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See terms Todd blanch through. It is, I think, useful to have the senators say there is a line beyond which I will not cross. The thing that's remarkable to me, Joanna, is this is the holdup. I mean, Todd Blanche has been found by a federal judge to engage in vindictive prosecution. I do think that the level of scrutiny for the Attorney General should be higher than for other cabinet level officials, if you believe that the role is supposed to be independent, as a de facto independent, even though the Constitution doesn't say that the person is independent.
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I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast and today we have one of my favorite guests, Andrew Weissman, who is the former general counsel of the FBI. He worked with Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation and he's the author of the number one best selling book Liars Kingdom. But today we're talking to him about Todd Blanche and Donald Trump's decision to hold back the confirmation process because Thom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina, and John Cornyn from Texas are refusing to confirm him. What does Andrew think about that? We're also going to be talking to him about the 8647 seashell threat to Donald Trump. Posted by James Comey, what's happening there, and the strange use of the Mafia and Sammy the Bull, who Andrew used to frequently put on the stand as an expert witness. And his, well, his description of what it was like interviewing Sammy the Bull I found completely riveting. And then we're going to talk about this move and this Senate's unanimous vote that Ghislaine Maxwell should not be pardoned for her 20 year sentence for sex trafficking. So just before we get into what I found to be a really gripping conversation, a quick reminder. Please subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast wherever you get them, if you haven't done. And subscribe to the website where we keep you up to date, moment by moment. With the crazy that's going on out there anyway, press the subscription button. Join us. We're independent media. And now let's get into it with Andrew Weissman. Most people use Claude like it's a fancy version of Google. That's like owning a Ferrari and driving it at five miles an hour. They open it up, see the models HiQ, Sonnet, Opus and Freeze. But never find out what Claude can actually do. Because Claude isn't a chatbot anymore. It's how people build apps, automate their entire week, and ship work that used to take a whole team, often without writing a single line of code. If you use Claude chat every day but freeze the second someone says Claude code or cowork, you're in the right place because I just found the Claude AI Mastery Workshop. It's a full deep dive into Claude, its real use cases and 10 other AI tools happening this weekend, 10/7 EST, and they have been generous enough to make it free of cost for my audience. So go register through the link. In two days, you'll do deep research with Claude, create full presentations, get hands on with Claude code, build custom agents, and walk away able to put your whole week on autopilot. Sign up now and you also get three free bonuses, 50 secret Claude codes, a full AI prompt library, and a personalized AI toolkit builder. What you'll learn in two days will change your next two years. Sign up now before they sell out, scan the QR and join the WhatsApp community before seats close. Andrew Weissman, first of all, welcome. Secondly, where are you? It looks as if you are in some kind of holding cell. Please don't tell me that this administration has finally gotten to you.
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Not yet. So I'm still free? As a bird. And where am I? I am at Ms. Now at their studios. Because when I finish this with you, Joanna, I'm going to jump on air.
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Okay? Well, just as well. Just as long as you're not in some kind of holding cell in some hellish American jail somewhere. That's good. So we're recording this on Thursday afternoon. It looks as if Donald Trump is going to back the nomination for Todd Blanche until his two Republican holdouts, John Cornyn from Texas and Thom Tillis from North Carolina, roll out of office because he refused to endorse them. And they got primaried. As we all kind of know. How bad of a blow is this to Todd Blanche and how bad of a blow is it to Donald Trump?
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And how bad of a blow is it to the American people?
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Well, of Course, Yes. Okay, very well. Very well answered.
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You know, look, Todd Blanche may eventually get through. It is, I think, useful to have the senators say, there is a line, you know, beyond which I will not cross. Remember, there are two parts to the bogus settlement, and when I use bogus, that is the federal government. A federal judge found that this whole $10 billion lawsuit was bogus and not. And this was not, in fact, a quote, unquote settlement. In fact, she's.
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And this was the. This was the case against the IRS for humiliating Trump by releasing part of his tax returns.
