists within Trump's own administration. I was stunned by the reporting we got this week that IRS lawyers compiled a 25 page memo that was supposed to be sent to the Justice Department saying, hey guys, listen, Trump's lawsuit isn't gonna stand up in court. This is literally Treasury Department lawyers saying this whole thing is bogus. And yet that notwithstanding, first of all, it's unclear if the DOJ ever read the memo. They felt the need to set make a settlement agreement with Trump. Nonetheless, I mean, there seems to be like. I mean, I have questions normally. Do you have questions about this?
- [05:54]
B
I do. And you know who else has questions? It appears the top lawyer at the Treasury Department who quit in proximity to the establishment of this outrageous slush fund. Taking $1.8 billion out of your and my in the American people's pockets in order to pay off Trump's cronies. The legal flaws were in the filing that we made with the court on behalf of those 93 members of the minority in the House of Representatives. There's no constitutional authority to do this, including because it creates an emoluments issue. There's no statutory authority, it's contrary to the rules governing the judgment fund, which is the pot of money that is gonna be raided for this. I mean, the illegalities are vast. And it's so bad that reportedly dozens of members of the president's own party confronted Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, Donald Trump's former defense lawyer, and he's still behaving that way, confronted him. And they had to. Alex, had to shelve the reconciliation negotiations. It blew up the reconciliation package because it's these senators who are normally lap dogs. Even they can't take it. So it's the worst corruption scand in the history of the presidency.
- [07:46]
A
Yeah, let's. Okay, so let. That is the breaking news of today. We're recording this on Thursday. So Republicans were all set. They were all teed up to pass a reconciliation bill before the imposed June 1 deadline set by Donald Trump. And that was going to give ICE up to $72 billion in funding, which was a tidy sum for a paramilitary organization that slaughtered American citizens. But I digress. That's neither here nor there in terms of this conversation. But as part of reconciliation negotiation, senators and Republican senators apparently wanted to put some guardrails on the slush fund. According to the New York Times, Republicans were exploring adding a measure to the immigration bill. That's the ICE bill, to limit the slush fund. And the slush fund. That's my terminology, not the New York Times, in part, norm. Because leaders were worried that if they didn't, a Democratic effort to kill the slush fund could draw enough Republican support to succeed. First of all, walk me through this. I mean, how. How are these two things related? Like, you're talking about, on one hand, reconciliation funding that would have given money to dhs, to ice. But then you're also talking about a fund, a pot of money that exists at the DOJ that's already been allocated. Is that right? I mean, how did. How do they. How can they use one to tackle the other, I guess is what I'm asking.
- [09:10]
B
Reconciliation is a budgeting process that Congress uses that under the rules of the Senate. It's called the Byrd Rule, under the rules of the Senate is not subject to the usual procedures for purely budgetary matters. You don't have to get 60 votes in order to move the bill. You can do it on a pure majority. But, Alex, once you have that majority, you can put anything into that reconciliation package relating to how the federal government spends its money, and you do it on a simple majority. So that means if only a handful of Republican senators and members in the House Were willing to agree, hey, we should not be creating a slush fund to compensate violent cop assaulters from January 6th were convicted by juries who had long jail terms until Donald Trump, himself a 34 times convicted felon, pardoned them on day one in what was previously the greatest scandal in the history of the presidency. We should not be paying them out of a fund of $1.8 billion. That proposition might have garnered enough votes that this reconciliation bill would have been used to limit or shut down the slush fund. So leadership freaked out, everybody go home. Funding ICE is on hold. And now we're going to see what happens and whether finally, finally, like with the Epstein files. But unfortunately, unlike hundreds of other outrages where the president's party has caved, finally we're going to see if there's another example where a few of them are willing to stand up to him.
- [11:30]
A
Well, yeah, and we can talk about the new reality as of this week where Trump is just saying off with their heads to any of his Republicans and critic Republican critics in the Senate and effectively creating an anti Trump coalition inside his own party. But just let's table that for a second because to your point about the reconciliation bill and the way in which this is such a fakacked up piece of political strategy, here's Burgess Everett from Politico reporting. Senator Kevin Kramer says it would have been a good idea for the Trump administration to announce the $1.8 billion fund after the reconciliation bill passed. Instead, it exposed the bill to all kinds of amendments because of its judiciary title. We can't help the president with a bucket budget reconciliation package with this hanging over us. Okay, can you unpack that for me like I just did? The White House shoot itself in its own foot on this and obviously not in consultation with Senate Republicans.
