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- [00:00]
A
I think he got the job because he knows exactly who Trump is and he's giving him exactly what he wants, which is vigorously going after his enemies to a frankly shameful extent and just doing whatever Trump wants without much concern about what the law is or what the facts are.
- [00:26]
B
I'm Jane Coston, and this is what a day. The a show that is stunned to find itself agreeing with ESPN's Stephen A. Smith and asking, why did President Donald Trump watch last night's NBA Finals game with his eyes closed?
- [00:39]
A
Go online, look at the videos. I'm not gonna accuse him of snoring because I wasn't in earshot, but the brother wasn't awake. He wasn't awake. If it was that important for you to be there, why did you, did you look like you were asleep? Didn't you call our former president Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe? Well, what should we call you?
- [01:02]
B
What should we call Trump? Tired Trump a REM cycle Republican? Let me know your thoughts in the comments on today's show, we talk to former federal prosecutor Ken White about Trump's nominee to serve as attorney general and beloved friend Todd Blanche. Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today, Tuesday, June 9, there's a report that an army helicopter went down in the spring. Can you give us an update on that? Are the soldiers okay? The pilots are fine, yeah. And what?
- [01:33]
A
Nobody injured?
- [01:34]
B
President Trump spoke to reporters in New York after the NBA finals about a U.S. army helicopter downed near the Strait of Hormuz. And this afternoon, Trump gave an update on that crash. He blamed Iran for shooting down the helicopter and said the U.S. must respond to the attack. These federal judges are really giving us a hard time. It's really crazy what's going on with the court system. They are giving us a very, very hard time and they shouldn't be doing it. They're hurting our country very badly. Well, that depends on who you talk to, so stay tuned because we'll be talking more about federal judges in a few minutes. But back to President Trump, who ended that press gaggle. Reacting to news that a federal judge struck down the administration's $100,000 fee on new H1B visas. The judge Monday sided with 20 states and ruled that the Trump administration exceeded its authority by raising the fee without congressional approval. H1B visas are meant for high skilled jobs that are difficult to find American workers to fill. The administration announced the astronomical charge in September as a way of preventing foreign workers from taking American jobs. Voters are headed to the polls for primaries today in North Dakota, South Carolina, Nevada, and Maine. As we discussed on yesterday's show, oyster farmer Graham Platner is all but certain to be the Democratic nominee against Senator Susan Collins. South Carolina voters will choose nominees to succeed Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term limited after 10 years in office. Trump's endorsement of Lt. Gov. Pamela Yvette to succeed McMaster could be decisive. And just weeks ago, longtime Representative James Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina Democrats, appeared to be facing the greatest threat to his political future. But after GOP lawmakers rejected the changes to the state's congressional map, it looks like his nomination will be safe and sound. A study commissioned by the Biden administration to investigate alcohol related health harms was released independently on Tuesday. The study had faced pushback from the alcohol industry and a congressional committee. One of the officials involved accused Trump's administration of sidelining the research, an allegation the Trump administration denies. But guess what? The findings were in line with what most of us already knew. Health risks go up with just one drink a day, and no level of alcohol has a protective effect on mortality. Sad. I know. And that's the news. Let's talk about the Department of Justice. Trump made it official. Todd Blanche is his next nominee for Attorney general. After firing Pam Bondi back in April, Trump chose his former defense attorney to lead more than 10,000 attorneys in the federal government. To me, it seems pretty clear why. Trump wants someone who will do what he wants, like prosecute his political enemies or set up a $1.776 billion MAGA anti weaponization fund. But in doing so, Blanche has made a lot of his own enemies, like Senate Republicans who screamed at him during a closed door meeting over the anti weaponization fund a few weeks ago, and judges who just don't trust DOJ attorneys anymore. So what does that mean for Trump's legal agenda? To find out, I spoke to Ken White. He's a former federal prosecutor, partner at Brown, White and Osborne llp, and co host of the podcast Serious Trouble. Ken, welcome back to what a Day.
- [04:48]
A
Well, thank you for having me back.
- [04:50]
B
On Monday, President Trump formally nominated Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to take on the job full time. How exciting for him. Blanche took over the AG role in April after Trump fired Pam Bondi. RIP we miss her. What do we know about how Blanche has run the DOJ so far?
