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“No exoneration.” · Pod Save America

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 4: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 5: On today's pod, we're going to talk about Attorney General
• 0:26
  Speaker 5: William Barr's cliff notes version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report,
• 0:30
  Speaker 5: which is something that now exists. And because the three
• 0:33
  Speaker 5: of us only play legal experts on Twitter, we will
• 0:35
  Speaker 5: be joined in this conversation by the former U.S. Attorney
• 0:37
  Speaker 5: for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara. Then
• 0:41
  Speaker 5: we're going to talk about the latest 2020 news, a
• 0:43
  Speaker 5: race that is all but lost for the Democrats who
• 0:44
  Speaker 5: have been planning on running against Mike Pence this entire time.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Woe is us.
• 0:49
  Speaker 5: Before we do that, there are still some tickets left
• 0:51
  Speaker 5: to our New England shows in April, which you can
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: get at crooked.com slash events. We're also adding Pod Save
• 0:55
  Speaker 5: America and Love It or Leave It shows in San
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: Jose and San Francisco in September. And pre-sale for those
• 1:00
  Speaker 5: tickets starts Wednesday, March 27th at 10 a.m. with pre-sale
• 1:03
  Speaker 5: code crooked.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Check it out.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: One thing to add, Love It or Leave It was
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: supposed to be out this week, but with the Mueller news,
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: we're adding a show. So Love It or Leave It
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: will be out this Saturday.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Wow, breaking news.
• 1:15
  Speaker 6: Buckle up.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's get to the big news.
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: Two days after Robert Mueller submitted the final report on
• 1:21
  Speaker 5: his investigation into the Russian attack on our elections, Attorney
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: General William Barr released a four-page letter to lawmakers about
• 1:27
  Speaker 5: the special counsel's report. Barr's letter quotes the following direct
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: line from Mueller's report, quote, And he defines those election
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: interference activities as the social media campaign and the theft
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: and dissemination of Democratic emails. Barr's letter also quotes another
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: direct line from Mueller's report with regards to whether Donald
• 1:57
  Speaker 5: Trump obstructed justice. Quote, while this report does not conclude
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: that the president committed a crime, it also does not
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: exonerate him. But while Barr says Mueller did not draw
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice, Barr and
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, quote, have concluded that the
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: evidence is not sufficient. to establish that the president committed
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: an obstruction of justice defense. Okay, here to help us
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: understand what all of this means, former U.S. attorney, current
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: host of the Stay Tuned podcast, and the author of
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: the new book, Doing Justice, A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment,
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: and the Rule of Law, Preet Bharara. Preet, thanks for
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: joining us.
• 2:35
  Speaker 6: Absolutely, my pleasure.
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: Good time for your book tour, huh?
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to call my book, The Mueller Report, Unredacted,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: See if it would sell well, but yes.
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: So I want to start with the Russian election interference
• 2:51
  Speaker 5: part of the letter before we move on to the
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: obstruction part. Did any of that wording raise any additional
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: questions or red flags for you?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: You know, not as much as what we'll talk about next, obstruction.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, people have been talking about the difference between
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the quote from the Mueller report and the language used
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: by Bill.
• 3:12
  Speaker 6: Barr, and you know, they're slightly different.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: You know, the Mueller report says the investigation did not
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired, etc. And
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the special counsel, and separate from that, and distinct from that,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Bill Barr's letter said the special counsel's investigation did not
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated. So, you know,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: you could have an argument about whether or not there
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: was some quantum of evidence that suggested there was a conspiracy,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: but it just wasn't to the level that you might
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: want to bring a criminal case or to say something
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: more negative about that conduct that related to the coordination
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: potentially with Russia. So I don't see it. I mean, obviously,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: all of this, and people should think of this whole
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: letter as a sanitized and streamlined and shortened and highly
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: abridged version of what is actually in the Mueller report
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and take everything a little bit with a grain of salt, right?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Because it seems to me a little bit of a gambit.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying any of it's necessarily in bad faith,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: but it looks a little bit like a gambit to
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: put in the minds of people an imprint of an
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: assessment of the Mueller report that's only four pages, that's
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: very favorable to the president, and some of it certainly is,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: but I don't know that it's as favorable as this
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: letter makes out, and maybe people are hoping that there's
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: going to be enough of a gap between this letter
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: coming out and the full report being known to the public,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: if it is, that this imprint will be left in
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: people's minds.