- [12:29]
B
The incompetence of this White House knows no bounds. We see that I had to fill my car gas with gas today. And you see that every American sees that when they go to the gas station or they drive by one. So if they had just waited until this budget package were done, you wouldn't be able to peel off Republicans to attach a provision to shut down or slush fund. So it's an, it's. Where would we be as a democracy if Donald Trump were not a dictator? Dutch Nuts. Alex. Fortunately, he's not very good at, I
- [13:26]
A
mean, in some ways he is good. I'm gonna give him a little credit because he just, I feel like I'm living in a tyrannical moment. But in terms of the practical Execution of tyrannical endeavors. He's not very good. Not only does he announce this slush fund before the reconciliation bill is passed, which throws the whole thing into doubt, he does it the same moment he's alienating members of his own party, who he needs marching in lockstep to get this thing over the hump. I mean, it's just. It's like it's pure own goal after own goal from this administration.
- [14:01]
B
Yeah, and we've seen a lot of that at Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defenders Action, the organizations I co founded, where we have over 300 legal cases and matters. Again and again, Donald Trump has tried to break the law in the stupidest way possible and has been slapped down by the courts for doing it. But you also see it in his handling of the other main job of a president, foreign policy and international relations. There has never been a bigger fiasco in the history of American war making. And we've had some fiascos. Vietnam, Iraq. We've never had a bigger one than Iran. You want to talk about own goals? He handed the Strait of Hormuz over to Iran. So this. But the slush fund, like the Epstein files this really. And like the war, it's breaking through, and day after day, the country is saying, what? And you are getting this pushback from Republicans in Congress. We'll see if that holds up when it's time for a vote. But it's a sign of just how foolish, venal, corrupt and wrong this $1.8 billion pot of cash for January 6th insurrectionists and others is.
- [15:38]
A
Can I ask a word about the money itself, like we keep talking about? Slush fund. It's already been allocated. The Senate may try and put some guardrails on it post facto, but the reality is this money already exists somewhere at the doj. Can you explain, I mean, for people who don't understand how and where this money is pooled, can you shed some light on that?
- [16:01]
B
There's a fund at the Department of Justice called the Judgment Fund, and typically it is used to pay judgments. You don't have to go back to Congress every time the United States government loses a case. If you have to pay somebody or you have a legitimate settlement of a case, not a case where the President is suing himself, you use the Judgment Fund. But, Alex, like all money spent by the United States, it is subject to congressional guardrails. Congress establishes the rules on how money can be spent. And because here, there never was a real case to be settled, the people who are benefiting from this were not a part of that phony tax case that was about to be perhaps thrown out in Florida. There's none of the triggers that under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress passes the laws to govern the utilization of money, including the judgment fund. None of those triggers are implicated here. This would be an illegal disbursement of money. Anybody who took the money would be at risk of having it clawed back. It's part of a, you know, a gigantic cash grab. It's as if the President wrote in his limo to the Treasury Department, took bags of cash just and then went to a picnic of the insurrectionists and threw the money in the air. It's totally illegal in every way. So, you know, the people who participated in January 6, including violently assaulting cops, should not be too excited about the cash that they're about to collect.
- [18:12]
C
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- [19:34]
D
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- [20:22]
C
I do. And also one child I know who takes high vitamins all the time is Charlie Favreau. I was over there the other day and he was just talking me through Godel's incompleteness theorems.
- [20:29]
D
Oh, the incompleteness theorem. So what's interesting about the incompleteness theorem is it proves that you actually can't. That there must be some part of a mathematical structure that is not provable. Right. There must be some part of it that can't be provided by the proof. There has to be some assumption baked into it and that's not solvable. It can't be solved.
- [20:51]
C
Yeah, Charlie explained it better.
- [20:53]
D
That may be wrong too. I think that's right.
- [20:55]
C
I think that's, you know, the deepest. They don't prove mathematics itself as fundamental limits.
- [21:00]
D
Yeah.
- [21:00]
C
There will always be true statements that cannot be proven.