- [05:09]
A
Well, it looks like Blanche is running it the way Trump wanted, which is sort of consciously as Trump's personal lawyer and as you know, the person carrying out the Federalist Society's unitary executive theory that all mechanisms of the government should be directly under the service of the President and there shouldn't be any sort of independence to the Department of Justice. So, you know, when this nomination, which was expected, came out, Senator Dick Durbin said that Todd Blanche has been around and he apparently hasn't noticed that Trump is corrupt. And I think that's exactly wrong. I think he got the job because he knows exactly who Trump is and he's giving him exactly what he wants, which is vigorously going after his enemies to a frankly shameful extent, like in the, you know, the Seychelles case and things like that, and just doing whatever Trump wants without much concern about what the law is or what the facts are.
- [06:06]
B
Yes, we all remember the adventures of James Comey, but I mean, to your point, Todd Blanche was literally Trump's former defense attorney. Now Pam Bondi served as Attorney General of the State of Florida. At some point, there had been the words Attorney General after her name, doing something. What about Todd Blanche? Like, does. I mean, I know what I am asking, but does he actually have the bona fides for this position if he were not Trump's former defense attorney?
- [06:35]
A
I mean, as much as anyone who recently has been up for the job does, considering the President was previously considering Matt Gaetz, I would say he's well qualified. He is a former assistant U.S. attorney. He was a supervisor in the U.S. attorney's office. He understands how the Department of Justice works on some level. That's not to say he respects how it works or how it's supposed to work, but he very clearly, in his public statement of sort of canine devotion to Trump, has demonstrated that he's going to do whatever Trump wants, that he loves him, and he says that literally and openly, and that he sees his job as to be the President's lawyer, the president as Donald J. Trump, the individual, not as the office of the presidency. So that has been his strategy, that he will push the department to do things that attack Trump's personal enemies, to use the Department of Justice as his personal law firm and to carry out his agenda items without, again, any sort of reference to whether they're legal, whether the things that are being said to federal judges are truthful, or whether they were within the lawful authority of the Department of Justice.
- [07:45]
B
We'll get back to my conversation with Ken in a moment. And we don't even need to check with a judge first. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Watch us on YouTube. And share with your friends. More to come after some ads what a Day is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. This hasn't gotten a lot of airtime, but President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission has been meeting regularly not to focus on religious liberty for all, but rather how to further a Christian nationalist agenda in the US Religious freedom is meant to protect individuals rights to hold and practice their beliefs without interference so long as they don't harm others, including children. Pretty sure we can all agree on that. Yet that's exactly what has happened when taxpayer funded adoption and foster care agencies deny kids a loving home that treats them with dignity. Religion is also being used as a tool to discriminate and only allow people who are of the right religion to serve as foster parents. That's exactly what's happened to multiple of Americans United's clients. Liz and Gabe Rutan Ram, a Jewish couple in Tennessee, were ready to foster to adopt a child until a state funded agency refused to work with them because they are Jewish. Amy Madonna, a Catholic mother of three, was rejected because she did not agree to an Evangelical Protestant statement of faith. Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin were turned away because they are a same sex couple. If you believe religious freedom should protect everyone, not be weaponized to turn away qualified families looking to foster and adopt children, we need you to join the fight now. Visit AAU.org crookedtolearnmore and become a member today. This fight is far from over and every one of us has a part to play. What a day is Brought to you by HomeServe owning a home is great. Until it's not. One minute you're sipping coffee in your beautiful kitchen. The next minute you are ankle deep in water from a burst pipe. Repairs don't care about timing and they definitely don't care about your budget. Regular homeowner's insurance usually doesn't cover a lot of the day to day wear and tear, plumbing failures, H Vac breakdowns, electrical issues. You're often on your own. For Those, that's where HomeServe comes in. It's like a subscription for your home. For as little as 499amonth, they've got your back. Repairs hit fast and hard. You could be searching for a contractor in a panic, or you could already be on the phone with HomeServe's 24. 7 hotline scheduling a repair. It's super simple. Choose a plan for your needs and budget and when something on your plan goes wrong, just call their 24.7hotline to start the repair process. They've helped homeowners like you for over 20 years with a trusted national network of 2,600 local contractors. With nearly 4.5 million customers, a 4.8 out of 5 post repair rating, and an a Better Business Bureau rating. They're the real deal. I live in an apartment, so I don't have HomeServe right now, but if I needed it, I would absolutely get it. Even living in an apartment, I've had some home repair disasters that I wish I could have called on HomeServe for, like the burst pipe that took out an entire floor of our building. So join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe for 50% less your first year, go to HomeServe.com wad that's HomeServe.com wad for 50% less savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. Let's get back to my conversation with Ken White. Trump has long wanted, essentially, a servile attorney general. It's interesting because he seems to believe that Democrats have had that, that Barack Obama had Eric Holder, and he believes that relationship to have been Eric Holder was Barack Obama's personal attorney, even though that's not what happened.