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: I mean, how likely do you think it is that
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: Mueller's report contains evidence of other interactions between Trump campaign
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: officials and Russians that may not have just met the
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: bar of a conspiracy charge. Like, I keep thinking, you know,
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: what about Don Jr. saying, I love it, when offered
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton, right? Like, do you think
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: that the Mueller report probably talks about these issues and
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: then just says, and here's why we couldn't prosecute on them?
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: Or what's your expectation there?
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I would expect it would.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: But, you know, there's this great difference between what It
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: appears the Mueller report says about collusion and what it
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: says about obstruction. On the obstruction, and we're going to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: get to that in a second, just to draw the contrast,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: it appears that the special counsel sort of set forth
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: all the bases on which you might find obstruction and
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: all the bases on which you might find mitigating factors.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So we know from that, you know, with respect to
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: that summary, that on the obstruction part, there was like
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a laying out of facts and no decision, but it
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: was all sort of set forth and unspooled.
• 5:32
  Speaker 6: I don't know that that's happened.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: On the Russian interference side, but I would expect it
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: would be because I think Mueller knows that history is
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: going to judge how thorough he was and whether there
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: are gaps and omissions in his analysis and in his investigation.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Whether we'll see all that is obviously a separate question
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: that I'm sure we'll talk about, but I would expect
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: him to be thorough and it would be in the report.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about obstruction for a second. So I want
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: to divide it because I feel like there's been a
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: lot of conversation about what Barr meant, what Mueller actually has.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: So I want to talk about it in terms of
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: substance and then process. In terms of substance, Barr basically
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: says that what Mueller lays out, even though Mueller doesn't
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: reach a conclusion, doesn't rise to the level of an
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: offense of obstruction of justice.
• 6:14
  Speaker 6: What is your interpretation of.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: The substance of what Barr said based on what we
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: know publicly about the lengths Trump went to obstruct justice
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: across various investigations?
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like, look, the problem with Barr... And
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: his weighing in on this, when it's supposed to be
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the determination of the special counsel, that's point one, problem one.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: You have a direct appointee of the president who is
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: weighing in on this when it was supposed to be
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: someone else's responsibility. Then point two is that Bill Barr
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: already seems to have had an opinion of this in
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: that famous memo that he apparently sent unsolicited to the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Justice Department about whether or not certain actions, if they
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: were within the authority of the president, could constitute obstruction,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: like the firing of Jim Comey. And it seems like
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that is his legal view. And it didn't much matter,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: although I can't tell, but it didn't much matter what
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the facts would show. And so in the absence of
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Bob Mueller making a determination about whether or not a
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: crime was committed, Bill Barr, right on cue, sort of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: swoops in to say, no crime here, even though Mueller
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and his team spent 22 months investigating it, couldn't come
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: up with a conclusion. Barr was able to do so
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: in 48 hours.
