← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
Disney Picks Free Speech Over Caving to Trump, Reversing After Revolt
00:40:43
In a major reversal, Disney is bringing back Jimmy Kimmel after a massive backlash. MSNBC’s Ari Melber reports on the corporate shift, and ongoing First Amendment issues, as the Trump administration admits its likely unlawful efforts to use government power to censor criticism.
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Narrator/Announcer
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Doug Brinkley
When work gets crazy, I like to.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Stop by the bar after have a few cold ones.
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Commercial Voice (Ollie/Greenlight ads)
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Clock. We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night.
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Narrator/Announcer
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Welcome to the beat everyone. Really nice. Always catching up with Nicole there. Briefly, we have though right now the breaking news that in this major reversal, Disney will bring Jimmy Kimmel back. That is a long ways from how they sounded last week and that will be tomorrow, Disney and ABC announcing Kimmel goes back on the air despite these government Trump efforts to silence him tomorrow. Here is the statement, I'm going to read you exactly what Disney said so you can make sense of it yourself. Last Wednesday we made the decision, these Disney executives say, to, quote, suspend production on the show, referring to Kimmel to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. They continue today, quote, we have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday. So that is the news and that's how they're putting it. Of course, there's a lot more to this and we're going to get into that right now. Donald Trump's FCC chair, the government set this in motion. Nobody who's followed this really denies the fact that this was the government demanding censorship and Disney and ABC responding, caving, issuing an indefinite suspension. That at the time was described as indefinite. It certainly wasn't described as three days. It's just about the number of Kimmel shows that have been suspended the Wednesday, Thursday, Monday, and he's back tomorrow. So this is a big change. The government wanted to silence Kimmel and it seemed the night that this began, the news breaking actually in this hour that they were getting somewhere with that. So now five days later, Disney's decision to restore Kimmel's show to reverse course on what they said was the initially right thing. Now the opposite, apparently, is what they think is right, whether that means right for ABC and its standards or right for Disney as a corporation or right in the broader sense of free speech in our country right now. And Disney is not just any company, you know that, but they also have stakeholders in what we might call the creative community, writers, artists, comics, to say nothing of all the journalists and political people at ABC News. So they were facing this massive backlash to one of the greatest government crackdowns in public admitted since the McCarthy era about the creative community. I'll give you an example. Hundreds of actors, musicians and directors signed what was a rushed and growing open letter. I mean, more people were joining that in real time up and through today and joining this effort, defending free speech. Many of these people saying it doesn't matter whether you agree with what was criticized about Kimmel or other things he or anyone has said, the whole point is free speech, not government censorship. Other artists boycotting the premiere of a Disney documentary, a major musician, Sarah McLachlan skipping the red carpet for her own related company film in protest was just getting started. What happened inside the fcc, ABC government censorship war was not being contained. It was spreading to a wider war. Disney has other business and commercial and cultural interests. And they had Marvel stars from Pedro Pascal to Mark Ruffalo to Marisa Tomei speaking out against the suspension. They had consumers, as we showed you last week, canceling Disney plus and many other voices, including people who don't agree with Kimmel all the time or don't oppose Trump all the time, sounding the alarm against what was very clearly an admitted, possibly illegal Donald Trump anti free speech effort. When the government begins to interfere, when.
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Narrator/Announcer
The government says, I'm not pleased with.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
You, so we're going to orchestrate a.
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Narrator/Announcer
Way to silence you, it's the wrong direction for our country.
