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- [00:01]
Commercial Announcer
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- [00:31]
Harry Littman
Some follow the noise.
- [00:33]
Molly Zhang
Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side,
- [00:48]
Harry Littman
you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story.
- [00:53]
Molly Zhang
Subscribe now@bloomberg.com hi folks. Harry here. We taped and published our roundtable early this week. Go catch Friday's episode if you missed it, but we didn't want to leave you empty handed on a Monday morning. So stay tuned for a great conversation with Molly Zhang. Fast. And just a heads up, we talked before the event Saturday night at the White House Correspondence Dinner so you won't hear us address that. Talk to you later.
- [01:31]
Harry Littman
Welcome to Talking Feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman.
- [01:47]
Molly Zhang
Hey everyone. It is our latest Molly Harry mashup in which political commentator and author extraordinaire Molly Zhang fast hits me with legal questions and I return fire with queries about politics. Molly, always great to see you and to chat with you. Who starts your call.
- [02:08]
Political Commentator
So I'm going to ask you a question about the Supreme Court. Trump super mad about the tariffs. There's like a whole docket of stuff that's going to, you know, we're just about hitting Supreme Court season. I want you to tell us what you think, what you're looking at, what you're watching, what you're waiting for.
- [02:27]
Molly Zhang
Okay? Yeah, glad to do it. And you're right. The court, unlike other institutions, they finish up, you know, at the end of the school year, rise and leave, get rid of everything one way or another. And that'll be at the end of June. And by the way, everyone will be watching close that day because that's the traditional time to announce retirements and all eyes will be on Thomas and Alito. Yeah, first of all, I just want to mention on the Twitter thing, he couldn't have been more like apoplectic and disparaging and yet he never even made even an attempt at a Legal point, it was just this must be bad for America because I wanted it. Two big cases everyone's holding their breath for. When you and that last week they released something on Friday, people were wondering will this be the day? The first thing everyone's waiting for and it was argued, I think in the very first hearing time in last October is the Voting Rights Act. So you probably remember there's this, what many people consider the most important piece of civil rights legislation, if not legislation, period, that passed in the 60s and it had two really important engines, Section 5, which the court has already done away with. And that gave the DOJ a opportunity to sort of push back against changes that certain states who had a history of discrimination made. There's also section two and that's a been held anyway to be a test that if you put into play anything that is racially has biased it can be challenged on that basis. And there's I think like 20 actual districts around the country, maybe more Molly, where the people who are there so called majority minority districts are because of that very section and courts having held you to do better here or you're diluting the minority vote, that very section. Now there's indication the court might want to strike down as unconstitutional and that would be seismic for the overall map. But. And I think they will strike it down, but I don't think it'll be in time to change things for the midterms, maybe for 28. And then finally everyone's waiting for the birthright citizenship case. I think the administrators are going to lose that one. It's just completely outlandish. And the reports will go out around the land. Oh, see, the Supreme Court isn't so bad. But those will be well overstated then. No, no Court, you couldn't write an opinion upholding this completely counter textual interpretation of the 14th Amendment. So it will continue to be the case, I think that anyone born here, whoever their parents are, will be an American citizen. And you know, that's a pretty American idea.
- [05:21]
Political Commentator
So the Voting Rights act dies, but it's not in time for this midterm election. It'll be time for 2028.
- [05:29]
Molly Zhang
I think that's right. And even 2028 they got to draw new maps. You only draw new maps after censuses. Of course, that hasn't stopped them. Now this term we just had the big result in Virginia yesterday, which you know is more in your bally wick than mine. But so far that whole effort by the R seems to be at best a kind of stalemate. So I Think it'd be weird even to try in the middle, but certainly for the next census that's going to matter and we'll see if Congress responds at all. They could reintroduce it, but especially if the opinion is like, oh, this is unconstitutional Congress. Okay. I love talking to, you know, makes me think about there's all the big questions swirling around. I just talked to Rick Wilson, but I, it really puts me in mind of things that are, every time I think of that, that's interesting. I got to Molly and here's my start. Been a pretty humiliating couple weeks for the Vice President of the United States, J.D.
