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- [00:00]
Harry Litman
Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.
- [00:02]
Mimi Rokos
Are you looking for a beach read this summer?
- [00:03]
Harry Litman
May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better.
- [00:15]
Aaron Blake
Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited.
- [00:17]
Total Wine and More Host
That's it.
- [00:18]
Aaron Blake
Happy ending, zero tears.
- [00:19]
Harry Litman
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
- [00:23]
Mimi Rokos
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes me slow when network is busy. See Terms Foreign.
- [00:37]
Harry Litman
Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Littman. It was a week in which the Trump administration's authoritarian project of keeping all of us deceived was front and center. Todd Blanche went before the Judiciary Committee and delivered multiple yarns, the biggest being that he's just the same old do the right thing prosecutor that he was in the Southern District of New York. It seemed to placate most Republicans, leaving Blanche's confirmation prospects likely turning on the decision of a sole Republican holdout in the committee, Texas Senator John Cornyn. Beyond the Capitol, two more fatal shootings by ice, one in Texas and one in Maine, produced more outrage and more reflexive claims from the government that the agents had acted in self defense, claims that were looking no sturdier than those made in Minnesota. And Donald Trump does delivered a primetime polemic that consisted of a series of reheated, debunked claims about the vulnerability of our elections to rival countries and other sinister forces. It was roundly dismissed as malarkey and recycled malarkey at that. Even a key lieutenant on Trump's election task force conceded that he didn't know of a single vote having been altered by a foreign power. To take stock of a series of wild eyed claims and their critical stakes for the run up to the midterms, I'm pleased to welcome a trio of great political and legal minds, and they are Aaron Blake. Aaron's a senior political reporter for cnn, where he writes daily analysis of the administration's moves. Before cnn, he spent a decade as a mainstay at the Washington Post. We overlapped there, and that was after stints at the Hill and his hometown paper, the Minnesota Star Tribune. Aaron, welcome as always to Talking Feds
- [02:56]
Aaron Blake
Hey Harry, great to be back.
- [02:57]
Harry Litman
And speaking of hometown, Connor Lamb, who represented parts of Pittsburgh in Congress from 2018 to 2023 and before that he served as an Assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania, my own Office, and spent 2009 to 2013 on active duty in the Marine Corps. He now practices law client inspector and teaches at Duquesne University. Connor, thank you for your service and great to see a familiar Pittsburgh face on Talking Feds.
- [03:33]
Connor Lamb
Thanks for having me back.
- [03:35]
Harry Litman
And Mimi Rokos, speaking of familiar faces and a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, where she worked for over 16 years, including with fellow Assistant U.S. attorney Todd Blanche. From 2021 until 2025, she served as the elected district attorney of Westchester County. She's now an adjunct professor at Fordham University's law school, a top legal commentator and finishing up and a book that has had a recent change of title. Want to tell us about it?
- [04:09]
Mimi Rokos
Mimi thanks Terry. Great to be with you. The book, the newly revealed book title is Justice Still Stands. And for those of you who remember, the original was going to be Justice Under Siege. So I have changed my view on where we are headed, where we will end up. We are definitely headed in a bad direction, but where I think we will eventually end up. And I look forward to sharing that with with all of you when the time comes.
- [04:32]
Harry Litman
There you go. A lot in those six words. But speaking of where we are headed, let's go to the confirmation hearing of Todd Blanche and there was also of Jay Clayton. But for the people who follow the DOJ closely, you know, the drama and stakes seemed high. I'm not sure the intensity was matched by the questioning, although maybe that's just the inherent limits on confirmation hearings. But before we bear down on a few moments of relative drama, what was everyone's kind of overall take on the Blanche hearing?
- [05:09]
Aaron Blake
My overall takeaway on this was that it's an interesting hearing and there are some open questions here. The big questions, of course are whether Thom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina who's retiring, is going to vote for him. The signs seem to point in that direction, given Blanche just met with Epstein survivors, which was Tillis big ask. The bigger question is whether Texas Senator John Cornyn, who of course lost his primary to a Trump backed primary challenger, is going to vote for him. Cornyn has been kind of the most reluctant and has said that he's genuinely undecided people by the time they hear this. That may have been decided. But it felt to me like a hearing that would have been extremely high stakes if it were taking place a year ago, but maybe felt a little bit less so in the context of everything we're in the midst of. And I say that because the last year has been a steady progression of the Trump administration kind of breaking down these guardrails at the Justice Department. And so what we have in Todd Blanche is somebody who is much more forthright about saying, yeah, if the President orders an investigation, it's okay for me to start looking into that thing in a way that we didn't even see last year when Pam Bondi was the nominee. But we've also seen Republicans just kind of accept that in a way that they didn't before. And so I'd be very surprised if this wound up being a nomination that wound up in any serious trouble, even if people like John Cornyn are raising a little bit of a fuss about it.
- [06:38]
Harry Litman
Can I just follow up and add something before Mimi and Conor weigh in? Because I would have thought that fellow fact was something that should have increased the urgency and drama first. We're not even halfway through Trump 2.0, so we're talking about a lot of time to do a lot of damage. But also it makes this a vote. As a few senators did point out, it would be to ratify everything that has happened in the last year and a half. As someone said, it's a performance review more than a confirmation. And given his, his record, I would have thought that would raise the stakes. This is the Senate actually giving its imprimatur.