• 7:25
  Speaker 6: Do you believe that.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Mueller was leaving the conclusion up to Barr, or do
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: you believe that Mueller was intending the conclusion to be
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: left up to Congress? Do you believe Robert Mueller was
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: surprised on Sunday?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much he was surprised. I think
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: this is really the most important question, or one of
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the most important questions about the whole document. My view
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: has been that he was, the way I put it is,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: you know, Bob Mueller was punting to Congress because he
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: didn't want to make this ultimate decision. And Bill Barr
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: came off the sidelines, caught the ball and ran it
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: into the end zone for a touchdown for Trump, which
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: was not what Mueller was expecting. Now, you know, you
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: could say, I guess, once Mueller decided that he wasn't
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: going to make a determination and just lay out the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: facts on one side and the other and not decide
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: himself that he might have, he's a smart guy and
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: his people are smart people. He might have anticipated that
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Bill Barr would put his own, you know, sort of
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: spin and conclusion on it. But I'm not sure that's
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: what was intended. It would be nice to see what
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: was in the document that Mueller wrote. So in other words,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Mueller could have very easily said, you know, we leave
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: it to others within the department. And it's possible Mueller said,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: you know, we leave it to others, including the department
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: or Congress. You know, maybe it's the case that he's
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: totally silent on who he was punting to. But until
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: we see the document, we don't know.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: So I guess I wanted to help people just step
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: back and understand the broader context of what a declination is.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: My understanding is that it is not evidence of innocence
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: per se. It means that they did not have adequate
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: admissible evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Is
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: that an accurate way to understand this document? And can
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: you sort of walk listeners through what this thing was,
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: the process here, kind of the criteria you'd need to
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: meet to prosecute somebody?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and by the way, might I indulge in a
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: brief reference to my book? Because I talk about sort
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: of how the system works and how prosecutors think about
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: these things. I have an entire chapter called Walking Away
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and the considerations that you take into account before you
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: decide to either prosecute a case or walk away from
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: a case. And it seems to me that what the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Mueller team did, like all good prosecutors do, is you
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: see where there's smoke and you see if there's reasons
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to investigate something. And remember, this whole investigation... with respect
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: to Mueller. Mueller's appointment happened in connection with a concern
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: about obstruction. You know, obviously his first goal was to
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: look at this collusion issue, conspiracy issue. But the only
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: reason there is a special counsel is because all of
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: a sudden Donald Trump fired Jim Comey and there was
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: this crisis and it looked like it was done for
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: reasons having to do with obstructing the Russia investigation.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: And here's a point.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: So his whole reason for being is because of the
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: second element, you know, the second component of the report, obstruction.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So what happens is you go through all the evidence
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and you decide, you know, what favors prosecution. And remember,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Although it's true that to bring a case against someone
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: with a criminal complaint or through a grand jury indictment,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the standard of proof is just a reasonable, I mean,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: probable cause. If you have probable cause, which means it's
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: sort of more likely than not that a particular person
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: committed the particular crime being alleged, it's okay to go
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: and get an indictment against that person. Obviously, that's not
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: enough for most prosecutors because eventually you have to be
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. So sometimes
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you have enough evidence. And it's just enough to sort
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: of get your indictment, but you have severe worries that
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: you won't be able to prove it at trial because
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: you don't have it beyond a reasonable doubt. That could
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: be a reason why, in fact, friends of mine have
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: said that they think that's probably what it was. It
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: was in the twilight zone. The sum and quantum of
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: evidence was in that twilight zone between probable cause and really,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: really surefire beyond a reasonable doubt. It could be that
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: he decided that unlike normal prosecutors, in my experience, office,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: for example, if I had sort of equal evidence on
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: both sides and it was a really close question, and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: maybe other prosecutors would disagree with that, given how serious
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: it is to charge someone with a crime and how
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you have the presumption of innocence in court, you sort
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of have a benefit of the doubt idea about people
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: who are going to be charged. And so if it's
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: really close question, probably a lot of people would think
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: don't charge. And maybe if this was not the president
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: of the United States for whom accountability can be had
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: through other means, like accountability through Congress, My guess is
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: that Bob Mueller would have just said, you know, it
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: was a close question and we decided not to bring charges.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: He didn't do that here because there's this other option.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: So it's not like every other case because, as we've
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: seen before and we saw on Watergate, sometimes the special
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: prosecutor wants to lay out the facts for other people
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to make the decision. It seems to me, as we
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: talk about this even more on day two, that Bob
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Mueller was really trying to lay out evidence and facts
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and punt, to use the pejorative, but give it to
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: someone else Congress. That's what it really looks like to me.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: So just one follow up on that and on the
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: process here. So we had this weekend where at the
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: end of roughly 48 hours of work, there's a four
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: page summary of a 22 month investigation that was dashed
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: off by a guy who applied for the job of
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: attorney general with a memo saying the president can't obstruct justice.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: That seems weird to me. And then you also have him,
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: the attorney general, deciding that he and Rod Rosenstein were
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: the arbiters regarding obstruction of justice when that's not what
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: happened in Watergate. It's not what happened with Whitewater. It's
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: not what the Constitution says. So how bothered or not
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: are you by that process?