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Yeah, actually. And it wasn't really the irs. It was a contractor who unauthorized released stuff. Now, that's bad, but it obviously didn't cost $10 billion in damage, and it wasn't sanctioned by the IRS. But there were two parts to the quote, unquote sett. One was this fund that was, you know, all reports are, was going to be used to pay criminals. And by the way, the Department of Justice has now been doing that, but not using the fund. They've been using other funds. But there was a second part to the alleged settlement, and that was this general release that only Todd Blanche signed. The acting Attorney General giving a audit release of tax liability for Donald Trump, his family and his companies, and notably the president seemed to be fine saying, hey, I'll give up the fund because that's money that's not going to me. But when it comes to the tax audit, I'll be damned if I'm giving up something for me that I got. And so that seems to be the sticking point that, you know, that's the thing that Todd Blanch either isn't willing to give up or isn't willing to give up because Donald Trump isn't willing to give it up. And you could understand why, not just these two senators, but frankly, it should be. All senators should be upset. Just imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, and this was a Democratic president saying, you know, I want unilateral immunity. The thing that's remarkable to me, Joanna, is this is the holdup. I mean, Todd Blanche, as we have discussed in the past, has been found by a federal judge to engage in vindictive prosecution. He was referred in terms of his conduct to a disciplinary board. He, in my view, has obstructed the independent investigation of Alex Preddy and Renee Goode, the two people who were killed in Minnesota. I mean, there's just this litany of things. And. And, you know, this feels a little bit like, okay, they found something, but, you would think in any rational world, there would have been sort of, you know, A to Z on why it is that he should not be confirmed.
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Okay, so. So you said two things there I want to follow up on. First is the fund that they are paying criminals out of. So where is that money coming from? So the 1.8 billion is sort of suspended for now. Right, Right. This is to go to people. Let's just remind everybody that Trump believes, or a committee of people that he's setting up believes were harmed by the Biden administration using the DOJ as a weapon against them. And this would include the January Sixers, some of whom attacked policemen. I mean, it's so difficult to get your head around the idea that we would be giving taxpayers money to those people. How do these payments get sanctioned? How do they get through Congress or the Senate?
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Sure. So great question. And yes, it is hard to understand because it's one thing for the president to pardon these people because in the Constitution, he has that unilateral power. But now it's not only do I want to pardon you, but I want to pay you. Talk about sort of doubling down.
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Well, and pay you for chasing your own party through the halls of Congress. I mean, we've all seen those videos of the senators and the Congress, people looking terrified.
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Right. And people who had due process in many cases have pleaded guilty and have said from their own lips under oath that they are guilty or went to trial, as is their right, to be clear. But a jury found them guilty and they have a right to appeal at the. Et cetera. And these are people who are adjudicated criminals and as you noted, Joanna, for serious crimes. So how can they do this? I always thought that what the administration would do is say, okay, we're not going to create one big global fund of $1.776 billion. But the Department of Justice has other pots of money. So one pot of money is something called the Federal Tort Claims Act. And what they, the Department of Justice has been doing is using that. And in a way that's less sort of a lightning rod because it can be sort of dribbled out in small, small cuts and doses. So we have already seen, for instance, Michael Flynn get over a million dollars just the other day. Another convicted defendant got reportedly hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that can get parcel out under this Federal Tort Claims Act. And in some ways, it's sort of like a smarter political strategy because it doesn't have this sort of label that people can sort of latch onto as well, as the genesis of it being this, this bogus settlement. And so there is this other pot of money that the Department of Justice has, and to be clear, Congress has the power, because they have the power of the purse to say, stop it, we do not want it. But right now, the sort of, the, that would take Congress to sort of pull back the funds. Right now the sort of default is that the DOJ has the funds and can use them.
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Wow. And so I understand this is a political humiliation for Donald Trump, but just explain to us what is the difference in practical terms, in actual terms, between being an acting Attorney General and being the Attorney General? Is this humiliating for Todd Blanche?