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Che Kolindouri
Someone can say something they shouldn't and get taken off the air, but the government cannot, cannot apply pressure to force someone to be silenced.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Whoopi Goldberg making that distinction on an ABC program just today. The View and the distinction she makes is important. I'm going to say this once before I show you a couple more details. We've covered this story. We're a program that has people on from all sides. We've had a lot of Trump officials on this program. We've had a lot of Democrats and people in the opposition on this program. And we've had a heck of a lot of other people, artists people in that creative community I mentioned on this program, and we've always talked about the need for dialogue. And dialogue can of course, include a negative public reaction. You say something and someone else says something and we go back and forth. And that's the messy process of civic discourse in a democracy with a First Amendment. And I've told you before, if you happen to watch this program on a more personal, professional note, before I was doing this job, I practiced First Amendment law. These are areas of great debate with a lot of important history of people who have fought and sometimes taken great risks to have the right to uphold First Amendment speech in this country. What is not allowed, separate from public criticism, rebukes back and forth, is the government coming in. As Whoopi Goldberg stated there, quite simply, to censor, to abuse government power, the power to tax or to fine, to imprison, to do retaliation or even regulation in the service of censorship. This is fundamental. It's why it's the First Amendment, not the 10th, not the 20th. It's the very First Amendment our founders put in the Constitution. Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech or the press. So here we are. And while people may observe this and say, okay, Ari, but Trump has done a bunch of other things this year in the second term that also some courts have found unlawful, that also have violated parts of the Constitution that also seem wrong. Why is this one so big? And part of the answer may be that he picked a very strong target in a very famous, well known and frankly well liked comic who's made fun of a lot of people. Certainly Kimmel criticizes Trump, but he's criticized other things and politicians and did it in such a blatant ham fisted way that he all but lost the case before it went to court. More on that later tonight. But we have this talk show with this comedy and criticism publicly named as a target. The view that I just showed you, plus Kimmel, which we know is a target, plus NBC's Tonight show, which isn't even that political, which Trump named last week as his next target after the backlash, the sanction from the FCC on Kimmel. Now to the bottom line. Disney's stock took a hit during this whole crisis. You can see that there customers began canceling their subscriptions not just to, say, ABC or Kimmel, but to the entire portfolio of Disney products. There are many ways to measure this. I could tell you. Disney hasn't exactly announced just how much money they've lost or subscriptions they've lost. It's probably not in their business interest to fuel their own boycott. But one way you can look into this is Google Trends, where you see the normal churn of people wanting to cancel Disney, which could be for any reason. You could just say, oh, I'm tired of it or I need to save money. But that's the normal churn on your left. And of course around the suspension, you this huge spike according to Google Trends of people just searching for how to do it. 12 month highs. At one point, Disney plus cancellation page crashed because so many different people were saying, if Disney is against free speech like this, we don't want any Disney product. Now why am I showing you this? If you say, okay, the news already occurred and Kimmel's back, why are we talking about how we got here? But how we got here is very important. When people fight, there's a fighting chance. When people speak, efforts to silence speech run into the brick wall of a lot more people. And not everyone's in the position to use economic power. A lot of people are just trying to get by. But someone who might already have a Disney subscription and have the disposable income to have, you know, these days they want you to have three or five streamers saying, I'm going to do something, even if your kids are going to miss the Disney products for a couple of weeks, or you might miss your favorite show in your own way. That civic activism saying no more Disney clearly had an impact. I'm not telling you what to do with your streaming services. I'm just reporting this works. And it works a heck of a lot better than what former Disney chair Eisner Michael Eisner called the cowards at various companies and law firms who didn't fight at all, not even for a day. Pressure works. There's a new commentary here from John Oliver, who is in this sort of group of late night comics who talk about politics and have found themselves uniquely attacked and targeted, Discussing how he says one should stand up to a government bully.