- [07:18]
Mimi Rokos
I think Aaron's point of view is a really insightful and interesting one. I mean, I think both things are true. Right. I think that to those of us who understand, and, you know, I don't limit that to DOJ alums, but to reporters who are following this really closely, to people who understand inherently sort of the importance of an independent justice system, the urgency of the moment could not be greater. On the other hand, as Aaron says, and as I think we all recognize, they, the administration have done an excellent job of normalizing the idea that you don't need to have an fully independent justice system from the President. What's the big deal? What's the big harm? And maybe we should articulate that a little bit more. But I think the single greatest number one reason why is it's not that the President cannot or should not even direct the Justice Department. Many of the things Todd Blanche said are perfectly reasonable. The idea that the executive branch, executive control. Yes, but what does that mean? And it means should mean directing Policy and direction and priorities. It should never mean handpicking the people to be prosecuted, whether there is a crime or not. And that's the outrageous, one of the many but outrageous part of all of this. And I don't think that came through in the hearings. And I was disappointed by that, because Blanche knows that that's outrageous. He's very good at making things sound reasonable that are not reasonable and palatable, that should not be palatable. And I didn't think that. Overall, with a few exceptions, the senators did a good job of pushing back on that with specific examples that show the absurdity, the danger of where we are with doj.
- [09:22]
Connor Lamb
Yeah, I agree with all of that. And I would only just add, I think, what people are calling the Freudian slip. You know, the moment when he said he was asked, are you Trump's friend? And he said, I'm his lawyer. And then he kind of caught himself and said, I was his lawyer. The reality is he thinks of himself as Trump's lawyer. And that means that the conception of the attorney general that we've all always had is essentially dead at this point. And we can hope that it will be revived or resurrected, but it is dead. I mean, we're on our second Trump attorney general nominee who has felt the same way. I mean, Bondi was the exact same thing. She was also Trump's lawyer in his impeachment, and they behaved that way. And so from where I sit as a Democrat, honestly, a huge worry is not just surviving the next couple of years, but how are you going to tell a future Democratic president that they can't put a loyalist in that same spot to protect them maximally and do their agenda maximally? I mean, I think that would be wrong as well. Just as wrong for a Democrat to do it. But once the norm is so clearly broken and nobody seems to recognize an obligation to stop that, it just means we're in a really bad spot. And our entire hopes are pinned on John Cornyn, whose only motive really seems to be, like, punishing Trump for going against him. It's nothing pure. So it's a bad moment. It just really is.
- [10:37]
Harry Litman
Yeah, I just want to echo that. Whatever Cornyn does, it won't be because of what There are three of us who served in the doj. We just know to our marrow that the idea of launching a case against someone because they're the president's enemy and there's not evidence against them is so antithetical to everything the department stands for. It's a glum point. You Make Connor but I think an accurate one that that's kind of been adjudicated within the current American political system. And if you just sort of watched almost with the volume down, you could just see that with a couple exceptions, people didn't seem to be hot and bothered about it. And I don't know if the American people themselves are.
- [11:31]
Mimi Rokos
Can I just.
- [11:31]
Harry Litman
Mimi, go ahead.
- [11:33]
Mimi Rokos
Because maybe my job, given my new book title, will be to play the optimist a little bit.
- [11:38]
Connor Lamb
That's what I was hoping.
- [11:41]
Mimi Rokos
I don't have the full answer, but I will say that part of why I was what we're all saying about what we're disappointed with, the lack of sort of urgency in the hearing is that I think one of the things they could have done effectively, the senators, is to give all of the many examples of cases that this administration prioritizes but have fallen apart either because the grand jury hasn't voted for them, the judges had dismissed them, a trial jury did not convict, the attorneys are being questioned and possibly sanctioned or even just called out in court in ways that any of us who were in the U.S. attorney's office know. If it happened once in a blue moon, it was like, oh my God, the judges are, you know, critiquing our credibility and now it happens daily. If many of those examples had been brought out in, in seriatim kind of here's the totality of what you're looking at, I think it could start to make the point and this is where I'll say Connor, I think when we get to the Democratic or any normal president doesn't have to be a Democrat, just like someone who respects the rule of law, I would argue the kind of Department of Justice that we're seeing now is a weak one. And so yeah, maybe you prioritize, you, the president, you, the administration, protecting yourself. But at the end of the day, in terms of the priorities that you have for drug enforcement, child exploitation, all the sort of more non political goals, everything is going to fail at the end of the day. Long term juries are not going to trust you, judges are not going to trust you, grand juries are not going to trust you. Not only the politically bent cases but all your cases are really going to start to suffer and you can't have that. And so that is one of the most sort of practical arguments I think. And we're already starting to see those actual real consequences. And the Democrats I think could have done a better job, the senators, of making that vision like sort of crystal clear.