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Harry Littman
vance.
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Molly Zhang
Trump seems maybe to be setting him up to take the blame in Iran even as sources close to him whine to the media. The VP never wanted the war. He drew this, as you pointed out, pretty damn paltry crowd at the kind of right wing event he used to star at. Are his political fortunes well and truly fallen, would you say? Or is there a third act, I guess you'd have to call it because his first act was anti Trump. Is there a third act for him in the offing?
- [07:03]
Political Commentator
Well, you'll remember what happened to Donald Trump's first vice president, one Mike Pence. I don't think it's a good judge, first of all, even when you're not the second fiddle for a complete narcissistic sociopath, it's a bad job. Even when you're just the vice president for a normal president, it's not a good job unless you're Dick Cheney. But I think in this case, I think Vance has a number of problems. One is he has this humiliation tour. He's been tasked with bringing peace to the Middle east, the Iranians. I think what Donald Trump has done with Iran is really kicked a hornet's nest. And I don't think that this, you know, Trump has really been trying to sort of de escalate the war in Iran. But the problem is that the Iranians are ideological in a way that I don't think Trump quite understands. And so, you know, he's not able to get to sort of back this train up. And I think, I think it's a really tough job for Vance. So. But I think there's another tension here, which is that Trump is a lame duck. He's 79, he polls terribly and he's not running for reelection again. But he knows that the minute he chooses his successor, his power gets diminished even further. And so the power he has to play JD Vance against Marco is sort of one of the last cards he has left. And so I think it's very unlikely that Donald Trump will make J.D. the heir apparent. I think he'll do as much as possible to keep that question running for as long as possible. The other thing is that J.D. vance is saddled with a really unpopular president who has made gas prices higher. And it's so funny because it's like there are so many reasons not to support Trump. His anti Democratic stance, his racism, his sexism, his misogyny. But ultimately the thing that seems like it's really doing it as the gas price.
- [09:16]
Molly Zhang
Yeah, but that's really super interesting analysis. A very fast Ian Fasterian, if I could say, because you're right, if that's right, he wants to play him off against each other. That also suggests he doesn't kick Vance to the curb for a while because,
- [09:31]
Political Commentator
yeah, I mean, it works much better for him to have JD Vance and Marco fighting over his love. And you know, one of the things we saw was that the wife of Charlie Kirk, Erica Kirk, she endorsed J.D. vance really early from Turning Point. And you could see like what it did was she lost her power that way. And so that's a mistake you will not see Trump make.
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Molly Zhang
Very good.
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Harry Littman
Your turn.
- [10:05]
Political Commentator
Okay, so I am, you know, today, yesterday, I think in bat shittery, we had Todd Blanche up there. And remember, you know, this is on the heels of the Bondi departure, which I think is relevant. Todd Blanche up there with Kash Patel indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center. Meaningful for any number of reasons, one of which is that they are the group that hunted the kkk. They have, you know, been around forever. They have this cooked up case that they paid informant and somehow that is wire fraud. Isn't that what the FBI does? And also. Right. And also what the fuck Go.
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Molly Zhang
Yeah. My two response to that that's what the FBI does and to what the fuck it is a deeply intellectually dishonest case. So first of all, the wire fraud, the fraud here is supposed to be, and it's got to be all these a lot of specifics against the donors. The theory of the case is that you went to the donors and said, we're please give us your money. We're working to ferret out extremism. We have a great track record, including with the kkk.
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Political Commentator
And a very important way to do
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Molly Zhang
it is the way law enforcement always does it. Infiltrate, get a confidential informant, pay them money. That's a whole big for you. Yeah, exactly. So besides the sort of overall hypocrisy of it. It was sort of revoltingly political and dishonest in a way that others haven't been so far. You know anyone who heard it, you scratch your.