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Narrator/Announcer
Giving the bully your lunch money doesn't make him go away. It just makes him come back hungrier each time. Instead of rolling over, why not stand up and use four keywords they don't tend to teach you in business school. Not, okay, you're the boss. The only phrase that can genuinely make a weak bully go away, and that is you make me.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
That's John Oliver speaking. And while we will yet learn tomorrow exactly what Kimmel wants to share about this and what he's been doing, it is clear that he, unlike some of those executives I mentioned some of those law firms I mentioned and even some of those universities that are full of perfectly thoughtful, learned people in charge. That's what it takes to usually become a university president. But even what those people did, they didn't do what John Oliver called for. They caved immediately. So as we hit the inflection point in response to the censorship inflection of last week, we are going to dig into what worked here and what that means for the road ahead. So in our honest opinion, we think this is an important conversation we're about to have with former Governor Dean and operative Che Komindouri in 90 seconds. We're back with former Governor and DNC Chair Howard Dean and longtime political operative Che Colman Durie as we get the news late today, this afternoon that Disney, after claiming it would suspend Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely, responding to clear backlash, says that's only going to run three days, Chef, and they are restoring him. We'll hear from him tomorrow. I'm curious, does this show that some amount of public pressure works?
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Che Kolindouri
Yeah, I think it shows quite clearly the resistance works. You know, this is a lesson that I think the American people understand. We saw with the no Kings protest, we saw with people canceling Disney. But ever since Trump has been inaugurated in office, we have seen the elites in this country, the CEO class, take the opposite lesson. You know, I do think that Bob Iger's decision to settle with Trump and give money to his presidential library in December of last year actually set a tone of elite submission that we have seen throughout media. We have seen it throughout academia. We've seen it with the law firms, et cetera. It's the actual regular Americans who have stood up and made a difference.
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Narrator/Announcer
Howard, I think that's exactly right. And you know that what Oliver minus one word had to say about bullies is exactly right. The amazing thing to me is the cowardice of the huge corporations. And Iger is not known for that. And he, I think, finally realized that this was going to be a huge problem. But look at all the tech companies, which are gazillionaires. They're kissing Trump's, you know what, all the time. And that is not a winning strategy in the long run. And I think consumers just proved to Disney it was not a winning strategy.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Yes. And it clearly wrapped all of Disney in a choice that actually is just one small part of their empire. Che. And so on one hand, you could imagine corporate leaders who aren't looking for this fight and wrongly perhaps think they can get away from it to Say, oh, this is just a little part. Right. The actual amount of revenue for a late night show compared to Disney and the parks and everything and the Marvel movies is small. And yet what you both just referred to, a massive, righteous and very clear backlash, actually supersized it up to affect some other parts of Disney. Check. Yeah.
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Che Kolindouri
And the reality is that people talk about the broadcast TV model and how that's a small part of the Disney empire. What makes anybody at Disney think it's just going to end with Jimmy Kimmel? What's the stop after this? Donald Trump saying, you guys own Star Wars. I would like Luke Skywalker to start looking like Don Jr. You guys are doing.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Or at least have an orange lightsaber in the mix.
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Che Kolindouri
Exactly. That's a great point. Or have the Jedi alliance wear MAGA caps now. I mean, they could decide to dictate every element of Disney's business, the nature of the entertainment, who they hire at their theme parks. Maybe Trump says, hey, I want you to look through the social media of all your employees and get rid of those people who said bad things about me. You know, what we know is if you give bullies an inch, they take a mile. That is why, as Timothy Sider pointed out with authoritarianism, don't give an inch.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Yeah. And I don't know how often, Governor, that David Letterman and Ted Cruz agree on a comedic punchline or how to make a point, but they both attack the Trump FCC as the mob. And this comes, of course, in the wider climate where that's not. What's the word I'm looking for? That's not hyperbolic. Because Donald Trump is literally threatening opponents, saying he wants his opponents silenced, indicted, jailed, not because they've done any crime, but because of their free speech. So it's not like the Kimmel thing happens in a vacuum. Other people's free speech is being sanctioned with other things. And they both liken this to mob tactics. Here's Letterman. Take a listen, Howard. Brendan Carr. Yes. So this guy, the FCC is.
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Narrator/Announcer
We can do things the easy way.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
We can do things the hard way. Who is hiring these goons? Mario Puo.
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Che Kolindouri
The.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
The fcc. We're not happy until you're not happy, Governor.