- [14:00]
Harry Litman
I Mean, in a way, we've been lucky that all the outrageous prosecutions, there have been grand juries or judges there to kick them out. I mean, the real danger is one of these will stick. And now we're in an authoritarian society, not just at the Department of Justice, but somewhat more broadly. One of the what I thought was going to be effective, and I was kind of, you know, excited to hear as a former ausa, was the back and forth with Adam Schiff of what the hell happened to the old Todd Blanche. But it fizzled a bit, in my view, because he stood up and said, same Todd Blanche as always and get up and do the right thing. And I'm sorry, anyone of any stripe who knows him, knew the department then and knows him and knew the department now would say that that is the biggest, most general sort of whopper of them all. But the feeling that I had of the room was, you know, he kind of sold it. And even if he didn't, people didn't really grasp the gravity, broadly speaking, socially, politically, to the fact that he is the antithesis, the World 2 version of the Todd Blantz that was in AUSA in Mimi's old office.
- [15:22]
Connor Lamb
Absolutely. You know, yeah, he, he is, as Mimi said earlier, he's sort of in that JD Vance zone of speaking in normal cadence and terms about things that are totally ridiculous. And I think there are a lot of people in that room who are doing an internal calculation saying it could be a lot worse than this, frankly. Like, they're not necessarily happy about it, particularly the Republicans. But remember that Matt Gaetz was originally supposed to get this job. And compared to him, Todd Blanche actually looks palatable to people, I think.
- [15:52]
Harry Litman
Aaron, let me ask you about that, the sort of overall view, because I agree there was a pretty big Bill Barr op ed in the Wall Street Journal. Nobody of any sophistication denies that, for example, they're bringing reprisal prosecutions. And I think to all of us, and maybe this in the country is like a fuddy duddy view, this seems like the most elementary cardinal sin, the worst abuse of federal power you can think of. But I think others do make this argument the next one would be worse or the trains will run on time. Or maybe he's going no real evidence of this to temper Trump at his worst. So I wonder what your sense is among Republicans of why they should go for him and vote for him and why it's all down to, like Cornyn and we're on a. We're on this knife's Edge?
- [16:47]
Total Wine and More Host
Yeah.
- [16:48]
Aaron Blake
I think part of the reason that we're not seeing more concern about him maybe among some of these Republicans, is the thing that you mentioned, Harry, which was this is a guy who, in a former life was a kind of standard issue prosecutor who people seem to like and think, you know, had the same kind of general sensibilities about what the Justice Department was supposed to do. And maybe they think that guy is kind of buried beneath everything that they're seeing right now come out of this Justice Department. I think if you're somebody like a John Cornyn or a Thom Tillis, that's a story that you can tell yourself that might ultimately be compelling. But I do think that, you know, even just setting aside the moral side of things and the ethical, you know, the judicial ethics of all of this, confirming somebody like Todd Blanche, who has a track record of doing these kinds of things before he was even nominated for this post, does create a situation where you're effectively signing off on these things. So if you're a Republican and you're very concerned about how the Justice Department handled the Jeffrey Epstein files, you're going to confirm the guy who was basically in charge of that whole thing. If you're concerned about this anti weaponization fund, this $1.776 billion that the Justice Department was going to have, that would potentially go to violent January 6th defenders, Dodd Blanche was very acutely involved in that. You're going to be essentially saying, okay, maybe I didn't like that, but we're just going to move forward with the guy who was defending this and was really behind this whole thing. And then also I think you roll into that these investigations of Trump's enemies, which have. It's been kind of a gradual drip, drip, drip of provocations in pushing the envelope on this. And, and that creates a situation where I don't know that most of these Republicans are necessarily good with that. At some point, they might have to worry about these things coming back on them. This standard being set and being used against Republicans in the future, you know, that's gotta be something that's gotta at least come into their mind a little bit. And so this vote is a little bit different, even just setting aside the morality of it, because they're gonna be kind of setting these new standards and approving these new standards because they're approving a guy who is, in a lot of ways responsible for bulldozing these guardrails.
- [19:09]
Harry Litman
And from way back. Right. So we know from Pam Bondi, he is Mr. Epstein, for example, so all right. The hearing was what it was. Let's go to the aftermath. So after Thom Tillis signaled it was a condition of his confirmation vote, Blanche finally met with Epstein victims following the second day of hearings. I just want to say that that was one of the more bizarre, inscrutable parts of the first day. He just seemed to be saying, oh, we've been meeting with them forever. Everything's just normal. And the victims, in a very persuasive manner, were saying, what is he talking about? Anyway, Thom Tillis says, I would really like Blanche to meet with them. No surprise he did. But the victims say they came away bitterly disappointed. So what did you make of that meeting? Has he done right by them and has he done right by Thom Tillis so that whether or not he's done right by them, he's shored up that vote?