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Harry Littman
Wait, what?
- [11:56]
Molly Zhang
Oh it turns out that all this time we thought they were good guys. They actually were pro extremists. And then you take a step back and understand the just deeply you BS theory of the case and BL stood up and said all this time and the indictment says they've actually been promoting extremism. And it's exactly as you say, Molly, that if that's true, then the FBI forever has been promoting the mob, promoting drug cartels because it's the exact same way. Now they're trying very technically to to say well maybe they were defrauded donors. I don't think that's going anywhere. And then there are secondary things about they, they paid them. You can't, you're not going to pay confidential informants where they check this as scpc.
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Political Commentator
Right. Right.
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Molly Zhang
And suppose in money laundering. But the basic idea, they can try this technically but the basic idea is just designed it seem me to mislead the American people was for the headline. And a headline that they know is dishonor. It's confusing because it seems like it can't be. And then when you look just one level deeper, you know, it's just a total. I think the legal term would be bullshit case. It's. And it's really, this is Blanche, you know, really trying to do. Bondi won worse. But you know the, the notion this is the Department of Justice there to enforce the laws, you know, true justice without fear or favor and it's just a political hit. That's all it is. I don't think it'll last. But, and you notice they didn't indict any people, just the, the organization itself. But even if somehow they, they can make in the middle district of Alabama a very pro Trump part of the world, make little things stick. It's really important to understand the whole effort is just deeply dishonest and political.
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Political Commentator
But I just want, I have a follow up question for you. When they were talking about it, Kash Patel who was screaming at a journalist when they asked him about his the Atlantic reporting of his drunkenness, he said well a grand jury has indicted. So we know it's true and we know they did it. Just explain why that's not how any of this works.
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Molly Zhang
Well what people always used to say about grand juries and especially the middle district of Alabama is they can indict a ham Sandwich. Of course, the administration has been serving up different kinds of sandwiches that grand juries have rejected. But, yes, it's child's play. And, you know, in my whole career, Molly, I've only heard or been involved once in a case where the grand jury refused charges. It wasn't even my case. It's exceedingly rare, except it's called a Nobel. Say what?
- [15:05]
Political Commentator
It's called a no.
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Molly Zhang
Yeah. For the grand jury to say no, they typically sit there and say, you know, and rubber stamp. That's a problem. People have noticed it. Which has made it all the more striking, the skein of failures by the Trump administration. But that is, again, anyone with any sophistication knowledge knows that's the best you got. The grand jury said that's, that's another part of the whole fiction here. And again, the most the grand jury would have said has been persuaded in some technical way. The grand jury has not accused the SPC of actually supporting extremism. That is just a, you know, total deceptive, is a kind way to put what's really a bullshit charge. So this, well, you talked about Patel and man, oh, man, he come, he comes right out of the box with that defamation suit against the Atlantic for all those allegations. We'll see where that goes and why he's doing it. Also this week, Lori Chavez de Remmer is the labor secretary is gone in the wake of some really tawdry allegations. My basic question to you, Molly, is first, why does this administration produce such, you know, outlandish scandals, like nasty stuff month after month? And is everyone in your sort of estimation, is the American public so used to scandal now that there's no real political price to be made from this kind of conduct that normally used to make people kind of gasp?
- [16:42]
Political Commentator
Well, remember up until a few weeks ago, Donald Trump refused to fire people and he just moved them around. So I do think scandals matter. He did that because scandals matter because he knew how bad the optics were. So that is number one. Number two. So we have three women who have been fired from this administration. Laurie Chavez, Dreamer Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem. Chavez Durimer and Kristi Noem have two very similar situations. Chavez Darimer has the father and husband who were both really problematic. The father probably is alleged to have harassed people in her orbit who worked for this government, treating government employees like, you know, all three of them in the Chavez Durimer case treated government employees as if they were personal staff. With Noem, you had a similar situation, right, where you have Corey Lewandowski treating her government job like an atm. And you have allegations there too.