- [21:02]
D
Yeah, I got it. I nailed it. I nailed it. I believe this is somehow tangentially connected to some. There was a two guys that wrote like a 500 page proof to just show that one plus one equal two. Really? Yeah. Things get, things got pretty crazy in the like, I think like 1920s in math. Anyway. Oh, I'm reading the ad and here's something every parent needs to hear. If getting your kids to eat vegetables feels like an impossible daily battle high as new kids daily greens plus superfood is a total game changer. It's a greens powder designed specifically for kids that's packed with 55 plus whole food source ingredients. Just mix one scoop with milk or milk alternative and watch them actually enjoy something that's secretly fueling their growing bodies. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their bestselling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order to claim this deal, you must go to hyahealth.com crooked. This deal is not available on their regular website, so go to H I y dash A H E A L T h dot com CROOKED and get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.
- [22:03]
A
Can I ask, I mean, there's already, you know, Blanche. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch, who's, I don't know, conducting the most pathetic, stunningly pathetic job audition job interview ever. Just doing literally anything, breaking all laws and norms to get the title permanently. But nonetheless, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been very opaque about whether and when the American public might find out who is a potential recipient of these funds. Here's my question. Because they are public funds and because they are subject to some oversight, the DOJ says we wash our hands of this money. We have nothing to do with it. Once it's given out, don't come knocking on our door. But that's not the end of this, right? There can be FOIA requests to find out where this money went. I mean, there are mechanisms by which, whether the administration wants the public to or not, the public can find out how this money has been spent. Is that correct?
- [23:08]
B
To be sure, the government is still subject to congressional oversight. Members of Congress can demand that information. Should Congress change hands come January, the House and perhaps the Senate will have enforceable subpoena power to pursue those information. That information. But, Alex, you and I also have the power to do it. Any journalist and any American through the Freedom of Information act, can file a request for this. We have filed hundreds of Freedom of information requests over the years, including a large number at the Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defenders Action. And then if we don't get the information we want, we go to court and the court forces the disclosure. So they should not think that at the Department of Justice that they're gonna be able to hide this. But more to the point, I believe the litigation has already begun and there's gonna be a very substantial court pushback on the first dollar and ever going out the door at the fund because it's so blatantly illegal.
- [24:34]
A
Yes. Going to a J6 picnic and throwing a bunch of cash up into the air doesn't seem like what the Founding Fathers intended. Let's talk about those lawsuits because your party, your, your organization, Democracy Defenders, filed a motion to block this use of taxpayer funds and it was filed in a. The coalition on the suit includes, as you mentioned, members of Congress, including Congressman Joe Negus and Ranking Member Jamie Rask. Can you talk a little bit about your confidence that that can move forward? And then I also want to get your thoughts on other suits and who has standing here.
- [25:08]
B
Yeah, we filed the initial legal objection within moments. Literally within minutes we had that ready to go on behalf of those members of Congress. Got a whiff of this at the end of the week last weekend and worked through the weekend. The team pulled an all nighter to get this together. The judge in Florida who had the power to investigate and perhaps to block it, did not exercise that power. That means that we and others now will go to court. We're going to need to find new places to do that. Those lawsuits have started to pop. Anybody who has an injury as a result of this misbegotten slush fund has the power to bring that case. People who are entitled to reparation for genuine abuses of the government. There have been so many over the past 16 months who've been targeted by the administration. They're the real victims of weaponization. Alex, it's dubious. You can tell from the context that's not who's going to be getting money and then others who are injured in various ways by the funds, including people who might have gotten under properly congressionally authorized disbursements from the judgment fund. That 1.8 billion has to come from somewhere. There's people who would have been able to recover. That money is gone. So there's a huge number of folks who are injured in various ways by this. And the litigation is going to be going on, I predict, for months and years to come. And if you liked our first brief on behalf of those 93 members of Congress where we laid out all the illegalities here. Stay tuned. Much more ahead from us at Democracy Defenders Action.
- [27:32]
A
What do you think about. You mentioned there's an excess of lawsuits that are either being filed or that are coming down the pike. Two officers who famously and publicly defended the Capitol on January 6, Daniel Hodges and Harry Dunn, sued the administration this week to try and stop the creation of the slush fund. What do you think of that effort and where does it go?
