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A
Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it.
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B
And now we're friends and colleagues and on our new podcast, Ms. Now presents Clock it. We are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.
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A
Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it too. Ms. Now presents Clock It. Listen now. Wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes drop Thursdays this summer.
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C
Don't squeeze in, spread out. Find homes big enough for your whole guest list on vrbo. That's vacation rentals done right. Book your stay now.
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D
Yes you can. A five minute quick and easy calorie burning workout. Give it a try.
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C
Come join our sweat sesh on TikTok.
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B
Hi everyone. It is still a little cold for the beach here in New York, but not so in the great state of North Carolina. It was around this time last year that former FBI Director James Comey was on the beach in the Tar Heel State, apparently beachcombing. We know this because Mr. Comey posted a picture on Instagram of seashells laid out on the sand, spelling 8647 with the caption cool shell formation on my beachwalk. Cool shell formation for Jim Comey or a death threat in the eyes of Donald Trump? Yes, according to Trump's personal lawyer and the acting head of the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, Comey's beachcombing post was a threat to inflict bodily harm against President Trump. That is the claim of the criminal indictment brought against James Comey by the Department of Justice. For real. It's been widely criticized as a joke. We have something called the First Amendment and also seashells. Really, guys? But Todd Blanche says there is more to come. Here's what he told NBC's Kristen Welker on Sunday. How do you prove intent, Mr. Blanche? When Mr. Comey himself said he didn't understand that some people would look at that and think about violence.
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A
You've proven tent like you always prove intent. You prove intent with witnesses. You prove intent with documents, with materials. So again, this is not just about a single Instagram post. This is about a body of evidence that the grand jury collected over the series of about 11 months. That evidence was presented to the grand jury. And it's not the government, it's not the Department of Justice. It's not Todd Blanche that returned an indictment against James Comey. It's a grand jury.
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B
Have you ever heard the saying a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Yeah, this would be the ham sandwich. And even Republicans understand how weak the case is, even Senator Thom Tillis and MAGA apologist Megyn Kelly.
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D
Hopefully there's more to it than just the picture in the sand. Otherwise, I just think it's another example of where we're going to regret this because we're setting a fairly low bar.
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C
Keep your powder dry a little. I, too, think it looks rather weak on its face, but I don't know what Todd Blanche has, so I'm open minded to hearing what more there is.
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B
Now, this is not the first time James Comey has been targeted by Trump's DOJ. He was also indicted in September of 2025 for allegedly lying to Congress about the FBI's 2016 election probe, an indictment which fell apart spectacularly. Mr. Comey has not forgotten about that debacle, and he sounds pretty confident about his chances going forward.
- [03:33]
D
I'm still innocent, I'm still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.
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B
So let's go. Comey is, of course, not alone in being targeted by the doj. The department has set its sights on a number of Trump's critics, people standing in his way or otherwise refusing to bow down to the president's whims. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and even John Bolton, Trump's own former national security advisor. Because this is what happens when the president takes over the Justice Department, from its top brass to its foot soldiers, from the attorney general to the US Attorneys, and replaces all of these people with loyalists, MAGA loyalists, hardcore MAGA loyalists. Here, for example, is Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney in Alabama, podcaster Phil Williams, talking about the January 6th riots, which, by the way, he attended.
- [04:32]
D
The pundits wanted the story, so they took a word out of the law and created their story around it and then said the facts were what they were, but they weren't. It's an amazing thing, and I hope it never happens again. It was like the Salem Witch trials on a national scale.
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B
Phil Williams ain't alone. There are lots more US Attorneys like him. And even if these clowns can't win in court, what are they doing to the federal justice system in the meantime? Alex, I'm Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, Donald Trump's perversion of American justice. It is all there in the Comey indictment And in the U.S. attorney appointments, even the number of people Trump is pardoning. Majorly undermines the work of the justice system. Yes, this guy, Mr. Law and Order is at the end of his term on track to set a record for the greatest number of presidential pardons in eight years.
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D
In every place they control radical left judges, politicians and activists. And they've adopted a policy of catch and release for thugs and killers.
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B
Law and order? Or is it catch and release? Just a little more than a year into his presidency, Donald Trump has already pardoned 1700 people, the majority of whom were January 6th insurrectionists, people who broke into the Capitol and trashed the building and killed multiple law enforcement officers. By comparison, radical left leaders Barack Obama and Joe Biden pardoned 212 people and 80 people at the end of their respective terms. To get an inside look at just how Trump is destroying the doj, I'll be speaking with Mike Gordon, a former assistant US Attorney who was working on cases in the Capitol siege section until he was abruptly fired in June of last year. As a well respected prosecutor who had just received a perfect performance review and successfully litigated over three dozen January 6th cases on behalf of the government, Mike just had to go. We're going to talk about how his firing reflects seismic changes at the Justice Department, what's going to happen as the department is overrun by Trump loyalists and whether he has any faith that federal prosecutors can regain judicial respect. Then I'll sit down with law professor and strict scrutiny host and my friend Kate Shaw to put all of this Justice Department perversion into context, the magification of U.S. attorneys, Trump suing his own government, and of course, Jim Comey's criminal beachcombing. But first, my conversation with attorney Mike Gordon. Mike, welcome to runaway country. So, Mike, I know you were working at the Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney for four years by the time January 6th happened. And then you were fired in June of 2025. Can you talk to me a little bit about what happened and what led up to your firing and maybe why you think you were fired?
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E
Sure.
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D
So I ended up, all in all,
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E
working for DOJ for eight and a half years. And when January 6th happened, it was overwhelming for the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office to handle the number of cases that were coming out of that. So they asked for volunteers from around the country. So I was selected to work on those cases. And for two years, that's what I did. I was in charge of handling the most high profile trials of individual rioters, the ones that were going to get the most media attention. Those were my cases. After two years of That I came back to Tampa and I switched my focus to doing white collar cases, fraud, public corruption, cybercrime, that kind of thing. I was doing that for a year and a half when I was abruptly fired on a 4:30 on a Friday afternoon at the end of June in 2025. And I think it was my work on the January 6th cases, particularly that high profile work, which is why I became a target.
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B
What did you feel when that happened?
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E
First of all, I was shocked. I had expected that if they were going to fire January six prosecutors, they were going to do it on day one or at least week one of the administration. And so when it had gotten six months into the administration, I had initially been on guard, but I thought I was in the clear. I had also just that week, probably had my biggest success ever. I had been kind of handpicked to take on the most important case in our district. And I had just succeeded in helping push it over the finish line. My boss, the US Attorney, had been full of praise for me. It had been a huge win for me, for the department, for Florida. So to then be fired, I was stunned.
- [09:03]
B
So, as someone who worked in both Trump 1 and Trump 2, do you see a meaningful difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 as it concerns the DOJ?