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Molly Zhang
And then both of them have an adultery side to them, right?
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Political Commentator
Yeah, right. No, but you don't can't get fired. You don't get fired for adultery, and at least not in the Trump administration. And I think also more importantly, the adultery was blew up for her during the hearing, which I thought was actually really interesting, was that she kept being asked this question of whether or not she was having sex with Cory and she wouldn't answer it. Maybe because Corey would have been mad at her for not doing it. Maybe because she didn't want to lie under oath because she knew there was enough evidence to show that it was lying. Either way, it's informative when you think about when you're going to interview other members of this cabinet because there are going to be endless, endless interviews with members of this cabinet any which way. So I just thought there were a lot of similarities between Dreamer and Noem, which I think are worth noting. Bondi is a little bit of a different story. But I would say what I think is relevant here is that there are a lot of bad cabinet members in Trump world, from Kash Patel to Letnick to, you know, there are a lot of people. Yeah, there are a lot of people.
- [19:08]
Molly Zhang
Yeah.
- [19:09]
Political Commentator
Who are bad at their jobs and who are probably going to get fired. But I think it's noteworthy that the women have such a hard time hanging on. And I don't think it's because Trump, I don't necessarily think it's because they're worse. I think it's because the women of MAGA have to twist themselves into such a pretzel to exist in MAGA that there's just a lot more that can go wrong. And that's why you see the men, you know, you see these men sort of ruining their careers. You see just all sorts of second order effects that you might not be able to game out. My question for you is about this sort of Trump world's criminality. So we see that Trump has gotten, for example, Kristi Noem. Now she's gone. There's all sorts of fraud questions, the $220 million for the horseback riding movies, they're just different. Smoking guns with a lot of these cabinet members. If you're trying to go after the what Kristi Noem has done, where would you start? What's the legal like, is that a federal crime? I mean, obviously the Trump DOJ is not going to prosecute this, but you don't want to miss the term limits. So can states prosecute this? Like, could California prosecute this? And if so, what would it look like to try to start an investigation into Kristi Noem? Because obviously there's been a lot of really fraudulent spending.
- [20:47]
Molly Zhang
Yeah. So three quick points. First of all, I mean, the administration's been like a crime wave, including Trump himself. You think about the emoluments class stuff, you think about the pardon stuff, which would play as a quid pro quo. We somehow forgotten about it because DOJ is going nowhere and impeachment hasn't been on the table. But the two impeachments were righteous, each of them in the first term. But we have one after the other after the other. That's point one. Point two, where would you start? Federal crimes, doj. Oops. Point three, can states do it? Because they won't do anything. Although I do want to point out there's going to be a big, big kind of internal debate if the Democrats win the presidency in 28, about whether to force criminal accountability for what has been a really both damaging and brazen wave of crimes or whether they'll, you know, there'll be some voices saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but we don't want to bog down our new power in that. But it's also the case, Molly, increasingly there's a lot of critics who said this, that a federal crime can be a state crime. State crimes are the default. You know, they're 95% of all criminal prosecutions in the country. Now, of course, taking them will be stepping on a hornet's nest. We already see Minnesota doing it with a, with an assault by a nice agent. I think you're going to see charges that they bring against the killers of Alex Preddy and Renee Good. But it's the case that New York's a very good example. It has a statute, it's a state statute. But pretty much you, as with the Feds, you step foot in there and you do a fraud, people can go after. And I think it becomes a political question more than a sort of law school exam question. Does Letitia James think, man, oh man, I've gotten beat up and I'll hold back. Do you know particular AGs in particular jurisdiction? Think I've got what I need to go forward. In general, we haven't seen very much of this. And you would typically expect, first, that these would sound in impeachment and second, in federal court. And I just want to point out, had Bondi say been the subject of a criminal referral before she quit, I don't see how this administration, even this administration would have gotten out of some kind of special counsel. So if there is a special counsel for certain high level violations you might see it would be a civil war in the DOJ and the White House and Trump would do everything that Nixon tried to do to squelch it and more. But that's also on the table. To me it's basically a political question whether the Dems are going to want to go that way. And you know this better than I, but I detect a real kind of critical debate within the party over it.