- [27:56]
B
I think it's great effort. Hats off to Harry and to Daniel I know them both. They're wonderful public servants for taking the leap. The Public Integrity Project and my friend Brendan Ballou, who brought that case, was pulling no punches. So I think you're going to see that case unfold together with other litigation that is coming down the pike for all the different individuals or groups of individuals who've been injured by this terrible case. So I'm optimistic that the litigation front is going to result in putting some limits and even an injunction stopping the implementation of the fund to work together with Congress, where I think they're also going to impose some limits. And that one, two punch of the court of law and the court of public opinion, if you will, the public outrage as reflected in the, even the Republican members anger about this, well, you know, you won't lose money by betting against their willingness to take on the president. But here you have all of the cylinders of the scandal clicking. And it does remind me of the Epstein files where it became more and more intense and finally, the President's own party broke with him. There seemed to be, according to press reports, somewhat of a mutiny today when the President's former defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, tried to sell this to the Republicans in the Senate.
- [29:57]
A
Yeah, I mean, and by the way, Thomas Massie, who led the charge on Epstein, still in Congress, John Cornyn, who Trump basically sent, you know, to put on top of a door in the floor, he's still in the Senate. These people who Trump has alienated are very much still there, still angry and I think ready to go out Yosemite Stan style, guns a blazing. I wanna ask about your level of alarm on the why. So we know that Trump likes throwing bags of cash at people. We know that he likes sort of mob style comeuppance. But I wonder what it signals that he, I mean, how worried are you about the midterms that right now, as the polling shows Trump and Republicans on track to lose one or both houses of Congress, the strategy is not to pivot towards a better message, but to throw cash at a group of people who have proven themselves violent and willing to do anything to upend an election and in Trump's favor. Does it make you worried about the levers Trump might pull as the sort of weather forecast gets worse and worse for him in the party ahead of November?
- [31:14]
B
I think that the kind of machinations that we've seen and we've been litigating already are a sign that Donald Trump fears the will of the people. But based on the track record, I think voters can be confident that there will Be free and fair voting no matter what he tries. Look, Alex, at Democracy Defenders Fund and Action, we litigated against Donald Trump's election takeover executive order. He issued one last year. We went to court, we got a preliminary injunction. Then he pivoted to try to steal five seats through redistricting in Texas. We represented those Texas legislators who fled the state to sound the alarm on redistricting. The result was there was five seats added in California to cancel out Texas. We went to court, we defended, we won that Prop 50. We helped defend it in court. We won it. We won again at the Supreme Court. The trial judgment was untouched on an emergency Supreme Court opinion without a single dissent. Noted dissenting vote. Donald Trump has tried another elections takeover. We're in court on that. He's trying to do more redistricting in the south, in Florida, more seats being stolen. We're in court on that. And we've been winning these cases now since January 20, 2025, plus a lot of others in our over 300 cases. So voters should know, and it's not just us, we're part of a very big coalition. Voters should know that we are going to go to court, we are going to fight for them, and we are going to make sure that no matter what Donald Trump and his cronies try, that voting is safe, free and fair.
- [33:26]
A
And you know, to your point before, it's a system wide. It's an attack on the separation of powers. It's an executive branch attack on the legislative branch and potentially the judicial branch. And those two branches are potentially not going down without a fight. Right? They're the lawsuits. And then there's also Congress saying like this is actually, I mean, at least Democrats and perhaps Republicans join them. This is our purview. We are granted the authority. We are granted the power of the purse. And you can't take that away from us. Because by the way, what is the appropriations process matter if a president can just come up with a fake lawsuit and then a fake settlement and give himself you know, control effectively over billions of dollars? Like, why bother having Congress if that's going to be the new strategy?
- [34:15]
B
Republicans in Congress have been disappointing. That's Article 1, Article 2. The President has been outrageous. But thank heavens for our federal trial court judges and the Article 3 because they have been the guardrail. But those cases don't start themselves. You need groups like ours and our wonderful coalition partners, hundreds of clients and partners who go to court who bring those cases. And that makes it possible to have these many, many victories that have hemmed Donald Trump in. And the other good thing about that is each one of those court cases is an alarm bell, and the American people have woken up. They see what's going on, and that's why the President has these historically low approval ratings. So he's not coming from a place of strength. He's coming from a place of weakness. Of course, that can be very dangerous, and that's why we are all on our guard. But there's a proven record of success in court over the past 16 months to build on in elections and more broadly.