- [20:08]
Mimi Rokos
Herod, this may be in a long list of things that have outraged me about Blanche turning his back on everything he was taught and kind of practiced, but way back then, this is now at the top. This is just pure theater. What just happened? I mean, I don't know what Tillis true intentions were or not, but it almost seems, I will say from the outside looking in, like he set this up as a way for Todd to do something that would check a box. Right. He saw that this was problematic in the hearings because it was the one thing that just kind of kept coming up and up and up. And Todd was dodging about why he hadn't met with them. Well, they have lawyers. Well, I didn't say that I couldn't meet with them. I said I had. I mean, he was contradicting himself. And then Tillis comes out and says, well, I want him to meet with him. And boom, he meets with them. Which, by the way, I've spoken to people who were involved with that meeting and were in the room. There was no preparation. The attorneys were not given any notice. First he just shows up at Capitol Hill expecting the survivors to be there. Then they're not still there. They're all leaving. Some of them had to turn around and come back if they wanted to do this, because God forbid they didn't take him up on this meeting. Then the narrative would have been, you know, well, we offered and they didn't, you know, I was here. So then they meet with them. It's literally a 30 minute meeting after the nine hours with Ghislaine Maxwell. And by all accounts, and I don't know the exact words, and you know, there have been survivors out there talking about some of the actual things that were said. But there is no question, and I don't know how he would even dispute this, that he left people who went in there, actually, I think with real hope and an open mind, like they wanted. He could have said very little that would have reassured them, and he did the opposite. He made them feel even more degraded, even more shunned, even more ignored.
- [22:11]
Harry Litman
He gave them nothing. Right?
- [22:13]
Mimi Rokos
Yeah, well, yeah, that's a very long winded way of saying that this was set up as political theater. He treated them as political pawns, not as crime victims. No one disputes that these survivors, at least I've never heard, actually experienced crimes, whether they were prosecutable crimes or not. Different issue. But when I was da, I met with victims of crimes that I, I was not there in the office when they happened, but they were in crime crisis for some reason or another. At the point when I was da, I would meet with them and I would apologize on behalf of my office or whatever law enforcement agency or whatever city police, shooting victims, things that did not happen under my watch. But I'm the representative now of this institution and I will try to make them feel better in part by showing that somebody is taking some responsibility and, and going to look into how it happened and apologizing to them. He couldn't even do like one tiny bit of that, and that is just unforgivable. And again, getting back to what Aaron and Connor and everyone has said about senators, I mean, they will vote for him. I mean, we know they will, but they need to be made to for the rest of their careers. They are owning, making sex crimes victims, child predator victims feel like nothing. And that is unforgivable.
- [23:41]
Connor Lamb
Yeah, I think it's that latter point. People have actually accepted the idea that the Senate now stands for nothing at all except being a partisan extension or surrogate of the people in power. And so these senators just allowed this guy to come in and interview for this job and behave as Trump's lawyer, like someone who considers themselves accountable to the public or to victims. Acts totally different. In the meeting that Mimi just described, and it's obvious to everyone that he has no intention of doing anything for them. He's just protecting Trump by what he's doing. And the only people in our system. I get this from people all the time on the street. Why are they getting away with this? How come they can do whatever they want? The Senate are the only ones. It's the same thing with this ICE situation that I know we're going to Talk about like, this was so preventable if they had just made a condition of funding, you know, some standards on who you hire, some standards on whether you can fire into cars requiring that they actually wear the body cameras. Like, the Senate talked about all these things a year ago and didn't do a single thing to enforce it. And that's why all this stuff is happening.
- [24:44]
Harry Litman
And you're so right. It would have been easy in the normal thing. There's a sense to me, Mimi, that where Trump is still in the room during that half hour and Blanche doesn't want to say anything that, God forbid, seems contrite. Okay, look, this is going to be playing out for a couple more weeks all. And Cornyn is in the hot seat as a sort of exit question. First, I do want to say it is touch and go. There are ways that he could go down. Cornyn is one. And if you do the math on the floor, that's another. Here's my question. There are people on the left who are taking it as near a fetacom plea, but are saying no. The real point is he gets confirmed. But now we have fodder for campaign commercials against. And it's not Corny and Tillis. Right. But maybe if it goes to the floor vote Collins or Dan Sullivan, if he's confirmed, does it have any and even what Mimi just said as sort of ongoing legacy, et cetera, or is that really basically just consoling talk about, you know, if he's confirmed, it's sort of done, it won't be an abiding issue come midterms or 28.
- [25:59]
Aaron Blake
I tend to think that things like Supreme Court votes could be, you know, a thing for Susan Collins in her reelection race if she were to, you know, forced to vote for somebody who gave the wrong answers on abortion rights or something like that. Like, that's an issue, I think, with Blanche. The potential political impact is in if people see what's happening at the Justice Department moving forward and they really don't like it. And, you know, Democrats can say, you know, the guy who oversaw the Epstein files is now being installed in the job permanently. Like, that's the kind of thing I think you can make a campaign ad out of possibly.
- [26:34]
Connor Lamb
Yeah, it's hard to land a significant punch, I think, in the midterm elections over this because it's just. It's just not that high on the radar for normal people. But my fear about it is the political significance is that, like, the reason you're seeing Graham Platners nominated around the country is because the Democratic base thinks that its own leadership is too weak and cowardly to do what needs to be done. And my fear is that Todd Blanche is another time that Democrats just get their faces rubbed in this and then they're going to want something of their own when they come back into power. And that's directly at odds with what we believe in about Department of Justice, which is that it's supposed to stand for some sort of nonpartisan principles.