- [11:22]
A
Right.
- [11:23]
B
So what's funny is that Trump is getting what he wants in some parts, but he's losing a ton. So how has the DoJ been functioning with this more servile attorney general compared to Trump's first term?
- [11:38]
A
Not well. So they have been noticeably stretching more in all sorts of cases. In other words, the first Trump administration DOJ did some crazy things, but not as overtly and aggressively as they have during this term, and that has yielded bad results. They are down around 20% of their lawyers, which is a lot given how sought after and prestigious those jobs used to be. They resorted to offering bounties to get people to come in and work for the Department of Justice, which is laughable. And their reputation with courts has taken a huge hit. And you can see that not just in the results of judicial decisions, but in the tone of them.
- [12:24]
B
Can I go back to one quick thing? Bounties. In what way? Like, are they getting literally, like, please come work for us. Here is a check.
- [12:31]
A
Yeah, they were offering money for people to come work as US Attorneys, assistant US Attorneys in these hubs that they're trying to set up to do more immigration work and other Trump agenda items work. And that's ridiculous.
- [12:45]
B
That's actually wild.
- [12:47]
A
Yeah. I mean, you would typically have, you know, 50 people trying to get the same one spot as an assistant U.S. attorney.
- [12:53]
B
I've known people who have, you know, in previous times, like the people who went to, like, Harvard, Yale, Duke Law, all being like, I'm gonna be an assistant U.S. attorney. Like, they're gone. They've been gunning for that since they were in grade school and to need to write a check. But you were. You were talking about judges and those losses. You can go on. I was just stunned.
- [13:13]
A
So at the beginning of my career, I was, you know, super proud to say I'm Ken White, and I represent the United States of America. These days, it's increasingly becoming a resume stain, frankly, because the judges are showing increasingly overt disbelief and skepticism about the word of Assistant U.S. attorneys. They are calling out lies in a way, and previously, they would have sort of presumed that was a mistake or an oversight or something like that. They're using scathing language in decisions. And these are all sorts of judges. These are not just Biden appointees or Obama appointees. This includes conservative judges appointed by Republicans, even Trump. So there's been this. Traditionally, you've probably heard use the phrase presumption of regularity, this thought we're going to assume the Justice Department is basically trying to do what it's supposed to, trying to comply with the law. And there has been this deference and respect given by the judiciary to federal prosecutors and federal attorneys, and that has largely disappeared. And it's shocking how fast it happened. So me, now, the current Ken White, who's been a defense attorney for 25 years, thinks it's a good thing if the federal judiciary is no longer going to be automatically trusting and deferential federal prosecutors. But it is a gigantic blow to the prestige and of the Justice Department and to the ability of the Justice Department to get things done, because a lot of things they could get done, they could get done because federal Judges believed Assistant U.S. attorney wouldn't come into my court and lie to me. That is gone. That is completely gone.
- [14:51]
B
Yeah. And it also seems as if, if Trump wants to get the terrible things he wants, then it's gonna be a big problem that the judges whom he may have even nominated won't give it to him. So are judges going to be the biggest check on the president this term because of all of this?
- [15:07]
A
I think they will be. And, you know, a lot of people have sort of given up on the judiciary largely because of the Supreme Court and its decisions and its, you know, shadow docket, or as I call it, the separate but equal docket. But, you know, the truth is that district Court Judges are doing an enormous amount of important work, and they are acting as a brake on some of the biggest extremes of this administration. The thing is, what you see again and again in cases that the administration is losing at the trial court level is a total lack of discipline or effort or planning. So a lot of the things they've done, they could have gotten away with it if they put in effort and time and planning and discipline, but they have none of those things. You know, they don't feel like.