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D
Oh my God, it's gargantuan. So Trump won was from largely a normal presidential administration. From the perspective of doj, for the most part, it's totally normal as administrations change for the department to change its focus. Some administrations are going to focus more on violent crime, some on drugs and his more on immigration crime. There's nothing outrageous about policy positions changing. The political leadership of the department under Trump 1 were sort of true believers to some degree, but they weren't outside of the bounds of what's normal. They didn't ask prosecutors to do anything that violated the justice manual, essentially our policies and procedures. They didn't ask prosecutors to violate their oaths, essentially. Whereas Trump too, that became a regular practice. It wasn't just a question of Trump putting in his own pick for attorney general. That's normal. But it was putting in loyalists who prioritized kind of fervor over competence all the way down, you know, all the way down to U.S. attorneys and section chiefs.
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B
Yeah.
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D
So the, you know, effectiveness of the department became compromised, but so did its ethics and its procedures. And the cost of that has been felt in courtrooms all over the country on a daily basis.
- [10:40]
B
What did you think of the indictment that was put forth? The Comey indictment The most recent one, yeah.
- [10:48]
D
So it's outrageous for a number of reasons. The first being they used the wrong law. It's one of these things that you look at, and it just leave aside the partisan politics behind it for a second, which don't belong at DOJ at all. Just the way it illustrates the degree to which the excellence of the department has fallen is stunning. So the important thing is that there used to be one formulation for what a threat meant, and the Supreme Court changed it in 2015, about 10, 11 years ago, and they based the indictment on the old formulation. This is the kind of thing to say it's a rookie mistake is unfair to rookies. Right. Even rookies learn in law school, like, how to look things like that up. There's that. There's the fact that it is nakedly, obviously a sort of political hit job trying to go after somebody who's an enemy as opposed to an actual threat. They have to prove that he intended to communicate that as a real threat that someone would reasonably anticipate, and that could be carried out against the president. And there's just no way a picture of seashells on the beach does that. So it's just an attempt to go after the man because he's an enemy. So it's not the first of these cases. And I would look at the supposed fraud prosecution against Jerome Powell as another example. The four different times they've tried to go after Letitia James for housing fraud.
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B
Right.
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D
These are all examples of the department identifying targets first and crimes later, which is exactly opposite of how it's supposed to function.
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B
Do you have a sense of how it's playing inside the department? I mean, I just cannot imagine having to go home and tell your kids, like, what'd you do today? Well, I'm trying to get a guy locked up for beachcombing. Like, I filed a brief with the court about the ballroom, which was really a true social post. I mean, you have a sense of. I would assume it's demoralizing, incredibly.
- [12:56]
D
So. I have, you know, I still have, say, friends across the department and U.S. attorney's offices all over the country. And, you know, the vast majority of them every day face this sort of crisis of, okay, I love my job and I love what I do, and I personally. Right. This is what people are thinking. I personally have not been asked to do anything unethical or illegal. And so do I keep doing my job to the best of my ability and following my oath and doing the right thing and know that, like, in my little Corner things are proceeding the way they are, or am I complicit in the rest of what's happening in the department? Just by staying and keeping kind of the trains running on time? Should I stay or should I go? People have family obligations. They have, you know what, law school loans. They have all kinds of reasons that they want to stay, and also the knowledge that if they leave, they're not. They're going to be replaced by somebody who's not as, you know, sort of ethical or dedicated to the rule of law as they are. So I have friends who have left in principled resignation, and I have friends who have stayed because they think that's the right thing to do. But every single one of them I know who has stayed feels conflicted or feels that they are just crossing their fingers that they get through another day without being asked to do something that they can't stomach.
- [14:16]
B
It's just amazing how uniform that feeling is across different branches of the government. We've spoken to newly fired immigration judges who loved their work and felt like it was really important and are very sad to see what's become of an already admittedly compromised immigration system in the US but knowing that the people that are holding the gavel or in charge of the process are much worse or not qualified or don't have the body of knowledge, it's painful to see these agencies, I won't say gutted, but the attempt to hollow them out and repopulate them with people like. I mean, I wanna ask you about the U.S. attorney's appointments, because the more we learned about the caliber of person that Trump is trying to appoint for these very important U.S. attorneys positions, the more chilling it should be to every American. I mean, these are people who are completely unqualified and who really are only in the job because they are vocal proponents of President Trump. It's just personal loyalty above professional qualification. What is your reaction to some of the names that have been floated, like the US Attorney for Alabama? There are a number of people that are just unique in their sort of strident, publicly partisan musings that would otherwise, I think, disqualify them from the job of U.S. attorney.
- [15:39]
D
Yeah, no, that. That's 100% right. I agree with you there. I do disagree with you, though, in terms of it being a broad brush. I do have, for example, you know, a few U.S. attorneys, David Waterman and Iowa, you know, Greg Kehoe in Tampa, who are former prosecutors, tremendously ethical, excellent lawyers who are sort of good stewards of the Constitution in their role. But Then you see people like Lindsey Halligan, Alina Haba, right? People who have never been prosecuted prosecutors
- [16:08]
B
before, or Janine Hero, who's already. Who's the television prosecutor, right?
- [16:14]
D
And so what you have the job of being a prosecutor takes tremendous judgment. And you get that judgment not just through your own personal ethical code, but you also get through experience of knowing which you know, what is sufficient evidence, what isn't, how a case is going to play in the jury, how to interact with agents, how to run an investigation, how to analyze the law and the facts, how to decide is a case worth the department pursuing. Those are all judgment calls that you need experience to do well. And so when you appoint somebody, not because of their experience, not because of their knowledge or their skill, but rather because of their partisan fervor or their donations or the degree to which they sing a politician's praises, you're not just undermining justice in a theoretical way. You're harming individual cases and therefore whole groups of people that live in the places where those prosecutors are in charge.
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B
Do you worry about a more sort of cancerous effect of all of this, which is that the presumption of regularity within courtrooms is changing the feeling? I mean, and some Americans already had a feeling that the Justice Department had been perverted, if not necessarily for partisan gain, then for political expediency, that the American public's understanding of justice being blind is basically going out the window. I just worry. I worry about it. I wonder if you, as someone on the inside of the machinery, worry about the dismantling of that.
- [17:44]
D
I do, but it's beyond just worrying like it is happening. It's not just something I'm fretting about. It's what I'm seeing and hearing. Just for example, in Los Angeles, the federal public defender there has won seven consecutive assault on a federal officer cases against DOJ. DOJ's conviction rate is usually like 99.5%, right? They almost never lose, or at least historically, because they get to pick and choose which cases they prosecute. So the. And the typical way DOJ works is you do all the work up front and you only charge when the case is, you know, buttoned up, ready to go, you know, unassailable, and you're ready to take that case to trial and win. That's being flipped on its head. Now you see DOJ bringing cases that are half baked, cases that should never have made it past the prosecutor's desk, let alone to the grand jury, let alone to the trial jury. And the result of that is that not only does the public lose faith in doj, but then so do juries. And then you see things like in Los Angeles, losing seven consecutive cases, that's unheard of. I've never seen anything like that. You know what I hear from my friends that are still in DOJ is when they get to jury selection and they start asking the questions to try to establish who on the jury can be fair and impartial, which jurors are coming to jury duty with kind of already coming in with a bias against one side or the other. It used to be that you really had to work to eliminate everybody who might have a bias against defendant. People who might assume just because someone's been charged, they must be guilty. Now they're having a problem eliminating people who are biased against the government, who assume that the government is the one lying. And that loss, that sort of just as you put cancerous or corrosive effect of people's trust, that the Department of Justice is there to administer the law fairly and equally, that it follows the law and the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor. People losing trust in that puts us in a place where people believe that the government just comes after enemies. Whether they did it or didn't, they're there to persecute people, not prosecute people for crimes. And, you know, that is, you know, we're gonna. That is going to take effect not just today, but over the course of a generation of people.