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Narrator/Announcer
You know, the same thing is going on, interestingly, in the Democratic Party. The government shutdown is a perfect example of it. They raised the white flag the last time and let some ridiculous, awful bill through that's going to do a lot of damage to the public, especially including a lot of Trump voters in red states. And now they're Saying, no, we're not, unless you include us in the negotiation and we can do something for these folks that we care about. We're not supporting you. And if the government closes, that's your problem. If you don't do that, there'll be more and more of this pushing people around. So this is a Trump tactic. He used it in business for years and years and years. He wasn't a particularly successful business guy. And this is not a particularly successful tactic as long as Americans remember who they are. There's been a lot of Americans forgetting what America is about. And I think the Disney people learned the hard way that we still have America and we still are gonna resist being pushed around.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
It all makes sense on that point. And Che, still thinking about the deep point you made, that there's no boundary to this. I mean, Trump is shaking down tech companies for money, and that's gotten a lot of concern on Wall street, but hasn't been sort of noticed. Perhaps the same way you're saying he could shake down other parts of Disney empire, you're saying that this doesn't stop until you resist and make it stop. And so I'm curious what you think, looking forward, Che, about this as a story, because we do know people learn, and Disney knows better than most people learn more through story as a shape of information than through long books that we might enjoy reading. But some people don't read or studying First Amendment precedents, which I've done, but not everyone knows them all. The story of they took on Kimmel, they broke his company as big as Disney, and they were crowing about it. And then how quickly this story now has another chapter. Che, if Kimmel is restored and stays on air, does that, in your view, in terms of how politics works, resonate with what you said earlier, the elites who have proven to be less courageous than the public?
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Che Kolindouri
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what this story points to is something that you discuss a lot on the beat, which is the power of culture to shape politics. Jimmy Kimmel has done more to highlight the threat of authoritarianism in America than almost anything else I can imagine. I remember just two weeks ago, Ezra Klein wrote an op ed saying, Democrats need to talk about the authoritarianism. Stop pretending like this is normal. Maybe you should use the government shutdown to bring light to the threat of authoritarianism in America. Well, Jimmy Kimmel did that more than any Democratic politician could ever possibly do. It points to the constant importance of art and culture and comedy in shaping the national narrative.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Really well put. The evidence is all in Front of us, two warriors here, peaceful warriors who sound a little emboldened tonight. Howard Dean and Che Kohlman Dory. Appreciate both of you. Let me tell folks what's coming up because we are starting the week with a lot of news. Let me say this. 50k in cash, a sting operation and Donald Trump's border czar. What's bringing those together in a big piece of journalism by MSNBC reporters. I have that for you coming up. And the uproar as Trump demands more prosecutions of his rivals. But we're not done with Kimmel yet. We just talked about two people discussing where it goes. I want to put this in the context of history and other censorship battles. The great Doug Brinkley is here next. Absolutely inappropriate. The government's got no business in it and the FCC was wrong to weigh in. And I'll fight any, any, any attempt by the government to get involved with speech. I will fight Republican Senator Paul pushing out against what was obviously the admitted Trump administration's effort to censor speech. We're back with historian Doug Brinkley, a professor at Rice U. Welcome.
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Doug Brinkley
Thank you for having me.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Where does this effort in both its initial efficacy and its rank, blunt confession, fit into the modern clashes over, over free speech? Is it worse than usual?