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So the actual difference is truly non existent. It is a question of the message it sends and the sort of the humiliation to the President and to Todd Blanche, because, you know, they do have a majority of Republicans in the Senate. And it means that even though they have the majority, they cannot muster the necessary votes here because they have gone too far. Now, as you pointed out, two of the senators who are objecting are going to eventually, you know, go by the wayside. And so this could all take on a different hue in several months, but in the meantime, he will be acting or Donald Trump could try and put a different person in as acting. So Todd Blanche could go back to being Deputy Attorney General and another person could be proposed as the acting Attorney General. We'll wait and see. But I do think it is for a president who has basically wiped the floor with the Senate and, and the House, it is a loss.
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It is a loss. You know, his first attempt at Attorney General with Matt Gaetz, the congressman from Florida, also bit the dust. Is there something about the role of Attorney General that sort of triggers people or is it just these two candidates?
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I think it's a little bit of both. I think what you see is that the concern is that the role of Attorney general, traditionally post Watergate in Democratic and Republican administrations, is that they are not the same as other cabinet level officials in that they have an obligation to the public, they work for the public, and you do not do anything and everything that the President wants just because he has the power to do it. So specifically, who to target. James Comey, I'm sure we'll talk about as like a classic, you know, example now, or who not to target. Meaning I don't want you to go after people who are engaged in criminality because they're friends or they're in the right party, et cetera. And so I do think that the level of Scrutiny for the Attorney General should be higher than for other cabinet level officials. If you believe that the role is supposed to be independent, as a de facto independent, even though the Constitution doesn't say that the person is defend is
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independent right now, who can forget that slip of Todd Blanche's tongue when asked if he was a friend of the President and he said, I am the President's lawyer. And then he quickly moved on and said, I am the acting Attorney General. Whatever. He said, um, that's not a security plan, it's a donation. There's a reason you wouldn't trust the wrong person with something valuable. Just like there's a reason why Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for the people over 35 years. With over $30 billion recovered for their clients. Morgan and Morgan knows a thing or two about fighting to get you the compensation you deserve. Hiring mor Morgan and Morgan is like hiring an army to go into battle. They've got more than 1,000 lawyers and 100 offices nationwide. If you're injured by someone else's negligence, you deserve to be paid. Not all law firms are the same. Hire the wrong one and you may be beat before you even start. If you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. Morgan and Morgan will fight to get their clients the best results. And their fee is free unless they win. For more information, you can go to forthepeople.com DailyBeast that's forthepeople.com DailyBeast so, well, let's talk about James Comey. So can you bring us up to speed with what's going on? And also again, one just finds it remarkable that we're in this moment because a 65 year old man posted some seashells on his social media following, which again, I find frankly quite bizarre that James Comey, former head of the FBI, would do that. Nonetheless, what's happened since he made that post, I mean, feels like a sort of sci fi or. It feels like a dystopian drama.
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It does. And it's laughable if it weren't so serious. And to bring people quickly up to speed, James Cummy was originally indicted in the Eastern district of Virginia for lying. That case was thrown out, as was the case of Letitia James, the New York Attorney General because of the improper appointment of the U.S. attorney. There's a lot to say there about that. But those cases are on appeal where the government's saying, please put those back. In the meantime, what we have learned in connection with this second indictment, the 8647 indictment, is that James Comey sees theirs on the seashore with his wife, takes a picture, posts that is there's a lot of sort of right wing blowback saying that this is a threat. James Comey immediately takes it down. He is asked to be interviewed by the Secret Service or the FBI. He does do the interview. He says had no idea that's what people understood it to be. So he took that down. He apologized and said, of course I don't believe in violence. And then we wait a year. And what we've learned is that Todd Blanche was very much sort of behind, sort of orchestrating that this needs to be done. Even though the Secret Service is like saying, what are you talking about? And they want to get the ability on an emergency basis to track the movements of James Comey and his wife, who are presumably on vacation, going back to their home outside of Washington D.C. and they do.