- [20:04]
B
How does it make you feel as someone who, you know, you spent a lot of your career fighting on behalf of the government? How does it make you feel?
- [20:12]
D
On one hand, incredibly sad, right? Just sort of see something that you love and believe in passionately to just be, as you put it, hollowed out or destroyed, angry at the people who are doing this, who don't see the long term damage or worse, who think that they are doing a good thing and in a bizarre way, hopeful, because I hope that people are kind of waking up to the importance of some of these things. The idea that we can't just have these vital institutions running on kind of norms and traditions, but that we need to actually institutionalize the things that make us fair and impartial. And that when the American public gets sick of this and puts a new president in place, whether that be a Republican or a Democrat, but somebody who values the rule of law and returning DOJ to what it should be. And I do think that day will come, it gives me hope that what we'll emerge with is a stronger DOJ that is resistant to this kind of hollowing out or degradation in the future.
- [21:18]
B
Well Mike, from your mouth to Todd Blanche's ears. No, someone else's probably.
- [21:24]
D
Yeah, I think that ship may have sailed.
- [21:27]
B
Mike, it's really helpful to get your perspective on all of this. I'm really grateful for you speaking out and giving us the truth about what's going on inside the department and how it's landing with people who've been doing the heavy lifting for quite some time. So thanks for your time.
- [21:41]
D
You're welcome. Thanks for having me on.
- [21:46]
B
After the break, putting it all into context with law professor and host of Strict scrutiny, the great Kate Shaw. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Life is a journey. Some days feel good and others feel overwhelming. Whatever's keeping you up at night, it's easy to feel like you have to figure it out all on your own. But the truth is, no one has all of the answers and no journey should be alone. Having someone with you to listen, to understand and to support you can make all the difference. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It's an opportunity to check in with yourself and understand where you're at right now. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, stuck, anxious or unsure, well, those feelings are much more common than you think. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, Having served over 6 million people globally and it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. You do not have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com Runaway that's betterhelp.com Runawaycountry Runaway country is brought to you by Miracle Made. Do you ever wake up sweaty or freezing or just uncomfortable? The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep and don't I know that. That is why I switched to Miracle Made Sheets. They are inspired by NASA technology and they use silver infused temperature regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long. Thanks to their antibacterial silver technology, those miracle made sheets stay cleaner and fresher for up to three times longer than regular sheets. That means fewer odors, fewer wash cycles and way less laundry. Plus you don't have to worry about all that hidden bacteria in regular sheets that clogs your pores and causes dreaded back knee. They feel just as good if not better than sheets you'd find at a five star hotel but without the steep price tag. Smooth, breathable and ridiculously comfortable. So upgrade your sleep or give the gift of better rest. Go to trymiracle.com Alex to try miracle made sheets today you'll save over 40% and when you use the promo code Alex you will get an extra 20% off plus a free three piece towel set. They make an amazing gift and with a 30 day money back guarantee there is no risk. That's trymiracle.com Alex Code Alex@ checkout. Thank you to Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode. Kate Shaw I gotta say man, I've been waiting to get you on this podcast. I am excited.
- [24:24]
C
Alex Wagner, it's so good to be here.
- [24:26]
B
Thank you for doing this and enlightening us as to how our law is being perverted and our Justice Department is being destroyed in a way.
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C
We're gonna have to count the ways.
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B
Thoughtful manner than perhaps I'm capable of. I wanna start with the seashell indictment. Beachcombing mob boss Jim Comey is charged with writing, or I guess he's charged with writing it, even though he says he did not actually arrange the seashells in such a fashion. But writing 8647 in seashells and then posting that image to Instagram and therefore, I guess, crossing state lines because it's a social media post, all of this is so far fetched and that that is, according to the Justice Department and a grand jury, a threat to, quote, inflict bodily harm on the president. I can understand the ways in which this legal maneuver seems clownish, but I wonder, Kate, if there is anything substantive inherent in this indictment. Is there anything, anything worthy in this? Or is it the piece of garbage that I think we all believe it to be?
- [25:28]
C
I think it's pretty garbagey. It's, you know, so you described it accurately. So the indictment is for, you know, knowingly willfully making threats to take the life or inflict bodily harm upon the President, both as a standalone charge and then, you know, crossing state lines. It also sort of sounded. So that's what's in the actual written indictment. It sort of sounded from Blanche when he talked about this in announcing the indictment as though it was an incitement charge. So not that it was really a threat directly from Comey to actually, you know, harm the president, but designed to provoke others to do the same. And incitement, you know, is a crime you can incite, you know, you can be charged and convicted for doing that. But because incitement, by its terms, involves speech, there's a pretty protective First Amendment standard that's also true about what are known as true threats. So it's really only if you're both intending to and actually have a very good likelihood of, you know, committing harm, physical, bodily harm against someone that you can ever be convicted for something that is fundamentally just speech or, I guess, like seashell expression, but like, you know, kind of expressive conduct or actual words. And I just can't imagine a universe in which, however a prosecution was pursued, it could ever survive, given the sort of big overhang of the First Amendment. Not even sort of considering the kind of vindictive prosecution dimension of this. Because clearly this is Trump and his Justice Department looking for something to go after Comey for, and this is the best they've got.
- [27:07]
B
I mean, I don't know, Kate. There could be a whole community of mermaids and mermen ready with pitchforks. Maybe they operate, ready to storm the Capitol, communicate, you know what?
- [27:16]
C
You make a break.
- [27:16]
B
We can't know. Right. Maybe Todd Blanche is up playing chess, and we're just playing checkers. But for now, it seems exactly, as you say, like, selective and vindictive persecution prosecution, underscored by Todd Blanche going on to, you know, television and telling NBC's Kristen Welker there's thousands of pieces of merch being sold on Amazon that says 86, 47. And those people aren't gonna get prosecuted because. No, no, no, of course they aren't. First of all, that seems textbook selective prosecution, right?
- [27:48]
C
Absolutely.
- [27:49]
B
Like, textbook. There are literally other people doing the same thing, but they're not gonna get prosecuted. Cause their names aren't Jim Comey. Right. Blanche then goes on to say that they have, like, amassed a trove of evidence suggesting that he has real intent to do harm or incite people to do harm against the President. But correct me if I'm wrong, Kate, isn't that stuff usually in the indictment, like, if you have more proof, like, wouldn't you say it instead of leaving it there with Seashells and Instagram, as
- [28:15]
C
opposed to being sort of your secret plan?
- [28:16]
B
Ye.