- [24:04]
Political Commentator
Follow up who can I'm sorry to do this but I have like legal questions.
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Molly Zhang
That's what why we're here.
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Political Commentator
Who can, who, who sets up a, who sets up a special counsel? Is that only the president or can
- [24:18]
Molly Zhang
other attorney general who finds under the regulations and there's no way around it. You could have a conflict of interest. But we just saw, we've seen Todd Blanche stand up and I'm sorry say things that aren't true. Brazenly so could they stick it out and say no special counsel maybe. All of these we found to our chagrin ultimately turn on political pressure. That and legal questions that the Supreme Court has settled in Trump's favor. But in theory, the AG says conflict trying to criminally prosecute the Attorney General or the Labor Secretary or the Secretary of Defense. I got to do a for appearances, I need a special counsel. Of course, if you cared about appearances and you wouldn't be doing these completely raw, nasty, unjust reprisal prosecutions in the first place.
- [25:23]
Harry Littman
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- [26:23]
Molly Zhang
The broad question on my mind these days, everything seems to be stacking up in Dem's favor for the midterms. But apart from their opposition to Trump, in many ways, they don't seem so unified. Will that be enough to bring it home? What do the Dems need to do to stick the landing in the midterms?
- [26:43]
Political Commentator
So I think that, I think the House Democrats will win the House. I mean, I don't know what they do in Florida, but I think Democrats will win the House. I don't think at this moment Democrats need to have a, I mean, I think they need to run anti Trump, which they, they, well, obviously very easy to do that. I think focusing on fraud, which is something that Trump wanted to do. He has. One of the many things that JD Vance is tasked with doing is a anti fraud, remember an anti fraud thing, which is completely ironic because Trump is engaging in all sorts of fraud. So I would run on fraud if I were Democrats. The, the Senate is the thing I'm watching the most closely. Alaska. You know, a Democratic senator from Alaska would be a big fucking deal.
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Molly Zhang
Texas is in play.
- [27:39]
Political Commentator
I don't know. I don't want to get involved in Texas. It's too scary. But, but I, but Iowa has all these empty open seats and that seems like a real, I don't know, maybe they flip the governor's, maybe they flip a Senate seat. You know, that's a Joni Ernst seat. I just, I could see that happening. There's just a lot of drama. Like the main Senate is a lot of drama. I, you know, the Platner, I think Platner is going to be the candidate, but I don't know what happens with the Platner Susan Collins matchup. And then I don't. And then I think, I think that like Michigan, which seems like it should be a very easy one, has gotten so ugly in this three way runoff. And Michigan is a state that's very divided, that has a lot of Muslims, a lot of Jews, and you have these three wildly different candidates. And that's a very late primary that doesn't happen until August. So that I think, you know, I think that could all work against Democrats. So those are the things I'm watching and a little bit worried about. If I were to worry, which I
- [28:51]
Molly Zhang
always do, Molly, it's always a blast to be with you. See you next time.
- [28:56]
Political Commentator
Thank you, Harry,
- [29:00]
Harry Littman
thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from 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 you can also subscribe to us on YouTube, where we are posting full episodes and daily updates on top legal stories. Check us out on substack harrylittman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Feds has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this 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. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now linked up with an ambitious and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. 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 Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hamsam 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 Littman. Talk to you later.
- [31:17]
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- [31:49]
Molly Zhang
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- [32:10]
Political Commentator
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