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And Andrew, how do they do that? Do they go into his phone? Are they tracking the car? What's the actual mechanism of that tracking?
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I think they're tracking his phone through a GPS and they're saying it's an emergency, even though if it was truly an emergency, they would have arrested him. And it took over a year to bring this case. And I can tell you as somebody who has been in law enforcement, if you really thought that James Comey was a threat to the President of the United States, you would have arrested him. I mean, the idea that it's like, oh, he's such a threat that we're leaving him out there for a year, that's not the way it works.
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It's also a bizarro thing threat that you would make a threat in seashells, on the beach, on social media, which couldn't be more public.
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Yes. So you would think. And one of the. James Cuban has now made a whole series of motions through an excellent series of lawyers that he has truly first rate people and legal minds attacking it based on vindictive prosecution, based on a violation of the First Amendment, seeking all sorts of discovery about what happened. But what we learned is two things. One, that the President of the United States was actively monitoring sort of step by step, in real time, exactly what was going on in the case. What is he being interviewed, what has he said? And we were just talking about this idea of a separation of Department of Justice and the presidency. This is the antithesis. And of course this formed the basis for the vindictive prosecution motion. Showing just how the politicals are involved in the outcome here. The second thing we learned is how does the government plan on showing that James Comey thought that 8647 meant 86 is code for kill, and that it's so obviously understood that when he said 8,647 people would know that and he knew it and everyone would know that. So the defense says, what are you talking about? This is sold on Amazon and their T shirts. And everyone's using it in the phrase of he should not be president, we should get rid of him, not in terms of get rid of his life, meaning he should not be president. And what does the government do? They in the investigation go to Sammy Gravano, the first former underboss of the Gambino family, which who, by the way, I have put him on the stand several times. When I used to be an organized crime prosecutor, he was a witness for me. Then later.
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Was he a good witness? He was an excellent witness.
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He was an excellent, excellent witness. And in part because he made no excuses for what he did or for how he did it. It was. It was like we whacked him. I put a gun under his chin and blew his brains out. We took him after we killed him and we put him. These are real examples, by the way. We took him and put it. We dragged his body down into the basement. We had a kiddie pool. We cut up his body in the kiddie pool so that the blood would be easily contained. I mean, so he is very sort of matter of fact of these are the rules. And this is what I did. And it made him just very. A very believable witness. And he was very good. Having said that, he then gets sentenced. He gets a light sentence from a judge, but because he cooperated so extensively, just truly dozens of people were prosecuted in whole or in part based on his information. But he does his five years. He does some probation after that. And about a New York minute after he finishes his probation, he starts an ecstasy ring in Arizona. And our office, I was leading it in the criminal side at the time, prosecutes him for that drug activity, and he gets 20 years. So I've sort of both put him on as a witness and I have prosecuted him. In any event, Sammy Gavano is interviewed by the FBI and he says, well, in the Mobile, we would understand 86 could mean to kill. We would never say it because it would be too obvious to law enforcement if we said 86, Joanna, or, you know, 86,
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that puts a shill, a chill down me, Andrew.
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He said we wouldn't say it out loud, but that's what it would mean in mob talk. And here's the problem. James Comey is not in the mob. Right. So even if mobsters might use it at times to mean that, by the way, it could also mean what I think commonly we understand, which is, like, you know, in cafeterias and diners, people say like, 86 or an order, because it's, like, canceled. But. But even if a mobster thought it meant killed, that doesn't mean James Comey, who was not in the mob, means it. Or who do you think is if he's posting it to whatever it is, Instagram or Facebook. I'm sorry, but that's not like the mobster's favorite way of getting hit messages. So, like, the public wouldn't understand it.
B
So especially in seashells, there's something particularly effeminate about the seashell way of messaging that you're planning to kill someone. I mean, it's just insane that they would think that.