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Doug Brinkley
No, I think this was a giant free speech moment. And you know, as in Cuban Missile crisis terminology, the two scorpions were in a bottle and one of them just blinked. And who blinked is Disney because consumers said enough. Whatever you think about what's going on politically, Americans believe in free speech. And to have canceled or seemingly canceled Jimmy Kimmel made it bipartisan. I mean, you had to be like, Ted Cruz was center of Texas. Even if you're a MAGA guy at heart, you back free speech. You can't be behind the canning of Jimmy Kimmel. I'm glad this has been rectified, but it's going to be talked about for a long. And there is now a new marker to say, follow what abc, you know, Disney's just done. Because to do the otherwise is to be a toady to Trumpism and it won't look good in history.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
And you gotta think someone like Mr. Iger, who, as we covered on the business side, has a great reputation on dealing with creatives and artists within the standards of commercial culture, had a pretty good rep. He had a successor at one point who struggled with that. And yet here was 400 plus artists, as I mentioned, in the creative community saying, no way. This is bigger than the usual debates that people have in art and media and some, maybe not all, but some other people in his field, his peers saying, what's he doing? He's tarnishing what they might have viewed as a very great reputation very quickly. And now coming back from that, I also want to put up some of the reporting we did Friday where if this does end up in court later, if the FCC does the mob tactics they threatened the hard way, as they called it, retribution, abuse of government power or regulatory power to hurt Disney for this, then of course they have many lawyers and they can go to court. And this isn't a close call. And history, of course, as you know, often involves the Supreme Court weighing in. Here is the nine justices last year ruling you can't coerce businesses, in this case Disney or media to suppress free speech views. Includes the Trump appointees, includes Democratic appointees, includes older Republican appointees. When you go to the against side there, Doug, you got no one. And I want to read from these opinion because it's so on point. Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties to punish or suppress views the government disfavors. And the court explains the First Amendment prohibits officials from relying on the, quote, threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion. They mean government coercion to achieve the suppression of speech the government doesn't like. That seems to describe what the FCC admits it was doing and may yet still do. Doug.
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Doug Brinkley
That's right. Well, look, back when Richard Nixon was president, the FCC really would love to have done away with Lyndon Johnson's PBS and npr, done away with cbs, ABC and NBC. I've read thoroughly the papers of the Nixon administration's attempt to destroy Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevaride and the list goes on and on and on. And they failed. And they tried Nixon to destroy the New York Times over the Pentagon Papers and Nixon failed. Every time Nixon did overreach, it blew back, Adam. And I think this is a historic day that Disney has done an about face and has given Donald Trump and the FCC a big time middle finger and saying we will stand up to you. Kimmel's going to be on Tuesday night. Kimmel's name is being talked about all over. Whether you do away with comedy and satire in America like Magas, try to kill books of Kurt Vonnegut and people that were satirist or Kerry Southern or somebody, then we're not much of a country. We're just a banana dictatorship. And the FCC is acted abysmal with their bullying, tough, you know, mafiosa kind of swing And I was staggered that Trump is always praising Al Capone who stood up against the feds because he really believes Al Capone is a great American figure. President Trump meaning anything to destroy democracy and tip yourself in to a kind of mob like atmosphere where you're going to bully and intimidate people. It's McCarthyism gone wild. And ABC Disney deserves credit for seeing the writing on the wall, looking at it from a financial point of view, looking at it as a subscriber point of view, but also as a First Amendment point of view. They did well by the reversal.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
A historic decision, as you say. Historian Doug Brinkley. That's gotta count for something. I appreciate you joining us on this. We wanted to get that wider view and the lessons from what you described, the censorship of the McCarthy era, the Pentagon Papers. Thank you, sir. Coming up, we will have that reporting on the bribery allegations. But first, Donald Trump's dark rhetoric and his calls to prosecute opponents.
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Narrator/Announcer
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
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Narrator/Announcer
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
There is another scandal roiling the Trump Justice Department and involves admissions at the highest levels of government. We begin with how Trump sounded at a weekend event. This was the memorial for Charlie Kirk. Here is what we heard.
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Narrator/Announcer
He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
I'm sorry.