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of bothered by it because it was also gratuitous.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: It seems to be a favor to the president because,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: as you mentioned in those other cases, so the special
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: prosecutor sets forth facts, doesn't make a determination about whether
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a crime has been committed or not. It's sort of
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: not necessarily up to Bill Barr, especially since the whole
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: purpose of having the special counsel is to show an
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: arm's length distance from the regular decision-making. Obviously, the independent
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: counsel statute expired and the special counsel has to, for
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: constitutional reasons, be under the purview in some general way
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: of the attorney general. But this, I think, causes a
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: cloud to be over the whole sort of final handling
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: of it. So I'm pretty bothered about it. The way
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: to get around concerned about it is to have as
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: quickly as possible, at a minimum, the obstruction portion of
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the Mueller report made public and given to Congress.
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: So Barr says that their obstruction decision is based in
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: part on the fact that the president wasn't involved in
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: What does he mean by that? And did that make
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: sense to you?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Look, so there's this interesting point that people keep making.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And on one level, I guess it has some some
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: common sense grounding. If you're not familiar with the law,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: you're not thinking too deeply. And that is, if you're
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: investigating a crime, and during the investigation of the crime,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: someone lies or obstructs in some way, but there's no crime,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: it seems wrong, according to this theory that Barr seems
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: to be promoting a little bit, it seems wrong to
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: charge someone with obstructing the investigation of a crime that
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: did not happen. And that has a very surface appeal.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: But that's not how the law works. Many, many people
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: have been charged with obstruction when there has not been
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: also an underlying crime charge. Now, sometimes that's the case
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: because the fact of the obstruction prevented the umpire, you know,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: to use the analogy, from finding out whether a crime
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: has been committed. So you're investigating someone for narcotics and you,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: you know, and you go, you have a search warrant
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and you go into the home and the person flushes
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: things down the toilet and you can never prove that
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: it was actually the cocaine. But, you know, maybe there's
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: a cause of action. Maybe there's a criminal prosecution for obstruction.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: That might not be the best example, but That's an
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: example where you see that the obstruction itself prevented the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: investigator from learning the truth. Now, there are other circumstances
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: when it's not quite so clear, not so compelling as that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: But think about what it would mean, as Rudy Giuliani
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: keeps saying, that you can't have a circumstance where you
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: charge someone for obstruction, but you can't do that if
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: you don't have the underlying crime charged also. First of all,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident and haven't done the research yet. When
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani had my job as U.S. attorney, I'm sure
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the office brought many such cases of obstruction. without the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: underlying count. And later, under another U.S. attorney, Martha Stewart
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: was charged in the same circumstances. But now imagine if
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the rule were to go forth, what the deterrence issue
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: would be. If everybody knew, well, now the cops are
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: investigating me, but I can obstruct. And so long as
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: they don't end up charging me with the thing they're investigating,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get away with the obstruction too.
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: You've got to be really good at obstructing, is what
• 16:02
  Speaker 6: you're saying.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: If you're good at obstructing justice, if you come at
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: the king, you can't miss.
• 16:06
  Speaker 6: You know what I mean?
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: You've got to get all that cocaine down the fucking drain.