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Yes. And then, I mean, it goes on and on. At the time that the Secret Service is saying, what do you mean? We're supposed to get an emergency order about this and track him, and this is like a big deal, but we're not arresting him. We don't think this is what he meant. And by the way, the president is out of the country, so how is there an emergency? So the whole thing, I think the legal term is stinks to high heaven. And it really should be the case that this case never sees a trial, either because it's vindictive or in a ground that I think is highly appropriate here, it violates the First Amendment because there was no clear, imminent threat that was being conveyed by James Comey. Even. Even if you could prove that his intent.
B
It does sound like James Comey has woven his way into Donald Trump's head.
A
Yes, it does. It really, to me, in some ways, that sort of ground zero, I think, for sort of. I ended up working on the Mueller investigation. But, you know, that was an outgrowth of James Comey being independent, then being fired by Trump. And I think Trump sort of views that as sort of the original sin, that lack of loyalty, et cetera. And, you know, this is one where I, just to be clear, I have no love lost for James Comey. I thought that he. There's. I think there's a ton of things that he. That I really disagree with. And many people at the Department of Justice believe that. Remember, he gave a very famous press conference where he denigrated Hillary Clinton without any foundation for sort of as justifying it. But that's sort of irrelevant to this issue of charging him criminally for something that just reeks of both a First Amendment violation and a vindictive prosecution.
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So James Comey was a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, prestigious job, like Rudy Giuliani before him, and now it turns out, like Jay Clayton. And I was going to say, what do the three have in common other than they all held that prestigious position? Can you tell me, Andrew, there's something else they share?
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Well, that is a good question. They. What is their.
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I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you.
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They're white, they're men, they have risen to sort of great heights. Those are all positives. But what do you have in mind?
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Well, I was all going to say they've had terrible hair jobs, terrible dyed hair. I thought Jay Clayton's hair looked absurd. No man has hair that color. I think Anthony Scaramucci calls it Latin America dictator brown. But it reminds me of Rudy Giuliani when it came dripping down his hair, Jay Clayton's hair. And also I think at some point, though I couldn't swear to it, but I was looking very closely at photos of him earlier. I think James Comey also dyed his hair at one point. Interesting. Anyway, that's aside the picture point, that's beside the point. But what did you think of Jay Clayton getting appointed as well to the Office of National Intelligence?
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My biggest concern there. I do not know Jay Clayton personally. I have no, you know, personal views of him in terms of his integrity. But here's the real problem. By statute, the head of the intelligence community is supposed to have substantial intelligence experience, and he simply does not. And this goes to sort of two issues. One, why would the President of the United States, who reads the Presidential Daily Brief or is supposed to read it every day and sees the threats that we face. And by the way, those threats are certainly not getting less now that we are at war with Iran. Why would you pick somebody with that lack of experience? I mean, I. The answer. I mean, I know the answer. The answer is loyalty. But that's not what's supposed to come first when you're talking about American safety. And so to me, that sort of like sin number one is like the President, sin number two is Congress. Congress passed that statute that says that he is supposed to have substantial experience. Whoever fills that position, a he or a she, we've had with the prior head of the DNI under Biden was Avril Haynes. I mean, she was by all accounts, I mean, just extraordinary and deep, deep, deep experience in the national security realm. And that's what you should be looking for. But the second sort of sin here is the Congress. Are we a rule of law country or not? And shouldn't we expect Congress, when they pass a law, to say what it means and mean what it says and be like, we told you, the person has to have this experience, and the answer is no. And when you put somebody up who is qualified, we will confirm them. And so, I mean, I know this all sounds terribly naive, but it's like we otherwise think we're normalizing what is really unacceptable and unacceptable per the Congress itself.
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Well, there's an argument that Jay Clayton is at least better informed about intelligence, possibly than the previous holder of the job, Tulsi Gabbard, who essentially, you know, had all sorts of connections to a cult, which we've written about extensively at the Daily Beast, actually. But, Andrew, so you've seen those daily briefings, those daily intelligence briefings. What is the sort of thing that they contain? Because I think lots of people sort of watching and listening have heard about the daily briefings. And I imagine it will be the first thing that the President would turn to every morning. You wake up and you're like, oh, my goodness, what's in the briefing? What sort of thing? How long is the briefing? And I know everybody's tried to shrink it for Donald Trump so that it, it's shorter than it used to be, and he still doesn't look at it. But can you give us a sort of sense of what the briefing actually contains and what's the format that a president gets it in?