- [28:16]
C
I mean, I think that usually there's gonna be more there there in an indictment, if there is more there there. I mean, I have to say that in some ways, though, there's the kind of selectivity. There's the sort of obvious attempt. So first we try perjury, and then this is what they first, you know, went after Comey for, and then we get Tripped up by having unlawfully tried to install Lindsay halligan as a U.S. attorney. And so that gets tossed. And so then we're casting about for something else. Sorry, forgive the beach. The beach metaphor.
- [28:42]
B
No, no, it's intended. It's intended. Pun's intended.
- [28:45]
C
Right. And so, you know, of what we come up with. But it's also like, the thing I find so. Or one of the many things I find so disturbing is just that a grand jury returned this indictment at all.
- [28:57]
B
Can we talk about that?
- [28:58]
C
Yeah.
- [28:59]
B
I mean, this is the ham sandwich, I guess, right? A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. Well, it's to pile of seashells, not a ham sandwich. But, like, what is. How did. I thought the same thing. You know, we rarely turn on our fellow Americans who actually go and serve on these juries because, like, who really wants to do that? But it is not a good sign of the times that a grand jury did indict on this. Can you offer any insight into how and why you think that happened?
- [29:22]
C
I don't have a great theory. I mean, and I'll just say, you know, yes, there's sort of the adage that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. But we've also seen a lot of really important counter kind of examples in this timeline. Right. Just in Trump 2.0, we've had grand juries refuse to return indictments against, like, literally speaking of sandwiches, the guy who threw a sandwich at a CBP officer in D.C. also refused to return indictment against member Mark Kelly and the other Democratic lawmakers for the, you know, video reminding service members of their obligation to refuse illegal orders. Tish James. So we've actually had a kind of a really unusual number of failed efforts to get indictments from grand juries, you know, launched by this Justice Department. And. And yet somehow this one, you know, at least at the outset, played out differently. So I guess we don't know exactly what they said to the grand jury.
- [30:11]
B
You know, do you think it's sus enough that they could demand grand jury transcripts? I mean, just because Halligan so grossly mismanaged the last grand jury indictment and it turns out that they were, you know, her. I don't want to get too much into the legal weeds, but, like, the grand jury was getting one story and then there was another story on the outside.
- [30:30]
C
Yeah.
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B
Layman's terms. Like, do you think that there's a case to be made for that?
- [30:36]
C
I am sure that Comey's lawyers will try, and I don't Know, I mean, I think it could be that if, depending on what went on inside the grand jury room, if they're told something very different from the public sort of story or even what we see in the written indictment, I guess I wouldn't be surprised to see the Justice Department just walk away from this indictment. Right. Like, if it comes to. Because they could just do that. They could just decide to drop it. If they're gonna be too potentially shamed by. I mean, I guess they're sort of incapable of shame, but if it would be too problematic, then maybe they just walk away from it. But I am sure if you're Comey's attorneys, I think you in parallel, sort of pursue those, like what. What was actually said in the grand jury room, given again, these shifting public explanations about what actually the conduct sort of being targeted even is what the legal theory is, and then also the kind of highly selective and vindictive prosecution, which is, you know, also an argument that he made the first time the Justice Department came after him, it remains selective and vindictive.
- [31:36]
B
It does, you know, if it is not. If the Justice Department doesn't, I don't know, have a wave of shame that washes over it, which at this point, I would not expect, and the case actually goes to court. The reality is that the charges against Comey in the indictment rest on a legal standard that was overturned by the Roberts Court in 2015. Isn't that right?
- [31:58]
C
So what the. So, like the. Both incitement and the kind of true threats doctrine. So these are slightly different kind of, again, word crimes kind of. Right. And no, I mean, there's a relatively. A more recent case, even on true threats, than 2015. And so I would say that the legal standard is somewhat indeterminate in that the last case involving sort of true threats actually was a stalking case, in which you had both conduct like actual, you know, stalking and, you know, threats conveyed via words. And so that's obviously deeply different. I mean, I guess we don't know exactly what kind of evidence Blanche thing. I highly doubt it's stalking evidence, but I would say that along both of these tracks, the First Amendment protections are robust, and the kind of, like, lane that prosecutors have is narrow. And I can't imagine them successfully navigating it kind of either way.
- [32:55]
B
It's all so clownish that it makes you wonder why they're doing it. And I have a theory that is not going to blow anybody's minds, because it's the literally the most obvious thing in the world, which is that Todd Blanche really, really, really wants Pam Bondi's old job. He is protesting otherwise.
- [33:11]
A
Critics of you and this administration, Mr.
- [33:14]
D
Blanch, have suggested this is an audition to become the nominee to be Attorney General.
- [33:18]
E
Is it?
- [33:19]
A
I don't even know what that means. We work hard every single day. The Department of justice returns over 100 indictments across this country every single day, making this country safe. And so, and so this narrative, this idea out there that somehow I'm auditioning. I've worked with President Trump for many, many years. I don't audition for this job. I've been the Deputy Attorney General for over a year. Okay. This is not an audition.
- [33:42]
B
It certainly seems like it's an audition for Pam Bondi's old job. I mean, what's your over under on him being the next AG Kate?
- [33:48]
C
I mean, I think that he's working real hard. I mean, just in the couple of weeks that he's been acting, I think we have seen a significant ratcheting up of the insanity coming from the Department of Justice. So not just in the second round of sort of efforts to get Comey, but the kind of filing which I hope we'll talk about in the ballroom lawsuit that seeks to capitalize on the shooter right at the White House Correspondents Dinner. That is one of the most arranged. No, the most arranged filing I've ever seen. The Federal Justice Department.
- [34:23]
B
Wow. Really? That's it?
- [34:24]
C
I think so, yeah.
- [34:25]
B
Okay.
- [34:25]
C
Yeah, I think I'm crowning it. Although, you know, it's. We're early in the second Trump term, so I suspect that it won't like, stay. That that record won't stand for too long. But I think right now that's. It's actually so. So I just think that it feels like he is showing Trump that he is willing to do anything. And that is just so dangerous because, you know, the. The Comey indictment again, the ballroom filing, these are. These are. Again, we talked about shame. Like, these are embarrassing. And there's. The legal profession has long operated with this kind of set of sort of reputational and sort of social professional expectations. Like people thinking that you are a joke really actually matters to most practicing lawyers. And it seems no longer to matter to Todd Blanche. And I think that is really dangerous because that's not going to constrain him because the only thing he seems to be interested in is kind of getting the favor of the guy on top and then getting the job at the top of the Justice Department in a permanent way. And I mean, prosecutors have a dangerous amount of power. And if it's wielded irresponsibly, you know, by kind of picking. Right. There's a very famous Robert Jackson speech about the role of the prosecutor. Just says the most dangerous power of the prosecutor is that he'll pick the people he thinks he should get rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. And like, this is just a textbook example of that with Comey and I think with Blanche's conduct so far.
- [35:46]
B
Yeah. The garbage ification of the Department of Justice has roots, you know, like that, that, that can extend well past the Trump administration.
- [35:57]
C
Absolutely.