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Narrator/Announcer
The Department of Justice is also investigating networks of radical left maniacs who fund organized fuel and perpetrate political violence.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
This was not a traditional presentation for memorial, to say the least. And if you take Trump at his word, he chose this memorial to emphasize what he called his difference on the matter of, quote, hate with the person he was memorializing. Now he is publicly calling on the attorney general to abuse power and target people for what in law is called selective prosecution, something that is unlawful. This will actually hurt these cases before any honest judges, because the admission of this kind of bias in building a case can get it tossed. But he is clearly upset that some prosecutions against his perceived opponents have not gone fast enough, saying, quote, we cannot delay any longer. It's killing our reputation. Naming Comey Schiff, currently a member of Congress, the Senator and the sitting Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, among people he thinks should be targeted for their views. This fits in with the censorship effort. The Times reporting. Even for Trump, it is an extraordinary breach of prosecutorial protocols. I reach back to the days following the Watergate scandal that could even be underplaying it. As we will report tonight, the demand comes after a federal prosecutor named in the Trump administration resigned after Trump was mad that apparently they did not find the facts or evidence to further investigate or indict Letitia James. Officials saying the investigation against James stalled because of the lack of evidence needed to go forward. Meaning apparently those prosecutors who might have started the case, knowing that Trump wanted it, still couldn't go all the way to building it and indicting if there was no there there. So Trump wants someone else who might do what his own appointees would not. Trump was asked about all this before the second term began.
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Narrator/Announcer
Honestly, they should go to jail.
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Commercial Voice (Ollie/Greenlight ads)
So you think Liz Cheney should go.
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Che Kolindouri
To jail for what they did?
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Commercial Voice (Ollie/Greenlight ads)
Everyone on the committee, you think?
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Narrator/Announcer
I think everybody on the. Anybody that voted in fighting.
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Commercial Voice (Ollie/Greenlight ads)
Are you going to direct your FBI director and your attorney general to send them to jail?
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Narrator/Announcer
No, not at all. I think that they'll have to look at that. But I'm not going to. I'm going to focus on drill, baby, drill.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
That was December. And at that point, then President Elect Trump said he was not going to do what you just see he is doing now. And that shows, again, a bit of the problem. Even as he makes a lot of noise and gets some things done, he's also Sort of spinning out, away from the strategy he set. Because the two obvious reasons not to admit you're doing this are that it is unlawful to do selective prosecution. And even nowadays it is unpopular. Sounds bad. We've shown you recently, Republicans like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz speaking out against the same bundle of Trump style corruption where you use the government to censor critics or investigate them or indict them. Not popular. But since it's not going as fast as he apparently wants, he's breaking what he said in December and admitting publicly he wants these kind of unlawful prosecutions. Those who have challenged the president through government or public speech have faced lawsuits, investigations, reviews, charges which sometimes were then dropped. While many raise the alarm.
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Doug Brinkley
I think it's a real threat to democracy.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
This is one of the most dangerous moments America has ever faced. We are quickly turning into a banana republic.
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Doug Brinkley
The Justice Department has always been a very, very strong civil service, no matter who was in charge. He's firing anybody who doesn't seem to be part of his acolytes and he's turning it into an instrument that goes after his enemies.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
The President of the United States is now employing the full power of the federal government in order to punish, lock up, take down.
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Doug Brinkley
This is the path to a dictatorship.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Strong words. The path to a dictatorship. And if you're old enough to remember the closing arguments last year, whether they were winning arguments for the public, there were prominent people, including Obama and Harris, who used evidence to warn of exactly this kind of autocratic crackdown. In the land of late night, we are seeing the effort wobble as some finally stand up to the Trump administration's effort to silence critics and the land of prosecution, even his own appointed prosecutor, at least in one of those cases I showed you, also saying if there ain't facts here, we can't do it. And Trump responds by doubling down, which shows how these stories are related at this important time. A time to pay attention and be a citizen, not tap out. We have a very special guest, the former head of the DOJ Criminal division with extensive nonpartisan experience in enforcing the rule of law, regardless of party. Leslie Caldwell is with us. Welcome. Your thoughts on what we're dealing with?
