Transcript
Alison Gill (0:00)
MSW Media. Hello and welcome to the Daily beans for Friday, April 4, 2025. Today, the Acting inspector general for the Department of Defense has launched an investigation into Pete Hegseth's signal chat messages. The Senate has voted to rescind some of Trump's tariffs, which caused the third biggest stock market crash in modern history. Federal prosecutors have dropped the charges against the guy Nancy Mace says assaulted her. Massive layoffs at the FDA include scientists working on bird flu and pet food safety. And Judge Boasberg held a hearing in the contempt proceedings in the Alien Enemies act case. I'm your host, Alison Gill. All right, hey, everybody. Tons going on. Still relatively light news day on this Thursday. But a light news day these days means we only have a million headlines. So we're going to get to all of those. I also am going to talk to John Fugelsang today because it's Fuglsang Fridays here on the Daily Beans. And I am going to be joined later in the show by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, former congresswoman. I'm excited to speak with her about everything she's doing for Angelenos just up to the north of us here in San Diego. Also, Dana is out, but she will be back on Monday, I promise. She's on a cruise, making people laugh, bringing mirth to the masses as she does so well. So, ooh, Judge Boberg held a hearing today for the contempt proceedings. It was a show cause hearing. Right. That's a step along, you know, on the ladder of contempt. And this was about his March 15 order that said they have to turn the planes around and bring the people back to the United States not to release them, but just to give them due process under law, like the, like the INA or the apa, for example. And it did not go well for the government. Today. A guy named Ensign was arguing for the Department of Justice, Trump's Department of Justice. And yeah, Boasberg painted him into a corner like 14 times. Got the timeline, got the guy to admit that, you know, they, that they, there were people that were brought back on the plane. Got them. He got them to admit that all the lies that the Trump administration is, is telling about what Judge Boasberg did are, in fact, not true. And it will, it didn't go well. He basically said, yeah, yeah, I am likely to find probable cause that, that this administration was in contempt. But he didn't rule from the bench. He said, don't expect a ruling until at least next week. And then he said, I'll see you on April 8, because April 8 they're holding a hearing about the Trump invoking the state secrets clause. And during the hearing today, Boseberg was also very skeptical of that as well. So we will cover that April 8 hearing. I'm sure before April 8, we will have probably that these guys were unable to show cause, which will then kick off contempt proceedings. Okay, so it's not holding them in contempt yet it kicks off contempt proceedings. Who. Which means each side will get to brief on whether or not they should be held in contempt, the Trump administration, and then the judge will make a decision, determination about whether or not to hold them in contempt. And as I have said, after that, they're probably going to see if they can purge the contempt, cure the contempt, become not in contempt anymore by actually returning these folks to the United States for due process. And he mentioned that briefly in the hearing today. He, he basically asked the government, hey, you know, if, would you be willing to purge the contempt if I find that there's probable cause that you are in contempt? And they couldn't really answer that. He danced around quite a bit. There was a lot of, you know, like, well, I, you know, I, I don't have that information. I'm not familiar with the process. I can't tell you what I told the government after you ordered the planes turned around, because that's attorney client privilege. And so we'll see. But I think we're well on our way to contempt. And again, if he's held in contempt, there's, we're still on, you know, step four of the hundred steps to actually put anybody in jail. And that would require probably an appointment of someone deputized to be able to do that. That's a long way down the road. First, they're going to have a chance to cure this contempt, and we'll be covering it for you. But this is good news. The judge wasn't having it. And I know people are like, oh, it's going so slow. It's only been 19 days. It's actually going pretty lightning fast considering. I mean, Judge Boasberg showed up like, that morning on March 15th. They, the plaintiff sued at like 1:12am and he called a hearing at 5, got the first hearing at 7:30 and then another one at 5:00pm he was wearing plain clothes because he didn't have his robes with him. He's going really fast. And this is all due process. Okay. So we can't really skirt due process in a, in a case about due process. That would be weird. So, anyway, it was bad for the government today, which means it's a good day for me and Americans and everybody in El Salvador, although they shouldn't have ever been there for one minute. It is horrific. It is torturous down there. It is disgusting. I know Kristi Noem went and took pictures in front of cages of human beings. It was absolutely disgusting. And they should never have been put there without due process. And it shouldn't have been put there at all because as Andy McCabe and I discussed here in the United States, if you are convicted of a crime, you face, you know, you, you face that crime here, and then you serve your time here. But most of these people haven't even been convicted of crimes anyway. We will keep on top of this for you. It's an absolute abhorrent circumvention of law to try to use the Alien Enemies act when we're not even at war. And even when we have used it, when we're at war, we've used it inappropriately. I think the law needs to be repealed. All right. We have a lot to get to today, so let's hit the hot notes. Hot notes. All right, first up, from our good friend Natasha Bertrand at cnn, the acting inspector general of the Defense Department will review Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's use of Signal in a group chat with other key national security officials to discuss military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen last month. And that's according to the inspector general's office. And they, they made an announcement on Thursday. In a letter to hegseth, the acting inspector general, Stephen Stebbins, wrote that the objective of the IG's evaluation is to determine whether Hegseth and other Pentagon personnel, quote, complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of commercial messaging applications for official business. The probe will also examine whether Hegseth complied with classification and records retention requirements. According to the letter, the review will take place both in D.C. and at the U.S. central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee requested that Stebbins conduct the review after the Atlantic magazine reported last month that Hegseth and other senior national security officials used Signal to discuss military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. As part of the investigation, Stebbins indicated that Hegseth will likely have to turn over materials for the IG to review. And he can't get out of this because you. Unless he resigns because inspectors general can't go after former officials. Now, Stebbins, who previously served as the Pentagon's deputy inspector General was appointed acting IG after Trump fired Robert Storch. Who? Or Stork. I can't, I don't know if it's a, a ch or a K sound there. Who? That guy was fired by Trump, along with more than a dozen other inspectors general at federal agencies in the first few weeks of the Trump administration. Stebbins was appointed as a principal Deputy Inspector General in April of 2023 under the Biden administration. So he's a career guy. And in a similar story, Trump apparently fired eight people on the advice of Elora Loomer. The decision came after Loomer vilified the staff members by name during about a half hour meeting with Trump on Wednesday when she walked into the White House with a sheaf of papers attacking the character and loyalty of numerous National Security Council officials. Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, joined later in the meeting and briefly defended some of his staff, though it was clear he had little if any power to protect their jobs. New York Times says it was a remarkable spectacle. Ms. Loomer, who has floated the baseless conspiracy theory that the 911 attacks were an inside job and is viewed as extreme even by some of Trump's far right allies, was apparently wielding more influence over the staff of the national security council than Mr. Waltz himself, who runs the agency. The people fired included Brian Walsh, the senior director for intelligence, Maggie Daugherty, the senior director for international organizations, and Thomas Boudre, the senior Director for Legislative affairs. And that's according to the Times. Those are just some of the people that were fired today. All right, let's, let's talk tariffs. And who could have seen this coming? I mean, who among us hasn't seen Ferris Bueller's day off?