- [35:58]
B
And, and breaking that seal between, you know, people having sort of a tacit understanding that there's a certain amount of, like, integrity that you bring to the, to the job and then throwing that integrity out the window and the reckless pursuit of power is a very bad development. I mean, are you surprised? Just as someone who knows, I mean, Todd Blanche worked at the sdny. Like, this was not an unserious person. He's not coming from. Like, he doesn't have the same legal background as Lindsey Halligan. And yet what he's doing is so profoundly dangerous and thoughtless. It seems thoughtless, but it clearly must not be. Like, do you have a theory about how he got turnt?
- [36:39]
C
I don't. And I think you're right. Like, I, I have never met Ted Blanche. I don't know him, but certainly people who knew him said he was a pretty serious, pretty normal, conservative prosecutor. There's a lot of people like that, and I don't think they understand and I guess they knew him personally. I certainly don't understand except to say that sort of the rot starts at the top. And I think you spend enough time in this administration and its kind of self interested, destructive amorality, and that just is kind of catching. And I think that that just may be the kind of Occam's razor here. Like, if the Trump administration is what
- [37:22]
B
turned him, I will only say turnt. Do you, you know, the instances of, you know, targeting political enemies and weaponizing the Department of Justice for retribution are. There are a number of examples we can point to in this administration. Lisa Cook, who is on the Fed Board of Governors, is another example of this. Her case is at the Supreme Court. Now, the Supreme Court, because it is populated by evil cronies, sorry, totally conservative ideologues, has made a special carve out for like political retribution aimed at the Fed. It sounds like they're like, they announced
- [38:00]
C
that exactly those terms, but they're like,
- [38:04]
B
it's not Cool at the Fed. Like you can do it elsewhere, but you can't really do it at the Fed. It seems to be their, their sort of like, stance on this. Like, first of all, what do you think is going to happen in that case? Because she is, I mean, she is indicative of like, I guess, more most broadly how the Supreme Court sees these cases. But also, do you have a theory on why they're more intent on policing the Fed than other bodies?
- [38:31]
C
I think there are a few possible explanations. And so just to kind of take a step back for a minute, right, so the Cook's case is still pending before the Supreme Court. And so there are, there are these two closely related cases about the President's power to just summarily fire high ranking officials on what have traditionally been known as independent agencies. So one involves a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, and then the other involves Lisa Cook, a governor on the Fed Board of Governors. And in both cases, he tried to fire those people. And in one case, the Slaughter FTC case, the Supreme Court said, go ahead and fire her. And then we can hear and consider whether you have the power to fire her. But they have already basically told us that the President has the power to fire her because he said, they said he could fire her. In the meantime, with Lisa Cook, the court didn't, on the shadow docket, allow the President to fire her. So they said, we'll take the case, we'll consider the arguments about whether the President has this power, but in the meantime, she stays on the Fed. And that doesn't definitively tell us how they're going to rule in the case, but it's a pretty strong signal. And there is a legal difference between the two cases in that in the FTC case, the President is arguing he has the power summarily, by fiat, to fire people just, you know, for any reason, no reason, a bad reason with the Fed. This, of course, connects to kind of the Jim Comey point. He's not saying, the President is not saying I have the power to just like wake up one day and fire anybody on the Fed. There's a statute that says there has to be some cause. And I'm not challenging the constitutionality of that statute, but I'm saying there is cause here. And the cause is that there's some allegations of mortgage fraud that Lisa Cook engaged in. Pretty thin allegations. But he says that he loves mortgage fraud.
- [40:02]
B
He himself loves to commit it anyway.
- [40:05]
C
Yes, no. He clearly like takes one to no one or something. But yes, this is a thing that he has used for a number of kind of political adversaries to, you know, different degrees of success. So yeah, there hasn't been a criminal charge, but that is the basis on which he ostensibly is firing her. But really it's because he wants more control over the Fed and interest rate setting function of the Fed in particular. So I think that based on the tenor of the oral arguments, actually Trump is likely to lose in the Cook case. And I think a lot of people read the arguments that way. And in terms of, and so that's, you know, the carve out is both, you know, what we're, I think assuming is going to happen in the arguments and a little bit what we read into the shadow docket orders. So President gets to fire everybody but the Fed. And they offered a little bit of reasoning in these shadow docket orders, but not, it wasn't very convincing. The Fed, they said, is just like historically and structurally different from other agencies, which is like kind of true but also like kind of convenient. Because the real answer is they don't want to be, I don't think, responsible for upending like the US and kind of global economy. By ending Fed independence, which has been this sort of central pillar of kind of economic stability, the Fed can make these, you know, kind of rational, kind of reasoned decisions about interest rates that are not just responsive to the political whims of the President at any given time. They have to think in sort of broader economic and more kind of long term sort of terms. So ending Fed independence would throw that into question. Everybody thinks it'd be wildly destabilizing. And I think the court doesn't want to be responsible for that. So in some ways it's a little bit like the tariffs case, which Trump also lost, which is, you know, they both like, they watch the stock market, they go to cocktail parties with people who have significant holdings and they, they understand that kind of economic stability is important. And they, I think they're, I think we're seeing that their kind of presidential power maximalism is an important preference, but that it sometimes is subordinated to a kind of pocketbook and like economic stability preference, which is like we want to side with the Chamber of Commerce, which was on the, you know, anti tariff side of the tariff lawsuit. And just like a lot of kind of establishment Republican interests that are basically telling the court that in, in the Fed case and the tariffs case, Trump might have gone too far or just like the kind of conduct was, you know, like unsavory for them. They just didn't they didn't like it. So I think that's, that's a Sorry, it's a long answer, but I think that's basically that. What, what, what is going on in the Cook case?
- [42:30]
B
Right. Leave it to the president to create economic calamity across the globe.
- [42:35]
C
Correct.