- [27:17]
Harry Litman
And I see some nods from AUSA Roka. All right, so let's just leave it there for now. We're going to have a committee vote and a potential for vote, et cetera. This isn't. It's far from done. Hey, everyone. Harry here. As the weather heats up, I wanted to give another shout out to Quince Clothing. Their organic cotton crew neck, their Traveler 5 pocket pants, and their Pima cotton T shirts have been great parts of my wardrobe. And they're breathable enough to feel fantastic on mild or warm summer days. They look good, fit well, and are inexpensive to boot. And I'm looking forward to checking out their new European linen pants and shirts for even more summer comfort. Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to Quince.com TalkingFeds for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U-I-N C-E.com TalkingFeds for free Shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Talking Feds. Let's move. As Connor previewed, we have two new killings at the hands of ICE. You know, fatal shootings. Well, there's going to be hotly disputed what happened. How bad are the facts here? How bad is ICE's conduct? Are these going to have the legs of the Minnesota fatalities? Where are we in Maine and Texas with these latest events?
- [29:05]
Aaron Blake
I think this is an issue for the administration. I think this is something that could wind up being something the American people are quite concerned about. I do think that, at least at this point, just speaking very kind of brass tacks about it, there are some key differences that make it a little bit more difficult for people to get exercised about it. The big one is that we don't have the same kind of video of these things. You know, in Minneapolis we had tons of people standing around who in many cases were proactively taking video of these clashes with federal immigration agents. And that's why we had all these angles of what happened to Alex Preddy and Renee Goode. We don't have that same thing In Maine and Texas, certainly. But if you look, and I did look at the polling on this issue earlier this week, I think the danger in this for the administration just bey on kind of the tragedy that we see here is that the American people, they like that the border has been effectively shut down. That's a good story for this administration to tell. But once you get beyond that and you talk about the administration's deportation agenda and how that's been carried out, the American people have a lot of problems with how that's been carried out. And the danger of this politically for the administration is that it injects that issue with a lot more currency and in a way that focuses people on something that is very objectionable. And so to the extent that we learn more about these episodes, and maybe like last time, the things that the administration said about them kind of falls apart over time, which was a trend that we saw with not just the Minneapolis killings, but other issues involving federal immigration agents where there were clashes with people. To the extent we see kind of a repeat of that and the story kind of lasts for a long time, that really dings what should be a stronger issue for the administration, at least next to all the other issues that are working against them right now, I
- [31:04]
Harry Litman
see real danger here for them. This unbelievable story of the shooter that the AP has just come out with, you know, the agent had a huge, lurid history of domestic abuse of two different spouses and mental instability. And to the extent these things are played out on TV as battles of anecdotes, we're not going to see the rich kind of video evidence come to the fore. But that guy, I think, is served up as a story of what the f is ICE and the administration doing. Those details, I think, have purchase, as it were.
- [31:47]
Mimi Rokos
I was just going to make the point, piggybacking on everyone's points about this, that again, I'm looking at this more through a former prosecutor's lens, that this is one of those examples of the consequences of the politicized, not just doj, but justice system law enforcement being politicized. The fact that the hiring standards have been lowered so much, the idea that, you know, it's sort of shoot and ask questions later because they want to detain and apprehend at all costs people who they paint but do not have evidence of as illegally here, let alone the quote unquote, worst of the worst violent criminals. And so when we talk in the hypotheticals that all of us, not hypotheticals, but sort of more lofty reasons why the Politicized law enforcement is so bad. This is, I think, another very concrete, maybe the most concrete example of that, that really any reasonable American, Right. Like citizen should be worried about. And I think that's part of why the earlier shootings and even these strike such a chord like that could be me, says any American who even looks like they are from another country and any of us who feel vulnerable because of our backgrounds, et cetera.
- [33:19]
Connor Lamb
Just one more thing. Look into the future. I am kind of obsessed with trying to get an idea of what the cleanup job is going to be like when Trump is finally gone. And if you think about how many guys like this ICE agent are lurking out there in ICE and all these other agencies, I mean, even in the FBI, which I love and always held up as the gold standard, I have heard things about them rushing people through there that concern me. And if you read the article that Harry mentioned and the his ex wife was on NPR this morning giving an interview about the abuse that she suffered from this guy, it is shocking. And if you've ever been through a background check in the federal government like this absolutely should have been caught. There's no question he's applying to carry a gun for a living. There were multiple things they should have caught. And so if that guy is representative of who has come in under Trump, that is going to be a huge project, finding those people and getting them out of the federal workforce, which is going to cause a big problem, and then replacing them with competent people who respect the rule of law as well. I mean, it's just a massive undertaking that lies ahead of us, which, as
- [34:25]
Harry Litman
we know, it's a lot harder to dislodge than to bring people in. I thought also, you know, Texas on the one hand, seems like the local authorities are the most passive. On the other, it really felt like Renee Goode all over again with the claim of a weaponized vehicle juxtaposed with the fatal shots coming from the side. And in both cases, also just this reflexive account given by our government, here's what happened here. And it seems to have no connection to the truth.
- [35:03]
Mimi Rokos
And Harry, there's no actual DOJ investigation going on. Right. Of either of these. I mean, Renee Goode there is now, at the last minute, because of Todd's hearings, they've finally given materials to the local authorities, though they still don't have an actual federal civil rights investigation, which they absolutely should. But I don't think in either of these cases, they've either shared materials or indicated that they will do an Investigation, which we know they won't.