- [35:43]
A
I gotta ask you about one last part of the slush fund, the settlement agreement, which is the provision that the DOJ added on Tuesday that for that, that the IRS is forever barred and precluded from investigating Trump and his family on their taxes, making the first family effectively immune from audits from the irs. Okay, Norm. I mean, double. What the fuck? On this, too? But, like, is this legal?
- [36:15]
B
Triple. Fuck triple.
- [36:16]
A
What the fuck? Might be a triple, but, like, can you do this?
- [36:18]
B
You can't do this, can you? No, no, no. First of all, the transaction was already complete, so it's like, o forgot we're going to throw in a freebie. Secondly, they have no power on this kind of a false and phony basis to get rid of the existing cases, much less, as it appears, to forgive future wrongdoing. It's like a preemptive pardon. It won't hold up in court. The whole sick shebang is gonna be flushed. But this is one of the worst parts, and it's like, oops, we forgot one more freebie at the end. I mean, it's so transparent. We are still a government of laws, not of people. And in these many court cases we've brought and won, we've seen again and again that our federal trial courts have stood up to Donald Trump, and he's going to fail in these efforts, and we and many others are going to fight him on this. Worst of all, presidential corruption scandals in the history of our nation.
- [37:55]
C
Pod Save America is brought to you by Rocket Money. Thanks to the good people at Rocket Money, I realized that I had been upcharged by a streaming service for access to one show because it was a foreign thing that Hannah and I had watched during the pandemic one time, one episode of it, then abandoned it and then forgot to cancel it. And we're getting charged, like, 10 bucks a month in perpetuity. That's why you all need Rocket Money, because they allow you to track subscriptions and cancel them within the app with just a few taps. In fact, Rocket Money has saved users over $880 million in canceled subscriptions. You can categorize automatic transactions across your accounts. You can customize categories with tags to help shed light on your spending patterns and much more. You get personalized insights and regular reports on your spending habits. You can even receive real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming builds, refunds and low balances. Consolidate your checking, savings, loans and investment accounts into a single dashboard to give you a clear, clear picture of your finances. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@rocket money.com Crooked that's RocketMoney.com Crooked Rocket Money.com Crooked get a jump on next
- [39:10]
A
summer with Vrbo's early booking deals don't wait to claim your dreams and summer spot, whether that includes a good porch swing or a poolside lounger. When you book early, you get the best places at the best prices. But back to poolside loungers. With vrbo, you don't have to reserve any loungers. They're all yours. In fact, the whole private home is yours. Book with early booking deals and you can lounge around all summer long, however you please. Book with vrbo. Okay, so here's my segue. It doesn't end here. Like the corruption, the malfeasance, the self enrichment, the megalomania, it all continues. I mean, this is not the only scandal this week. Buried in all of this is the news that in the first quarter of this year, Trump made 3,700 trades. Not himself, but his accounts, a managing director at a major Wall street brokerage told Bloomberg. In my in the 40 plus years of my time on Wall street, this is an unusual amount of training trading by any standards. I mean, yes, okay, we all assume Trump was Insider trading, but 3700 trades? Norm? I mean, do you have a sense of the scale of this? I know you're not a Wall street trader, but it seems eye watering.
- [40:30]
B
Another trader said that it was insane to have this level of trades and the enormous dollar value. Many of the equities being traded are companies like Nvidia or Intel where the President is involved in decision making. But given the presidency, you're involved in decision making for every American company. Now, the Trump Organization has said the President does not personally make these trades. And number one, you shouldn't have to ask the question. Number two, forgive me if I approach anything that they say with a bit of skepticism given the over 30,000 lies that Donald Trump has told, according to Washington Post tally. Like the slush fund scandal, Alex, the American people elected Donald Trump to put money in their pockets to make their lives better, to make their lives more affordable, not himself to expand his wealth. So this stock trading scandal is another profoundly concerning case of the president doing the opposite of what he was put in office to do. At the Contrarian, where I'm the publisher, we included both the slush fund and the stock trading on our weekly top 10 list. It changes constantly. I started putting together this top 10 list and I had to revise it four or five times in the space of 48 hours because there were so many new corruption scandals. So how can you pick just 10?