- [42:35]
B
We'll try and be a mediating influence. And likewise, if it concerns women and their bodies, who fucking cares? But if it's going to wreck someone's investment portfolio, then let's just put a stop to that. I mean, you almost wish it wasn't that transparent because it would make them less nefarious, but it is. And so that's the value set on the 6:3 Supreme Court. More of my conversation with Kate right after this quick break. Runaway country is brought to you by Mosh. That old adage, you are what you eat rings very true to all of us in the modern day. And I'm always looking for an on the go protein thing snack that satisfies me. But now I found one that helps me live intentionally as well. Mosh Protein Bars. Mosh, which you may have heard about on Shark Tank or Oprah's Favorite Things, was founded by Maria Shriver and her son Patrick Schwarzenegger with a mission to spark a conversation about brain health through food, education and research. MASH also donates a portion of the proceeds from every order to the women's Alzheimer's movement because two thirds of Alzheimer's patients are women and MOSH is working to close that gap. It is more than just a protein bar. It is brain fuel with purpose. I love putting them in my bag when I'm going into the city to run errands or go to doctors or do Ms. Now hits like the bars are good and the fact that they're donating money to women's Alzheimer's research is bonus, bonus, bonus. Find your favorites or build your boxes or keep things fresh with a variety pack. Mosh bars are the best way to customize your health while giving back. Head to moshlife.com runaway and subscribe today to get 25% off your first variety pack and 25% off your monthly subscription with code RUNAWAY. That is 25% off your first pack and 20% off your subscription of brain boosting bars delivered straight to your door. Start building brain health into your everyday with Mosh bars. Thank you to Mosh for sponsoring this episode. Runaway country is brought to you by Oneskin. I have to say I am all about skin health. Not just because I have a lot of skin. Like we all do, but because when you get old, you want to preserve that which you do have. I am using One Skin's moisturizer and their eye cream and I'm very happy with the results because I got thirsty skin, you guys, Thirsty skin. It's certified safe for sensitive skin. Their products are free from over 1500 harsh or irritating ingredients. It's dermatologist tested and they have been awarded the National Eczema association seal of acceptance by the nea. You really don't need a complicated routine to get healthier, younger looking skin. Born from over a decade of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthiest skin now. And as you age, for a limited time, try OneSkin with 15% off using code ALEX@OnSkinCO. Alex, that's 15% off. OneSkin CO with Code Alex. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about Oneskin. So please support our show and tell em we sent ya. I have to say though, regardless of whether the Comey case ever sees the light of day in terms of a federal court, there is the reality that life could be difficult and perilous for Jim Comey and any of these other people that Trump has decided to use his DOJ against. And there's the precedent it sets that, you know, we weaponize our Justice Department against perceived political enemies. That's not a good one for the country. I wonder if at all you think people are getting wise to standing up to Trump and, and, and seeing it as a more principled fight than perhaps just a personal one. And I'm thinking, I guess we keep talking about the Fed, but I'm thinking about like Jerome Powell, for example, right? Like to me he represents a turning point and saying like, no, no, you don't, you don't get to do this to me. And people actually have stood by him. He is gonna not be the chair of the Fed board, but he's gonna stay on the board of governors, which is a huge middle finger to Trump. And I think he represents. I don't know if I'm overstating the case. I probably am. It's my specialty. But you know, I think he represents a kind of a line in the sand from the sort of conservative institutionalists who never would have seen themselves as like ideologues or resistance fighters, but who see the fucking, the beclowning of this administration and this Department of Justice and are like, you know what? Mm, mm, not this time. I just wonder if you, if we might. I'm trying to find a silver lining here. Are we seeing the people who are in the crosshairs of all of this? Do you think that we're turning a page and seeing more fight, more gumption from these targets?
- [47:18]
C
I hope so. I agree that Powell has been this unlikely hero in this timeline, basically, since the beginning, he has been uncowed by Trump. Remember when initially Trump was going to was trying to manufacture some case against Powell that had to do with the renovations to the Fed building and cost overruns. And he's still, that's still a little bit like, I think, percolating in the background. But they did this hard hat tour of the Fed building and then stood, the two of them, Powell and Trump together in front of the cameras. As Trump is like, pulls out, somebody hands him a document and he's going through it. He's like, a billion, another billion. And he makes some claim about what's on the paper and he hands it to Powell. And Powell's like, no, that's a different building. Like, and he is just so uninterested in, you know, genuflecting or even, like, really performing much respect for Trump in front of the cameras. And it was just like an amazing moment because Trump is surrounded by sycophants all the time. And to have somebody be so unimpressed, impressed by him and again, be caught on camera, that unimpressed, I thought was pretty powerful, actually. I mean, it shouldn't be. But that is, again, the timeline that we're in. And so I think that Powell, and then, you know, when they first announced that there was an actual hero, announces that the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office is actually investigating both this, you know, renovation cost issue and Powell's testimony before Congress about that renovation. He cut a video that was just basically like, I am not afraid of you. And that two was, I thought, really impressive. And so, you know what you mentioned that he has now announced his term is ending, I think this month, I think it's in May. But he has got more years on his regular governor term. And Trump would clearly very much like him to go, and he's not going to. And I think he thinks that that's good for kind of stability in the Fed. And also he's not going to just, you know, accede to Trump's demand or at least like, desire that he go, okay, so is that, like, emblematic of some shift that's happening? So I love the optimism of it. I mean, because I think that the scarcity of that kind of you know, just sort of courage and self respect on the part of these people that try, you know, seeing law firms cowing and universities, I mean, it's just been wildly disheartening and counterproductive and there have been these sort of glimmers of hope, I think, throughout. But maybe we are seeing some, you know, shift happening, like maybe abc, abc, Disney.
- [49:43]
B
I think maybe we'll see. I mean, jury's out. But I do think the tide, I mean, there's a number of mitigating factors. Number one, first of all, Democrats may take power. They may take both houses of Congress. There's oversight, subpoena power that comes along with that. There's the business reality that Donald Trump's not gonna be president after 2028. And if you're a corporation making your bed with only Republicans and like, currying favor in a corrupt way with this administration might not be the best for your business interests. So there's, but also he's like, yeah,
- [50:12]
C
not so noble explanations, but also falling asleep.
- [50:15]
B
And like, look at what this brings me this. I mean, and look what he is asking his stooges to do. It means a lot to me, a Leslie person, Kate, that you think the worst filing from this DOJ is the ballroom. Filing like that is a high bar to clear. Yeah, well, let's, let's talk about. Yes, for people who are not familiar with it, it is a truth social post that was printed on DOJ letterhead, I believe, and filed with the court unsolicited. Here's an excerpt from it. If any other president had the ability, foresight or talents necessary to build this ballroom, which will be one of the greatest, safest and most secure structures of its kind anywhere in the title case world, there would never have been a lawsuit. But because it is Donald J. Trump all capped a highly successful real estate developer who has abilities that others don't, especially those who assume the office of President, this frivolous and meritless lawsuit was filed again. It's called Trump Derangement Syndrome, all caps. On top of everything else, this project is a gift to our country. Title case from President Trump and other donors. Capital D. It is free of charge to the American taxpayer. Capital A, capital T. Who could ever object to that? Who indeed, Kate?
- [51:26]
C
So that was one. Can I just read one more excerpt from it? So actually, I think it's the first sentence of the filing. It reads, quote, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a beautiful name, but even their name is all caps fake. Because when they add the words in the United States to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It makes it sound like a government agency, which it is not. They are very bad for our country. It goes on. This is a legal filing, right? This is filed by the Department of Justice in a United States federal court, basically making the argument that this, you know, lawsuit brought against the construction of this 90,000 square foot ballroom and the destruction that preceded it violates like many different laws, because it's pretty clear that it does. And they're basically saying you need to toss this judge, or it's a case that's pending on appeal anyway. So it's a very atypical motion to be filed. While cases is up above. Usually you're not filing in the trial court, but they basically say, this is an emergency and we're asking you to dissolve the injunction that you initially issued because, again, of all the aforementioned unlawfulness of the project. And then they essentially say, we need a safe and secure ballroom because of what happened at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, which, you know, again, they immediately and cynically began using as a justification for this ballroom, which was initially presented as about a better party space. And then they at some point decided there was a national security rationale, that they then sort of kind of retrofit the whole organization.