A
So first, obviously, it's classified, so I'm not going to be able to give you specifics or details on that. There is a written component, and the written component can be longer or shorter, depending on what, what is happening that day. And, and then there is an oral component, because in the briefing and the briefings that the FBI side, for instance, you know, it sort of goes up the chain. And then ultimately senior people are briefing the director of the FBI, then the director of the FBI briefs the attorney General, then the attorney general and the director of the FBI go brief the White House. At least that's the way it worked in my time. And so there's an oral component, and obviously the principle, whether it's, let's just take the President, the president obviously can ask questions about what's being presented orally or anything else, because the President can read it and have questions about things that aren't presented orally. And the art here, and I remember asking Director Muller about this, because the first few, you could say there, your jaw's on the ground. Because, I mean, obviously everything that's assigned to the FBI gets reviewed and gets followed up. You can't not follow things, but you can't follow everything all the time, immediately. So you have to do triage, and you want them to do triage. And the thing that's remarkable to me is watching experienced people be able to go, okay, on page three in paragraph four, I need to know the following now on page seven in paragraph six, and which ones were being singled out? Because I was looking at it page after page going like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh my God, it's all an emergency. And that's where I find it inconceivable that you could be president for four years if you have access and being told about this and that your number one obligation and interest would not be finding the people who are going to be able to do that job successfully and with the necessary experience. And whatever you can say about Kash Patel, you cannot say that he is the best person for that job. He does not have that experience. And the same thing with Jay Clayton. He doesn't have that experience to do that job to keep the country safe. And that, to me, is something that I just can't get my head around, having been in law enforcement. That's why you're in law enforcement, is you are trying to keep the country safe. The idea that, that something bad would happen to somebody, that you could have loss of life on your watch was the number one thing that drove Director Robert Mueller, and that he drove us correctly and rightly to be the best we could be, because that was not going to happen on his watch.
B
So let me just ask you something. Do you think it's because Donald Trump doesn't, Doesn't understand that? Do you think it's because he doesn't care? I mean, it seems inconceivable that a president. Well, first of all, A, wouldn't care, but B, would want something like, God forbid, a terrorist act on his watch?
A
You know, I don't know the answer to that. My guess as an armchair psychologist is that I think there is, there's something so unusual because I, it's. I don't, I've never gotten the sense of any. The empathy gene does not seem to be there in any way. Way shape or form which you know, that, that you don't go to your son's wedding. Just none of the normal. Or somebody seems to, like, maybe pass out in the Oval Office and sort of look off at the camera while other people, I mean, none of the normal reactions in that situation to me, suggest that this. None of the sort of normal human emotions you would have to that of. And like, I'm not, I'm not like, saying any of, like me, certainly I'm not trying to say, like, I'm the greatest person in the world, but, like, those are normal emotions to have whenever you see a tragedy and when you're in public office, that obviously has to be one of the reasons that you went into public service.
B
I can hear you channeling your therapist mother, Andrew, who you write about in your book Liar's Kingdom, which I noticed launched, I think, at number one on the bestseller list. So congratulations. Congratulations for that. Okay, so. So a final question for you. The Senate this week voted unanimously that Ghislaine Maxwell should not have a pardon. This was brought by a Democratic senator from Nevada. Does it carry any weight? Something like that? I mean, we know it's almost impossible to get the Senate to do anything unanimously, but this one, they really do seem to be clear about. Ghislaine Maxwell, sentenced for 20 years for sex trafficking, should not get a pardon. Will that unanimous vote in any way protect the victims and ensure that Ghislaine doesn't get a pardon?