- [15:57]
B
Sounds about right. That sounds right.
- [15:58]
A
They don't feel like putting in the work or coming up with a plausible story. Their sense is, this is what we want. We're the executives, and so we get it. And that's how you get cases that are just facially ridiculous, like the James Comey prosecution for the seashells that every judge in America is going to laugh at, that the most dedicated, you know, right wing legal analysts are embarrassed about. And that has consequences. It has consequences in the credibility of the cases the Justice Department brings and the credibility of every attorney from the Justice Department who shows up in court, including the decent ones.
- [16:38]
B
So here's my question. It was paranoia, but now it just seems like a thing that might be happening even though they're losing. And you said that, you know, they're not even trying does that because they feel as if they can just keep appealing and then the Supreme Court will give them what they want. Like, are they complying with these rulings at all? Or are they just basically saying at some point the conservative Supreme Court will let us have what we want anyway?
- [17:02]
A
It's a mix. On some things, they're counting on the Supreme Court to save them. On others, they're just moving on. So they're taking sort of the public relations and political win for having done this big flashy thing, and then they lose in court and they move on to the next big flashy thing. So the problem is that has lasting consequences for the credibility of the department, and it develops bodies of law that are not favorable to the department. But the problem is that, you know, it's much harder to defend and preserve institutions than it is to corrupt and tear them down. So Trumpism wins if they corrupt the Justice Department, make it a corrupt instrument of Trump, or if they completely destroy its independence and reputation. They win either way because that empowers the unitary executive of Trump. You know, the federal society wins, but people trying to defend the institution lose either if the Justice Department is taken over by corrupt people or if its reputation is permanently damaged, because then it can't accomplish the good things that it does accomplish accomplish.
- [18:06]
B
So the Epstein files have haunted this DOJ since the very beginning. It's their own fault. We've talked about that. And their botched release is likely a large part of why Pam Bondi lost her job, specifically because she could not get past this issue. But last month, Bondi testified on Capitol Hill that it was actually Blanche who had overseen the department's release of the files. Do you think that's going to impact his nomination to some extent?
- [18:31]
A
I think it will. And there's certainly some congressional Republicans, some people in the Senate who are more skeptical about Epstein issues than they are about other Trump issues. But I have not seen a lot of indication that they're willing to push back that hard against something this big. And you know that nominating the AG is a big deal, relatively rare historically from the Senate to successfully push back. And it really does seem as if the public has to some extent moved on, that the prediction, the cynical prediction of the Trump people that eventually everyone would get tired of it and move on to other stuff seems to be mostly true. I mean, it flares up now and then, but it has not been the consistent story it was, you know, in the winter and just a few months ago even. And so, you know, now attention has successfully shifted to, you know, whatever is allegedly happening with Iran today and to other issues.
- [19:30]
B
Ken, as always, thank you so much for joining me.
- [19:33]
A
I'm the bluebird of happiness, Jane. I'm always happy to be here for you.
- [19:37]
B
That was my conversation with Ken White, partner at Brown, White and Osborne llp, and former federal prosecutor. We'll link to his podcast, Serious Trouble in the show. Notes before we go, why does it seem like the Supreme Court always saves its worst decisions for June? Maybe the first gentle breezes of summer fill them with inexplicable rage. But opinion season is officially here, and the Supreme Court is about to reshape some of the biggest issues in our lives. Every week, constitutional law professors Kate, Melissa, and Leah break down the most consequential decisions and why they matter. New episodes of strict scrutiny drop every Monday. Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, celebrate a woman who is swimming the entire length of the state of California. And tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about Catherine Breed, who next month will swim more than 900 miles, roughly five to eight hours a day, dealing with sharks, jellyfish and storms like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe@cricket.com subscribe I'm Jane Coastin, and if Breed succeeds, she will be the first person to ever swim the length of California. Not the first woman. First person ever. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Kaitlyn Plummer, Emily Foer, Erica Morrison and Adrienne Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Kanter. Great help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.