- [42:43]
A
It's like Taylor Swift top single. There's just always another one. Singles. I want to get the language right from the Trump Organization. A spokesperson from the Trump Organization told Axios. President Trump's investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions. Now let me read to you a list of all the companies that Trump traded whose CEOs also norm happened to a company trip on his field trip, Trump to on his field trip to China, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Broadcom, Goldman Sachs, Micron, and a handful more. I mean, are you buying? You don't. You're not buying, are you? I shouldn't put words in your mouth. The idea that a third party has exclusive authority over Trump's investment decisions and oh, by the way, some of those big companies just happened to be my, you know, travel buddies as I went to Beijing. No, it's just a coinky dink.
- [43:46]
B
This is another matter that will be investigated. There's no official immunity for doing personal stock trades to the benefit of a president's account. So should the House or the Senate or for that matter state security regulators or anybody else have the occasion, they ought to check whether that's true? And is it really the case that the president had no awareness he now knows what's in his accounts? How does he build a wall in his brain so his decision making is not influenced by these stock holdings? I think we're entitled to ask highly skeptical questions about this whole pattern and particularly given the amount of dishonesty and dissimulation on other topics in the past, not to accept at face value the statement, oh, the president had nothing to do with it.
- [44:58]
A
He's going to build a wall in his brain that Mexico will pay for. Norm, I do want to talk a little bit about, as we talk about the megalomania and the corruption, some of the construction projects that so animate whatever part of Trump's brain has not yet been walled off. Where would you prefer to start? There's so many to choose from. The ballroom, the no bid multimillion dollar reflecting pool contract, or the Trump Arch that the administration is now claiming they don't need congressional approval for. Because Congress approved a plan for the Arlington Memorial Bridge in the year 1924, 102 years ago that contained an arch like structure that was never built. For people who are unfamiliar with this now, this absurd argument, the Washington Post reports that Congress formally ratified a report in 1925 that allowed for the building of Memorial Bridge. However, the columns that were part of that design were not actually constructed. And Trump officials today argue that in building the arch, they would be carrying out past lawmakers wishes by building an arch that was maybe at one point part of a design 102 years ago. Where do you want to start, Norm?
- [46:19]
B
All of these projects serve the President's personal ego, his whimsical, his desire for self aggrandizement, not the public interest. I think the granddaddy of them all, the thing that kicked us off was renaming the Kennedy center. And then when artists and audiences fled pretextually shutting down the center, claiming it was necessary for repairs, we're litigating that case and others of the matters that you describe, as are our wonderful partners and colleagues in the democracy movement. So it started with the Kennedy center case. Then you have the destruction of the East Wing Ballroom, where there's a great legal team working on that. We also, we and colleagues also have a piece of that case, Alex, because it turns out that when you demolish that historic, beautiful East Wing, the debris has to go somewhere. Donald Trump trucked it to a public park and public golf course in D.C. where he dumped it, Alex. It's full of toxins, lead, chromium, asbestos, carcinogens, pardon me, arsenic, carcinogenic substances. And we're litigating that case of the toxic dumping coming out of the East Wing demolition. And then other folks are working on the reflecting pool, which should be called the 50 Shades of Blue case because they can't even match the paint colors. It's so incompetent. Like the renaming of the Kennedy center that caused all those names to hemorrhage. We do that case for Congresswoman Joyce Bates, our client there, and then you have this arch case which another group of lawyers is litigating. So the courts are looking askance at these projects. We did get a temporary restraining order to get information about the Kennedy center. What was going on here? Donald Trump had claimed there was a one year review involving outside experts. When we got the documents, pursuant to a temporary restraining order for Congresswoman Beatty to go into the White House for a Kennedy center board meeting and confront the President, it turned out there had been no one year review of the kind that was promised. So these whims are extremely expensive for the American people. They're extremely damaging to the historic environment, or in the case of this toxic dumping to the humans within the District of Columbia. And it is yet another corruption scandal. And this basket of horribles is also part of our contrarian top 10 list.