- [35:29]
Harry Litman
It's even worse, at least in Texas. What they've said is they're going to investigate the agents that will be the inspector general or by the internal. Did they internally violate the use of deadly force so that they should get some kind of mark in their file? Oh, but never fear, the FBI is on the job, it turns out, to investigate whether the victim actually impeded law enforcement. You're exactly right. This is, I think, another reason why it fairly does go to the top. Because, okay, a crazy guy was hired, should never have happened. But if they're not responding at all and just reflexively circling the wagons, that becomes a statement about ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. What about this, right? Six months of no way, no how do you get anything? The car, the bullets, the interviews about the Renee Good and Alex Preddy killings. And they've had to sue for it, has Minnesota, in a way that I found not fully explained, they're now sharing that evidence. That's a big, big breakthrough. And I think it's quite likely we're going to see state homicide prosecutions against the shooters. In that case, I wanted to talk briefly, going all the way to the top, about this cessation and resumption of traffic stops. So law enforcement people on the ground, including Mr. $50,000 and a kava bag, Tom Homan said, you know, these vehicle stops are really dangerous. That's where all the problems happen. Let's stop them. And what was it a day later that the President of the United States, who knows jack shit about any of this stuff, just says, I want the vehicle stops resumed. And they were not a good look to me about ICE and law enforcement. What does it say about the administration overall?
- [37:31]
Aaron Blake
Maybe I can speak to this, since at CNN we had some reporting on this and kind of how this went down in the administration. The way that it seems to have gone down is this was an ask of Senator Susan Collins from Maine, who came out and said that this was something that she requested and it was pretty quickly granted. But then what happened was that President Trump heard about it and was furious about it. You know, this is a guy who has made deportation a centerpiece of his political agenda. And we were also hearing that there was panicking from these ICE agents that this was going to make it more difficult for them to meet their quotas. The administration is asking for 2,000 arrests a day. And so if you can't stop vehicles, that makes it a lot more difficult to meet those goals. And so I think Those two factors, according to our reporting, really combined. I was kind of surprised when this first happened that the administration reacted this quickly, not just because of the factors I laid out, but it did seem like they were kind of backing away. Like, you know, we saw after Minneapolis, Tom Homan came out and kind of suggested that maybe things weren't handled great. And then we had these other two killings and we see the administration immediately cancel these vehicle stops, at least temporarily. So maybe if you're Trump, you look at that and you think it projects some weakness on this issue a little bit. And maybe that's part of the reason that he was so upset about what his administration had done.
- [38:57]
Mimi Rokos
It also, I think them suspending the traffic stops, I'm sure Trump and others, including the public, could have seen that as an admission that there was something wrong and that happened also. I believe it was Renee Good, not Alex Preddy. But I could be wrong where one of the investigations they had started sharing information with the local authorities. The FBI had. And then literally they reversed their. I mean, it wasn't just that they didn't share, it was that they started sharing and then they stopped sharing when people like Trump and others, I think even JD Mans, came out and said this was all caused by the victims. And so then it became, okay, well, we're going to investigate the victims, not the agents. And we're not going to share information because sharing it and aiding in an investigation of the agents, even in and of itself seems like a, quote, admission. And this is a sort of an even bigger form of that. And it seems like, you know, I have no good things to say about Tom Holman, but every now and then he acts like a sort of law enforcement person, not a political person who is forced to taking certain positions. And his first instinct, it seems, was to do the law enforcement thing, the reasonable law enforcement thing. Like, let's put a hold on these until we figure out what's going on. This, you know, two and two days is a crazy number.
- [40:28]
Connor Lamb
And 17 over the course of the last year and a half, I believe 17 motorists. And if most of your listeners will have gotten here already, Harry. But for anyone who didn't, if Susan Collins was the senator that she presents herself as to the public, her reaction to Trump doing that would have been fine. I'm not voting for Todd Blanche, change my mind. Like that is what you do. You have to meet that if you're a co equal branch of government, it's obviously all related. And Trump knows she's not going to do that, and she's not going to do that. So it again, just comes back to that being a paper tiger over there
- [41:00]
Harry Litman
in that chamber, the whole anticipated deja vu of it and her Hamlet act with Brett Kavanaugh. It makes me queasy to think about it. I just wanted to say, Mimi, I think your point is a really good and generalizable one, more than we appreciate. You have a real focus, sensitivity, paranoia within the administration of potential accountability and payback, and really worried about not getting crosswise. Okay. Once the charges are brought in Minnesota, I think they'll breathe a little life into this. I wonder in general whether the Texas DA, who just seemed to say right away, well, if the FBI, it's all up to them, will in fact revisit next to any sort of, you know, political agitation. How can you just let this not even be investigated? All right, it is now time for a spirited debate brought to you by our sponsor, Total Wine and More. Each episode, you'll be hearing an expert talk about the pros and cons of a particular issue in the world of wine, spirit and beverages.