- [52:54]
B
Let no crisis go wasted. Every crisis is an opportunity indeed. But does this kind of bullshit. Pardon my French, but don't pardon it. Does it actually undermine the case in the eyes of the judge? I mean, it's just so. It's such. It's so unserious. I just wonder, is there any. Is there any legal repercussion for filing garbage like this?
- [53:13]
C
I mean, so in the Federal courts, Rule 11 is the sort of the rule that provides for sanctions for frivolous filing. So is this sanctionable?
- [53:23]
D
I don't know.
- [53:24]
C
Maybe. I don't think it's frivolous to suggest that it's sanctionable. I think. I think it's at least arguably sanctionable, but it's mostly just embarrassing, like, to the kind of shame point, like, this is. John Sauer, the Solicitor General, made some pretty embarrassing filings in the tariff case. We were a failing country and then the tariffs were imposed, and now we are the hottest country around. Like a line that was almost that verbatim was also in illegal filing. So. So that I think, was the previous record holder, at least in my kind of, like, ranking system. And I think this is. This is now displaced.
- [53:53]
B
This is pretty bad.
- [53:54]
C
It's so bad. And it is, like you said, it's a Truth Social post, and it actually was. Trump did then post it verbatim on Truth Social after filing it, but it got filed.
- [54:02]
B
And so chicken or the egg, Kate? Chicken or the egg?
- [54:04]
C
Hard to know.
- [54:04]
B
Why not both. Like, it has to be said that like his corrupting of the Justice Department extends literal to, literally to actual financial corruption because this is so under discussed and it incenses me and I feel like we've sort of like we're, we're just whistling past this graveyard. Collectively, Trump is suing the IRS for $10 billion over his tax returns being leaked. The presiding judge in April seemed skeptical, but I mean, Kate, is there a chance the American taxpayer has to pay Donald Trump $10 billion?
- [54:42]
C
I mean, God, I, I, there is not no chance. So 10 billion, I mean, I think that he likes that figure. He likes, he has sued multiple media outlets for 10, but 10 billion in particular, I think that's what both the Wall Street Journal and maybe the time anyway, he has sued multiple media defendants for $10 billion. But this is the first actual filing against his own administration. And yes, he is seeking $10 billion, as you said, for the disclosure of his tax returns during the first administration. So there the, the judge in Florida, which is where the case was filed in April, I thought I actually had a really, really interesting order. And the order basically said, okay, so Trump, you filed this lawsuit and you're, so you're on one side of the V and it's ostensibly in your personal capacity. So it's not DOJ lawyers representing you, it's your private lawyers. On the other side is the Department of Justice representing the irs because they represent the DOJ represents federal agencies when they're sued. But in order for a lawsuit in federal court to proceed, there needs to be what's called adversity between the parties. Right? Like they need to disagree about something. So there is a controversy for the judge to resolve. And she basically said, I'm not sure that that basic prerequisite to be in federal court is satisfied here because you are the president and you're at the top of the administration. And by the way, you issued all these executive orders that said that your legal views, you, Donald Trump's legal views are conclusive inside the executive branch, nobody can disagree with your view of the law. And so I'm just, even though you say you're bringing this case in your personal capacity, you are the sitting president and the people on the other side are subject to your direction. And so you all need to of huddle and then you need to come back and file arguments with me explaining why I can decide this case at all. So I am very curious what those filings are going to look like because, of course, this is the sort of the unitary executive on steroids is, I think, the way to understand this administration. The president has complete power within the executive branch and, you know, maybe within all of government, in his view. And if that's the case, you just can't be on opposite sides of a case, even if you're saying you're doing the, you know, you're the plaintiff as, as a private entity. So anyway, we'll see what they say. The thing that's, I think, so alarming about this though, is that the lawsuit is absurd, but it's also filed in, you know, federal court, and so we know about it. The thing that I think worries me even more is it's not impossible that he arrives at some kind of agreement or settlement with his own Justice Department and they quietly pay him. Yeah, maybe not $10 billion.
- [57:23]
B
Well, they've quietly arrived, arrived at settlements with Mike Flynn, Paige and like, you know, I think the family of Ashley Babbitt as well.
- [57:30]
C
Totally.
- [57:31]
B
Yeah. This is the, the, quite literally the fox guarding the hen house.
- [57:35]
C
Yeah, I think it's gonna be hard for them to do 10 billion without that word getting out, but like some subset of it, like, and at the same time, they're taking the position that the Presidential Records act is unconstitutional. So, hey, maybe they don't need to preserve any records of this at all. Now, DOJ is governed by a different federal statute about records. But, but it's still like, it is. The, the lawsuit is preposterous and like, really alarming. But in some ways, like the possibility of it being resolved internally is even more concerning to me.
- [58:03]
B
So that's where we are more of my conversation with strict scrutiny host Kate Shaw, right after this quick break. Runaway country is brought to you by Remy. I am a teeth grinder. It's loud, it's annoying, and it shatters your molars if you let it go unabated. That's why I need a mouth guard. I mean, don't we all? In these stressful, anxiety producing times, Remy night guards are the only FDA cleared and clinically tested at home. Impression kit night guards on the market. Not only do they help prevent teeth damage from grinding, they also help reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain. And they improve your sleep quality. You'll get the same professional quality and comfort as a night guard from the dentist for 80% less of the cost by taking your own impression from the convenience of your home. Remy saves your impressions so you can enjoy the convenience and savings of Remy Club where they ship a new top and bottom night guard to you every six months. Here's how it works. After you purchase, your impression kit comes straight to your door. You follow Remy's step by step instructions to get your perfect impression. Remy crafts and ships you your custom fit nightguard. You get your night guard back and you start protecting your teeth. So protect your teeth with Remy by using Code alex to get 50% off. 50% off your new night guard with Remy club. Subscribe and save. That is 50% off at shop r e m I.com Alex with code Alex thank you to Remy for sponsoring this episode.
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C
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- [60:18]
B
Well, that brings me to the sort of like, penultimate question here, which is about what happens when this goat rodeo finally comes to a conclusion at the end of 2028. And we already know that Trump is. I mean, Trump has said out loud, I'll pardon everyone who has come within 200ft of the oval. That's literally a statement from the President of the United States. Can you fucking imagine? Sorry again. You worked in President Obama's White House counsel's office. President Obama and President Biden had far fewer pardons than at the end of their second terms than Donald Trump does now. Donald Trump has made over 1,700 pardons. I would love it if someone could. I mean, I don't know who has the time to do this, but just track the pardons with and do a concentric circle. What is it, a Venn diagram with how much business each pardon represented either for the Trump family or the associates of the Trump administration. Because to me, this really smacks of pay to play. Or like a profound level of corruption that is. I mean, we don't talk about the pardons and we don't talk about the fact that Trump has every intention on making sure that nobody pays a price for the profound level, I believe, of criminality inside this administration. First of all, just put into context with me what it meant back in the before times to issue a pardon and what it means now.