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Leslie Caldwell
Well, it's really unprecedented and it's hard to. It would have been hard to imagine this even using your worst case scenario thought analysis as a former DOJ person. It attacks some of the very bedrock principles of being a prosecutor at doj, one of which is you're supposed to be impartial. You're supposed to act without Fear or favor, which is actually part of the oath that you take when you're sworn in as a DOJ lawyer. This goes in the face of both. All of those things. You are supposed to do things based on the facts and the evidence. And that's not what these prosecutors are being directed to do. And they're being punished for, as you just said, being punished by being fired or being forced to resign as a result of trying to adhere to their oaths. So it's really extraordinary.
- [34:13]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
What do you take from. Again, public reporting may be only a piece, but from the indication that prosecutors may have opened cases against his critics, which itself, you can educate us on, is certainly not the standard. But then even after that, pushed back against his goal because under even a rigorous, perhaps biased review, they didn't find enough to charge.
- [34:39]
Leslie Caldwell
Yeah. I think that also is very different from the way things are supposed to work and have, frankly, always worked. You're not supposed to just open investigation because somebody thinks somebody has harmed them in a political way. You're supposed to have some basis to open an investigation. So opening an investigation just on the order of somebody like the President or the Attorney General, without any indication that there's any real evidence is itself kind of unprecedented. And I think it's inevitable that these prosecutors will push back, or at least the ones who have been in place so far will have to see what new incoming prosecutors are willing to do. But I think there's also the grand jury that has to hear and vote on whether to indict cases. And as I'm sure you've seen, there have been a number of grand jurors in Washington, D.C. who have declined to indict cases that were presented to them, including the one involving the hurling of the subway sandwich. So there are some checks. But if prosecutors are willing to essentially take orders and bring cases that have no basis, that's an extraordinarily dangerous situation.
- [35:47]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
How would judges ultimately view some of these public statements if these cases are ultimately brought?
- [35:54]
Leslie Caldwell
I think very negatively. I can't imagine that there's a judge, a sitting judge in the federal system, who would think that that was a legitimate basis to bring a case or even to initiate an investigation. So I think the fact that the President made his statements through social media shows a couple of things. It shows one thing that he's really. He's playing not just to the doj, but to the public, which is also unprecedented. There has never been a situation before that I'm aware of where a president has said, person X must be Indicted immediately.
- [36:28]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Yeah. So go ahead. Sorry.
- [36:30]
Leslie Caldwell
I was just going to say it's, it's extraordinarily dangerous. Another thing that's been very dangerous is that the US attorneys have now been affected. There are 93 United States attorneys around the United States. Each of them has, each of them is presidentially appointed and serves at the will of the president. But generally, historically, as far as I've known, and I was a Prosecutor for about 19 years in the federal system, I've never seen any directive from the White House and frankly, rarely from the attorney general to do this case or don't do that case. That's just not how it works. And now people are being fired or told that they are in danger of being fired. In addition to the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. attorney who resigned, although Trump has been saying that he was fired, there are others who are apparently teetering with some threats against them, including Western Virginia and Maryland. And I think that's only a matter of time before other US Attorneys are going to be asked to do things that they think are not right or are illegal. And we'll see how that plays out.
- [37:33]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
You headed the criminal division, as I emphasized, very serious role. What would you say to people inside DOJ right now, some of whom may be doing what they considered necessary work of government, but when they run in, if they run into these things, what would you say to them?
- [37:48]
Leslie Caldwell
You know, I think it's very difficult for a lot of people because a lot of people have financial issues, and it's not easy for them to just say, I quit. On the other hand, I think there has to be a line that people should not be willing to cross, even if it means they resign, even if it means they have to suffer some financial hardship. Because this is not what these AUSAs and DOJ prosecutors signed up to do. They didn't sign up to follow orders. They didn't sign up to indict cases that had no merit against political enemies. And I think that I think the vast majority of people would resign. I mean, there have already been a number of resignations of line attorneys in connection with some of the directives that came down from Washington. For example, the dismissal of the Eric Adams indictment was one example, where multiple prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, which was handling the case and main justice resigned. And I think that's really what they should do. Unfortunately, that may be just fine with this administration, because they may just be happy to bring in, as they did in now Eastern District of Virginia, a person who's loyal to Trump, but has no, in this individual's case, apparently has no relevant experience, which is pretty difficult.