- [49:53]
A
Yeah, I mean, again, a top 10 list that has no, that should probably be like a top 100, given the number of the candidates you have to put on the list. Can we talk a little bit, though, specifically about the. You know, we talked about the resistance inside Congress to the slush fund. There's real resistance to the ballroom. The lawsuits could be a way to stop it. But it also, again, it's a legislative branch looking at this and saying this is totally corrupt and this is a vanity project. And even Senate Republicans, who I am loathe to give any credit to, are. It looks like, I mean, we know almost for certain that it's gonna get dropped, that they're not going to put it in the reconciliation package. The Senate parliamentarian has been like, nice try. That kind of shit doesn't belong in here. Do you. I mean, yeah. What do you think? I mean, are you surprised that, first of all, there's even that resistance? And do you think that this dies in the legislative branch?
- [50:52]
B
Well, when we were talking earlier about the reconciliation laws and how Congress allowed for purely budgetary matters to move with less than 60 votes, you can do it with a simple majority. They put in a rule that policy decisions can't be part of that. It has to be pure appropriations. Obviously, it's a huge policy decision in our country to build this ballroom. And the parliamentarian, she's a hero. She said, no. Senate parliamentarian, no. I'm not gonna let this through. This is not a purely budgetary matter. Donald Trump demanded she be fired. To his credit, it's a pretty low standard. But Majority Leader John Thune has so far declined to fire her, and the Republicans do not seem to be overruling her. So they let the parliamentarian do their dirty work. For them. But they're not pleased about building a golden ballroom in a time of tremendous fiscal challenge and a cost of living crisis for Americans that is exacerbated by this kind of corruption. So that is a positive sign that the system is holding, particularly that wonderful parliamentarian.
- [52:30]
A
Yeah, not all heroes wear capes.
- [52:39]
D
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C
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- [54:04]
A
I mean, I think you're so right to point out the sort of real economic climate in the country contributing to and really exacerbating the outrage over the corruption. Right. The corruption on its own is eye watering and historic, but the fact that it dovetails precisely with the moment when Americans can't afford hamburger meat and gas and air conditioning and, you know, health insurance, it makes it that much more galling. And I think when people, just in terms of the political moment, people have said, oh well, the corruption message hasn't stuck in the way that I think Democrats have wanted it to. Well, we're in a different moment right now. And as you point out, the dichotomy, the chasm that separates the corrupt activities of this president, the gilding of the ballroom, the arch, the painting of the reflecting pool, many modeled shades of blue for multiple times what it was supposed to cost. All of this seems like this senseless, deeply cynical, completely self absorbed behavior of someone who at the same time is asleep at the wheel when Americans need him the most to tackle the one issue he was elected to tackle, which is affordability. I mean, it's really giving Marie Antoinette vibes. You'd think they would at one point say, just like, let them eat cake. That's kind of where we are. Where's your. He's building his own Versailles. And the American taxpayer sees what's happening here and they're outraged.
- [55:33]
B
And I do think you see it reflected in polls. Americans say in poll after poll that corruption and fighting corruption in government is one of the most important issues for them. That the cost of living and the crisis around the cost of our everyday existence is a very important issue for them. Well, he's basically applying a Trump tax to every American to pay for these construction projects, to pay for the $1.8 billion slush fund. And the people see the connection. They don't like it. And I think that the public opinion polling demonstrates that this corruption spree is a part of why we have the most unpopular president at this point in modern presidential history. As you said, this is not why the people put him there. And he has hemorrhaged independence. It's another form of corruption. It's corruption of the rule of law to utilize ICE the way he has to attack innocent people. He said he'd protect the border and arrest criminals, not that he would tear moms and dads and kids out of their homes, out of their communities, out of the American economy. Or that his ICE agents would murder the Renee Goods and the Alex Prettys. That corruption of the rule of law also matters. And then you throw in the other scandal that has really broken through, like the slush fund or the ballroom or the Kennedy center, and that is the. It's broken even bigger. The Epstein files. That's a corruption story. I think the American people get it and I think there's going to be a very serious price to pay come November.