A
No. I mean, it doesn't have any legal force. The president has the power in the Constitution to issue a pardon. It can have, you know, potential persuasive authority. It also, on the cynical side, it allows the Republicans who are staying loyal to Donald Trump and even if he pardons her to be able to say, but I was against it. Now, to be clear, if they really were against it, they could actually go to court to enforce the Epstein Transparency act. Or if they were really for it, they could say, we are not confirming Todd Blanche until he turns over the 2 to 3 million reportedly Epstein documents that have not been released. And there's there, like, to me, it's performative in a way that is trying to avoid, you know, steps that they clearly could take that would actually be meaningful in terms of the victims.
B
Oh, how disappointing. I was hoping it was genuinely a bipartisan attempt to do the right thing, but of course, it's just politics as usual. Andrew Weissman, it is always a thrill to have you on our podcast. Thank you for joining us and rest assured, you will be our first call when we get developing news of anything else that Todd Blanche is up to.
A
It's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me.
B
Oh, that description of using a kiddie pool so that the blood didn't go everywhere. How gruesome. How, how strange and how fascinating. And that gesture that Andrew made with the gun under the chin. Oh, I found it chilling. Well, there you are. Tell us what you thought of that conversation. We love your comments. Send us your limericks. Leave us your comments on what you thought. Do you think there is any difference between acting? If you were in a job and someone said you were acting the role but you didn't actually have the role, how would that feel? And. And I'll be back tomorrow with David Rothkopf. In the meantime, if you have been, thank you for joining us and a big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Heather Passaro, Rachel Passer, and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many Beast Tier members now there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support.
A
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited product Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea. For the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch upfront payment
B
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Podcast Summary: The Daily Beast Podcast — Trump's Stunning Humiliation Over AG Exposed
Hosted by Joanna Coles with guest Andrew Weissmann
Episode Date: August 3, 2026
This episode delves into the latest political drama surrounding Donald Trump’s embattled Attorney General nominee, Todd Blanche, whose confirmation has been stalled by key Republican holdouts in the Senate—an unprecedented blow not only to Trump and Blanche, but also, as the discussion reveals, to broader notions of rule of law and governmental independence. Joanna Coles welcomes legal expert and former FBI counsel Andrew Weissmann to break down the implications. The conversation spans the political and legal fallout, the mechanics of “bogus” settlements and controversial funds, the peculiar prosecution of James Comey, ties to mafia slang, and a sharp segment on Senate actions regarding Ghislaine Maxwell’s pardon prospects.
On AG independence:
“...the role of Attorney General, traditionally post Watergate in Democratic and Republican administrations, is that they are not the same as other cabinet level officials in that they have an obligation to the public...”
—Andrew Weissmann (13:57)
On the DOJ fund:
“It’s not only, ‘Do I want to pardon you, but I want to pay you.’ Talk about sort of doubling down.”
—Andrew Weissmann (09:40)
On Comey’s case as dystopia:
“It does. And it’s laughable if it weren’t so serious.”
—Andrew Weissmann (17:17)
On Sammy the Bull as government consultant:
“He was an excellent, excellent witness... He made no excuses for what he did or for how he did it. It was, ‘we whacked him. I put a gun under his chin and blew his brains out.’”
—Andrew Weissmann (21:53)
On symbolic Senate votes:
“No. I mean, it doesn’t have any legal force. The president has the power in the Constitution to issue a pardon...”
—Andrew Weissmann (37:35)
Coles and Weissmann maintain a sharply analytical, often wry and darkly humorous tone. Coles’s asides (e.g., hair color jokes, “effeminate seashell messaging”) and Weissmann’s frank legal insight combine to make for an energetic, unvarnished, and highly informed conversation. The legal processes discussed are made accessible but never dumbed down—perfect for news and politics junkies who appreciate both insider detail and smart banter.
Listeners are left with a vivid sense of a system under immense political strain, the precariousness of legal norms, and the ongoing spectacle of Washington’s power dramas.