- [61:45]
C
In some ways pardons are just like public, you know, service in government as like a public trust, like as a thing that you sort of spend. This sounds like maybe kind of ridiculously naive or saccharine like in the middle of the, or beginning of the second Trump administration, but like it really was about doing the work of the American people and not and sort of engaging in kind of self interested or self serving behavior with your government power was literally unthinkable. These are not perfect administrations. But I am telling you in the administration of Barack Obama, and I think this is all also true about the Biden administration, like people made mistakes like these were not perfect places, but like self interest and self dealing were not what anyone was there to engage in. And that feels like the thing that people in this administration are the most interested in engaging in. And so pardons, I mean, I think that probably Obama and Biden did too, you know, engaged in too few pardons. But that's, but, but regardless, like the pardons that were given and obviously the sort of Hunter Biden pardon and some of the late Biden pardons were controversial too. But if we're just talking about the Obama administration, you know, these were sort of policy based and sometimes individual circumstances based. But the idea of a pardon is just the dispensation of mercy based on individualized circumstances that the formal law doesn't always account for. And this is, there is a very, very long and storied tradition of executives, whether we're talking about governors in states or presidents having this power of the dispensation of mercy and whether it's again handed out in individual or sort of class circumstances, individuals convicted of what are later understood to be unjust like marijuana laws. That's the purpose of the pard, far as I can tell, the mass pardoning of the J6ers and then people who have managed to hire these like powerful intermediaries who can get in touch with somebody senior in the Trump administration or the Trump family, those are the people who've been the recipients of these pardons, not individuals whose circumstances like warrant the exercise of mercy. And it's like, I agree we don't talk about it enough. It's both on its own terms, deeply disheartening, a perversion of justice, and also just emblematic of the kind of guiding ethos of this administration, which could not be more different from, you know, the administration's past.
- [63:53]
B
I'm going to ask a stupid question, but I just want to, I want to turn the screw a little bit. When you mentioned that Biden's pardons at the end of his presidency were controversial, including pardoning his son in part preemptive pardons, pardoning Anthony Fauci, pardoning Liz Cheney, I think a lot of Democrats, some Democrats thought, well, yeah, you better do that, cuz we know what, what, what awaits them when Trump has sworn into office. Other people said, you're opening the gates to way more. You've broken the seal effectively. Where do you stand on that? And I mean, I would assume if we seem to ping pong between extremes here in terms of presidents, do Democrats need to be more aggressive in pardoning preemptively people who may be targets of a future Republican presidency?
- [64:42]
C
It so much depends on just kind of how much of an outlier Trump and the way he has conducted this presidency is like in some ways, like, I don't think we're gonna have future Republican presidents who are self serving and vindictive in at least in this extreme way that Trump is and has been. But I don't know for sure. I mean, I kind of think that the sort of the way that Biden did the pardons at the end was sort of the worst of all. If he was gonna do these blanket pardons, he should have done them for sort of more individuals. It was a, you know, a rel. Not a random list, but an under inclusive race list in certain respects in terms of who might be targeted. So if you had the sense that he was going to be vindictive enough to go after political adversaries, maybe you should have cast a wider net in terms of the kinds of preemptive pardons that you were going to hand out. So I hate it. But is that fact that I hate that it's necessary? I didn't hate that it was done, I hate that it was necessary and that again, it didn't go far enough. But is that fact causally responsible for the fact that Trump is going to issue these, you know, enormous, sweeping pardons of like, everybody who's been in or near the Oval? Like, absolutely not. And I think it's just like completely tendentious for anyone to suggest that, you know, because Barack Obama once said, like, I have a pen and a phone. Like, we have Donald Trump, like, deciding to upend government as we know it. And similarly, I don't think that because Biden did these couple dozen pardons at the end of his term that somehow created a permission structure for Trump to do the same.
- [66:06]
B
Trump's a bad man and would have been a madman regardless. Regardless of what Joe Biden did in the closing days of his presidency. All right, last question for you, Kate. I know I said it was penultimate, but I meant that liberally. Trump isn't gonna be. Regardless of what happens with Todd Blanche, regardless of what happens with Donald Trump, they will not be in office in 2029. And I just wonder how significant you think the damage they have done to the justice system is. I mean, it may not be populated by stooges and podcasters in the U.S. attorney's office. They may not be firing federal prosecut and stellar records of prosecution, faithful servants of our democracy. But, you know, once you pervert a system that is already opaque to a lot of Americans. Right. And already has felt. I mean, has felt rigged on any number of levels for decades, if not lifetimes, how do you restore that trust? Can you. I mean, how bad is it? How bad do you think he's broken and already, you know, a system that had a lot of work to do?
- [67:08]
C
Yeah, I think it's. It's just really, really bad. I think that the Justice Department is going to need sort of a fundamental rebuild after the end of this administration. And I think that a lot of that is going to require legislation, because I think that the sort of the norms of apolitical decision making and insulation of prosecutors from political influence in the White House, like, those were norms. They were not, not hard law. And it turns out they were really malleable in the hands of a bad actor or a set of bad actors. And so they need to be codified. Some of those limitations, independent sources of authority and oversight need to be created, and all that needs to be done by Congress through legislation. And a lot of that, I think, will run into the buzzsaw of this six conservative justice majority on the Supreme Court because of the kind of vision of presidential control that they hold, I think, will mean that the kinds of reforms that are going to be crucial to the Justice Department might not survive scrutiny in this Supreme Court. So any reform agenda, and this is a drum that we beat on my podcast, strict scrutiny all the time. But any reform agenda must include Supreme Court reform, because no matter sort of how ambitious your vision and maybe effective your vision for kind of reimagining the Justice Department and maybe the federal government writ large. It might not go anywhere if you have this supreme in place. And so you need to fundamentally maybe disempower the Supreme Court, maybe impose term limits, maybe actually add a bunch of seats, maybe all of the above. But Supreme Court reform has to be at the center of these conversations because
- [68:41]
B
we know when Alito and Thomas retire, Trump is going to nominate some fertilized embryos to fill their seats.
- [68:46]
C
Indeed.
- [68:47]
B
Kate Shaw, my friend and brilliant thinker, host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, which, if you're not listening to it, what are you doing? It's so good you should be subscribing, as hopefully you are to this podcast as well. Thank you for ticking through all the perversions of our American justice system just on this light podcast. We started with Seashells and we ended with End Times. I am so grateful for all that you do and all that you think. On behalf of all of us who get to share in your wisdom, thank you for joining me today, bud.
- [69:20]
C
Well, thank you so much, Alex. Great to talk to you and we get to but we'd love to have you on strike scrutiny one of these days.
- [69:24]
B
Oh yeah, please, while you can. Have much to say, but I'll just come and you know, foam at the mouth.
- [69:28]
C
Sounds great.
- [69:28]
B
We love it. Awesome. That's our show for this week. Please don't forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway country with Alex Wagner. And if you are not sick of me yet, please take a look at my substack how the hell with Alex Wagner. Last but not least, if you've been impacted directly by the Trump administration or its policies, send us an email or a one minute voice note@runawaycountryokked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. Runaway country is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Emma Ellich, Frank Haley Jones and Anisha Banerjee, with help from Eric Schutt, Kenny Moffat and Charlotte Landis. Production support from Ben Hethcoat, Katie Long, Adrienne Hill and Matt De Groat. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
- [70:46]
C
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