- [57:35]
A
I wonder, you know, you may. I think a lot of people don't know about the garbage from the East Wing demolition being put onto a public park. I believe it is a public golf course that was really inexpensive to play on. And so people from all over the city used to play on that course, and now they can't because it's covered in toxic building materials that Trump unlawfully foisted on the park grounds. The Reflecting Pool is way over budget. It's not getting done on time. And the work from the reporting we have, at least in the Washington Post, seems to be incredibly shoddy. There are holes in the. The waterproofing, their bubbles. The blue, as you say, is 50 shades. Even as a construction magnate, he's failing at the job. He's failing politically in terms of strategy. He's failing the country in terms of being a leader and adhering to the principles of the Constitution or the letter of the law. And he's also failing at the one thing he is kind of known for, which is the building part. I wonder, first of all, do you think, think this stuff is going to get built? And if it does, what should Democrats do about it? First of all, it might be shoddy, dangerous construction. And second of all, like, does anybody. I mean, do we need the arc to Trump? Like, what do you think should happen to this stuff if it exists once Trump leaves office?
- [58:56]
B
Well, we'll need to take it on a case by case basis. You know, certainly the public park, the golf course, that's for families, people of modest means, those should be reopened. We have to get rid of those toxic substances there. I think we'll accomplish that through our litigation. That's the point of doing it. The Kennedy center needs to be reopened. We need to protect the independents of the Kennedy Center. So it's very clear that it cannot be renamed for Donald Trump. Congress has said it must be named for John F. Kennedy. So we'll have a court order in place. I think on many of these projects, what you're gonna see is the courts are gonna step in. I don't think the arch is gonna be built that is being litigated. But look, both with the built environment as with our government in the post Trump era, we are going to have to rebuild. Fortunately, there are good examples the United States can learn from both domestically and internationally, where you've had authoritarian regimes replaced and you are able to rebuild and reconstruct. In Hungary, you just had a super majority coalition oust a far more entrenched autocrat than Donald Trump in the form of viktor Orban. After 14 years, they're embarking on a very bold rebuilding project. In Brazil, the Bolsonaro regime was ousted. Lula has built a big tent coalition. He's a man of the left. He's built a larger coalition to do reconstruction there. And of course, we have the examples of what happened in the former Iron Curtain countries after the end of the Cold War. They were able to rebuild after a much longer, more difficult struggle. The post World War II Rebuilding, Truth and reconciliation in South Africa. There's a lot of examples we can learn from from it will start with knocking down. Personally, I think some of these monuments to Trump need to be knocked down, but it's what comes after. And the most important rebuilding will be the rebuilding of our government and setting America back on our course of fulfilling what Dr. King called the promissory note, not yet fully collected on of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. We have to continue that work going forward, but dealing with some of these fiascos, domestic fiascos, is going to be a part of that as well. Alex?
- [62:16]
A
Well, I mean, I think you're so right to suggest that there is a path forward, that we can come out of this, that the judicial system will continue to function in its critical role, providing some alternatives and some dose of reality in terms of what the law says. And also elections matter. You know, you point out Orban and Lula, these are the results. Those those changes are the results of a public saying no longer, no more. And everything that we see suggests the public is overwhelmingly rejecting this corruption and malfeasance. And that change, real and significant change, could be on the menu after election day of this year. So, you know, Norm, as depressing as all of this is, I think it's also cause for outrage and engagement. And that, I think, is hopeful, right? Having people involved on a civic level being enraged by their democracy and wanting to fix it is an unfortunate way to encourage engagement, but is also a really powerful way to do it, too. And I'll take it.
- [63:30]
B
And that has been the history of our country. And we've seen extraordinary turnout and electoral performance over the past 16 months for Pro democracy candidates. So I think we're going to continue to do our work in the courts of law, but we're going to count on the court of public opinion to restore that trajectory of progress in American democracy and to finally vindicate those promissory notes of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We will resume that if we all do this together.
- [64:13]
A
The great and inspiring and brilliant Norm Isen. It's great to see you. It's great to have this in depth conversation. It's been very helpful for me in understanding the sort of ins and outs of the lawlessness of all these terrible endeavors embarked upon by Donald Trump. But, you know, the work continues. It's great to have you, Norm. Thank you, guys for listening. The guys are off this Monday for the holiday because they're slackers. See you soon.
- [64:43]
C
Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farah Safari, with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill.
- [64:51]
D
Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben
- [64:53]
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