- [38:59]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Yeah, yeah. No, it's a serious time and you speak from the experience while we all are also seeing some of these roadblocks and some of the where the facts have still mattered, which I think is very important to document. Leslie Caldwell, thank you very much. When we come back, those bribery reports. Stay with us.
- [39:22]
Kelly Ripa
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- [40:05]
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- [40:32]
Leslie Caldwell
Did you know that parents rank financial.
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
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Leslie Caldwell
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Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
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- [41:04]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Turning to MSNBC original reporting that the FBI was actually looking at bribery allegations and evidence involving what is now the Trump administration's top immigration official. According to sources and documents, agents actually recorded that individual, Tom Homan, doing what appeared to be accepting $50,000. And these were undercover operatives that presented it to him, but they were posing as execs. Homan was saying that he could secure government contracts in the second administration. This occurred before the election. Homan was out of government. It seems that the FBI was doing the kind of investigations it sometimes does and wanted to see if he would follow through if he got back in power in the second term. But then a wrinkle. It appears the investigation stalled when Trump did take office and then was ultimately shut down after the FBI director requested a status update. Now that Director Kash Patel and his deputies said investigators simply found no, quote, credible evidence of wrongdoing, which is possible. He's the FBI chief. Although this is also an example of a potential conflict, the White House viewed the prior probe itself as political. Homan, we should report, denies any misconduct here. MSNBC's investigator Carol Lenning, one of the people who broke the story, explains, that.
- [42:27]
Che Kolindouri
Is not at all how the FBI agents or the prosecutors working on this case viewed it. When Trump is elected president, he names Homan as his borders are immediately. The appointees of Donald Trump are very sour on this investigation when they get into DOJ and into the FBI and are not interested in it being pursued.
- [42:51]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Of course, with federal law enforcement, there is not supposed to be any change just because someone is in power in office. As you may recall, there are special counsels appointed sometimes to ensure you don't have that problem. The reporting here is that maybe they did have that political problem under the second term. Homan, as I mentioned, denies wrongdoing. Right now. Previously, when he joined us on this very broadcast, we discussed the criticism that Trump doj, has been weaponizing and politicizing law enforcement. When you look at the investigations, it's a lot of critics of Donald Trump and Democrats. Can you think of or name any public official or individual who's in these crosshairs other than those folks? I've got some up on the screen. It goes from Cuomo to Comey to Springsteen. At this point, those who break the.
- [43:45]
Narrator/Announcer
Law should be prosecuted.
- [43:48]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
We're enforcing the law. We're investigating crimes.
- [43:51]
Che Kolindouri
If there's evidence that crime has been.
- [43:54]
Narrator/Announcer
Has been acted upon, then they need to be charged.
- [43:59]
Host/Anchor (possibly Ari Melber)
Those are Homan's statements on the record. We will follow this and all related stories as they develop. And we'll be right back. Kamala Harris is speaking out in more depth than she ever has before about her campaign and a lot of other things, and you can learn them tonight on msnbc. Rachel Maddow will sit down with Harris for her first news interview since leaving office. That's a significant thing, no matter which candidate. It would be. This is obviously a big one. They're going to discuss her new book, the Presidential Campaign, and I'm sure what's happening in the country right now. So for that newsworthy interview, watch Rachel Maddow Tonight at 9:00pm Eastern, 6:00pm Pacific.
- [44:46]
Narrator/Announcer
Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co host Woody Harrelson. It's called Where Everybody Knows yous Name. And we're back for another season. I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it. Listen to Where Everybody Knows yous Name with me, Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson. Sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.