- [42:19]
Total Wine and More Host
Thank you, Harry. In today's spirited debate, we dig up the dirt on the agave plant to find out the difference between tequila and mezcal. So, first things first. Tequila is a type of mezcal, much like bourbon is a type of whiskey. In general, tequilas are mezcals, but not all mezcals are tequilas. Allow me to explain. Tequila can only come from the blue agave plant in specific regions of Mexico, like the region Jalisco, where the city of Tequila is located. No coincidence there. Mezcal, however, can be made from many varieties of agave, specifically from the heart of the agave known as the bee. The distillery process for tequila and mezcal is also different. Tequila is produced by steaming the blue agave and then distilling it in copper stills for a toasty, clean taste. On the other hand, mezcal, which appropriately means oven cooked agave, is cooked in earthen pits with wood and charcoal before being distilled in clay pots. No wonder mezcal, which is typically consumed straight, has more of a smoky, earthy taste than. Of course, the best way to get to know the differences between tequila and mezcal is to pick up a bottle of each from your Total Wine and More, and pour hundreds of years of tradition right into your glass. Cheers.
- [43:37]
Harry Litman
Thanks to our friends at Total Wine and More for today's a spirited debate. Let's leave this one as well here. And it's going to be developing and go to the top. And the, the speech from last night that Trump had highly anticipated, everyone sort of, especially Republicans on edge. What crazy ass stuff will he claim? You did cover the speech for cnn, Aaron, and your sense is it didn't live up to the hype. Couldn't we go full on nothing burger, anything to this? And you know, what the hell was he even trying to achieve with these reheated and already debunked claims?
- [44:24]
Aaron Blake
I'll give the two different perspectives that I have on this, which I think coexist nicely. One of them is that, yes, this was in a lot of ways what we expected. There was not a whole lot of new evidence. The evidence that was new, according to CNN reporting, was generally speaking, the kind of raw intelligence. The stuff that didn't, wasn't vetted fully and couldn't be confirmed, that contradicted the kind of broader assessments from the intelligence community. And then a lot of the stuff that was presented as being new was actually kind of known about before. You know, the stuff about China getting voter rolls from states across the country was in the 2021 intelligence assessment about this.
- [45:09]
Harry Litman
I mean, more than kind of was just flat out, no.
- [45:11]
Aaron Blake
Yeah, yeah, but so a lot of this stuff was old, a lot of this stuff was maybe new, but it was not confirmed and was very raw intelligence. So to the extent that the promise was that there was going to be some bombshell new evidence that was put forward, we certainly didn't see that. I think it was a very important speech, though, for another reason. And that reason is that it is the opening salvo in what promises to be a very tense negotiation between Donald Trump and the legitimacy of the 2026 election. This is a president who of course has basically said that every election that doesn't go in his direction or his party's direction was rigged. It wasn't just the 2020 election. It was also the primaries that he lost during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. And then we also saw in 2020, ahead of what happened long before January 6th, we saw him really laying the groundwork for what he would ultimately do in saying that this election was rigged and stolen. He talked about this for months before the election. And so I think at the very least, what we saw on Thursday night was the opening bid in him doing that about a 2026 election that looks like it's not going to be very good for Republicans and him laying the groundwork for making that argument. I think the worst case scenario, if you're concerned about this issue and you think that that's what he's really doing right now, is that he's laying the groundwork for doing something more than that, which is inserting the federal government into voting procedures in some way, putting troops at polling stations in the most kind of far reaching example of that. I think that's the thing that people can start to be talking about more earnestly because he laid the groundwork for saying the status quo in our elections is not acceptable. And the question from there becomes, okay, what is he going to try to do about it beyond just complaining about it?
- [47:07]
Harry Litman
I mean, if that is the. That wouldn't be the opening salvo here, right? Really, Week in, week out, just today, two more decisions going against them in their quixotic effort to shake down all the states to get this stuff. I thought the headline in a way was his own person heading this, an election denier say there's no proof by intelligence agents or anyone else of a single vote. Yeah, having John Solid, you know, Venezuela can mess with things. China foments as Russia did, but literally not a single vote. So it's, it's a hard groundwork to try to lay. Maybe that's right. You probably have a sense of how Dems are trying to position this. What do you do about this kind of claim that seems to have no fact behind it at all? But he's just, he's the President and says it again and again and again. And by the way, it's not just partisan, but kind of pernicious. Right. It actually undermines Americans faith potentially in the safety and security of our own election systems. What are the tools to try to fight back that kind of ceaseless campaign?
- [48:21]
Connor Lamb
You know, I think that the way Ossoff has responded to it is really educational and his star happens to be rising at the exact time that this is coming along. And so, you know, I think Trump is hurting himself in a way by. By turning him into even a bigger hero than he was. Anyway, a lot of people are choosing the mockery strategy of like, oh, they only remembered to hack the election in 20 and not 16 and 24. And you were in charge in 2020 anyway. And that's getting some traction. But I think this is happening for two reasons. One is the real reason of laying a predicate to declare an emergency and interfere, if not this time in 2028. I do believe that's a consideration. But also he's under enormous pressure from their base over this Save America Act. And I think a lot of more liberal people are not really tracking how big of a deal that is. It's seems like a kind of a zany right wing activist thing, but like they're all getting pounded in their offices every single day for not delivering on that. It's kind of a little bit like when Biden had done infrastructure but had not done the rest of build back better and people were all over him about it. And I think that's the position Trump is in. And so he's looking for ways to try to get that group through the midterms without jumping ship. Basically.
- [49:38]
Mimi Rokos
I'll just, I mean I am not the amazing news reporter that Aaron is and not the political, you know, mind that Conor is. So I'll give you the perspective a little bit of someone just, you know, more distanced from this topic, which is a combination of what they both been saying and I think Ossoff has captured it, which is really like you're still talking about this, you're such a loser. You know, it just, this is old news, it makes him seem even more pathetic, etc. Etc. That said, like I am not underestimating at all the danger that already exists and I think will escalate to both of our elections. And it shows sort of the lengths that he's willing to go and the again inability of the enablers around him either because they don't want to or they are too scared to stop him from doing something that actually may be kind of self destructive in the short term to him politically and to their party. And on top of that, I recognize very much that this just seems like one of those whatever media bubble you're in, this just reaffirms already, right? To those of us who think he's a kind of raging lunatic stating lies to the American public, this just seems like another one. He's crying fire, blah, blah. And to very, very right wing MAGA people, I suppose it's up. See, we knew it and here it is. And they're just gonna believe what he says. So I just don't know that that alone has moved the ball at all. But I think it shows how far he is willing to go and how little control. Either cause they don't want to or they're too scared.
- [51:19]
Harry Litman
The people around him have I 100% agree. Did somebody say to him, you know, what are you doing, Mr. President? The media coverage of this was actually seemed to reflect the skepticism. A lot of networks skipped it altogether. Others did it very briefly only to debunk the claims that some of that was on cnn, the New York Times, Big piece. They actually tempered it. But coming out of the box was this is all crap and it's all, it's all been disproven. That to me was a departure from the kind of what's been frustrating on, on wanting to have the sort of, on the one hand, on the other hand, I don't know if you have any insight into it, Aaron, but it was there, you know, some kind of corporate sense that like we're not going to give him the, just because he says it's a primetime address, give him this, you know, platform to advance these false claims without any kind of pushback.
- [52:18]
Aaron Blake
Well, a couple points on that. One is that it's not unprecedented for the media and media outlets not to air these speeches. It happened with both Obama and with Joe Biden in the recent past. Another point is that the last Oval Office address that Trump gave was the Iran speech back in April, which was pretty news free. There was a lot of anticipation of that and then it wound up being really just a lot of warmed over talking points. So I think there was a sense that maybe this was a repeat of that or that he was kind of abusing this ability to bring eyeballs on himself. But I also do think, and maybe this isn't your perception, Harry, but I do think that when this subject of voter fraud and election integrity comes up, I've been pretty impressed that a lot of outlets bring the same kind of skepticism that I tend to in my coverage. On some level, politicians should always be judged on their track record. And when you say things that are false over and over again about a given topic and then you say I want to talk about a given topic in primetime on your airwaves, you should be skeptical about that because there is a history that's involved there. And so I think that's been very interesting. And then the last point that I would just point to on this is it hasn't just been the skeptical coverage which I think is wholly warranted. It's also been the reluctance to cover this among the entities that Trump really needs to be pushing this idea forward. This issue has almost been completely ignored on Fox news in the 24 hours since Trump made this speech. I think Hannity talked about it very briefly after the speech and then this morning on Friday, Fox and Friends didn't even touch the issue. Now some of that may be that they paid $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems over stuff like this, but I think on some level it's a reflection of there's just not a whole lot to grab hold of here too.
- [54:18]
Harry Litman
Really good point. Okay, we're out of time. I want to lob in a final editorial comment, which Paul Krugman I thought had a very interesting column. We tend to see this as a nothing burger, but the President of the United States standing up and just talking deranged, psychotic, discredited stuff that has an impact kind of in the world for our overall reputation. He thought that the craziest thing he said was that we are now respected more in the world than we ever have been. All right, we'll leave it there. And we just have a minute left for our five Words or Fewer feature. Health officials say they've now traced the stomach troubling bacteria outbreak to lettuce provided to Taco Bell. Others aren't so sure. What might be the administration's theory about the real source of the stomach bug afflicting Americans? 5 words or fewer anyone?
- [55:15]
Mimi Rokos
Hillary Clinton, Root of all evil Root.
- [55:19]
Harry Litman
Very good with the root.
- [55:20]
Aaron Blake
Yeah, excellent. Mine is Deep state provocateurs from McDonald's.
- [55:28]
Connor Lamb
I'm just going to follow Secretary Hegseth and say low tea.
- [55:32]
Harry Litman
Oh that. I had that in mind. And that's the cost of going last. Lettuce is low testosterone, as everybody knows. Thank you so much Aaron, Connor and Mimi. And thank you very much listeners for for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. Check us out on substack@harrylittman.substack.com where I'll be posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. Paid Substack subscribers can now get Talking Fed's episodes completely ad free. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube, where we are posting full episodes and my daily takes on top legal stories. Talking Feds has joined forces with the Contrarian I'm a founding contributor to this bold new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in. And don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Lou Cregan and Katie Upshaw, Associate Producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle Rosie, Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansum Hadranathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistants. By Akshaj Turbailu. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Deledo, llc. I'm Harry Litman in Talk to you later.