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: I mean, isn't this what happened to Scooter Libby? He
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: went down for obstruction even though they never actually charged
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: the underlying crime of anyone outing Valerie Plante.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it is a separate crime in and of itself.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: You can't have the rule be, as you were just
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: saying a second ago, and it was a great way
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to make the point, that the prosecution has to be
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: able to prove the underlying crime. It's a separate crime
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: to obstruct and you can't have it. And sometimes it's
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the case that you can't prove it. Look, there have
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: also been, there have been charges brought by Bob Mueller
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that are sort of obstruction type crimes, like lying about something,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: like lying about a proceeding or an investigation. You know,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Michael Flynn was charged with lying and not charged with
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the underlying crime that was being investigated. It happens all
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the time. It makes sense that it happens all the time.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And The argument that's being made here in the letter,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I think, holds no water.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, we don't even have to get we can
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: we can step out of abstraction, you know, by the
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: bar standard. If Trump was committed to obstructing justice just
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: to prevent a quid pro quo with Russia, which may
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: not have constituted a crime or just prevent embarrassing information
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: about the conduct of his campaign or his conduct in
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: business from coming out by bar standard. that isn't necessarily
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: a crime, even though it could involve lying to the FBI,
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: trying to tamper with witnesses, trying to suborn perjury, right?
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, is that, would Barr under questioning be able
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: to defend that argument?
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, just in fairness to Barr, he has
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: not said, like Giuliani has said on television, that in
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: no circumstances could you charge someone with obstruction unless the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: underlying crime is also charged. He does say, in the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: letter that they have, that one has a bearing on
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the other. And he says, as I'm looking at it,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: page three, I think that on the issue of the
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: underlying crime, he says, while not determinative, the absence of
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: such evidence, meaning absence of such evidence of the underlying
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: crime bears upon the president's intent with respect to obstruction. So,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if these circumstances hold here
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: because we haven't seen the report and maybe there's lots
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: of instances of bad things happening with respect to conspiracy.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: It just wasn't enough for collusion relating to the election.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: But you can imagine a hypothetical in which You know,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the person being investigated, you know, really had nothing to
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: do with the thing being investigated. It was a totally
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: innocent bystander. And then later, it appears to have lied
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: about his whereabouts. You know, I suppose there's some connection
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: between the person's non-involvement in the crime and proven non-involvement
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: in the crime and whether or not the later, what
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: looks like it's misleading, was actually misleading or was an
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: innocent mistake.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: That's a limited circumstance. I don't think we have that here.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: But he does allow for that exception.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: But it's also the logic seems so flawed to me
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: because it presumes that Trump would have to know through
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: the duration of his efforts to obstruct justice that his
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: whole team was in fact innocent of the underlying crime.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: And I find that hard to believe when we know
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: that his idiot son was meeting with Russians and sending
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: stupid fucking emails about their attempted collusion in the process
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: and editing statements on Air Force One. about said meeting.
• 19:14
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: So it's like, it feels like they're absolving him in
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: a way that logically is fundamentally flawed to me.
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: Look, by the way, you can also, yeah, I agree.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: You can also have a circumstance in which, you know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: it turns out that the law doesn't make something, uh, illegal,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: but you think, man, you think your intent is to
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: obstruct because you think that, um, that they're going to
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: find evidence of, of a crime you committed, or maybe, uh,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: or maybe you did commit the crime, uh, And you
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: lie about it because you don't want other people to
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: be implicated in it. There's all sorts of reasons why.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: in the absence of a charge of the underlying conduct,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: you could absolutely be found guilty of obstruction. And I
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: think the most important point here is that we need,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: as I said over and over again, and I think
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: people need to clamor for it, the obstruction portion of
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the Mueller report needs to become public. And another reason
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: why I think that seems possible is that my guess
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: is that all these reasons why you don't want to
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: make things public, including grand jury secrecy information, secrecy rules
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: relating to information and classified information, it seems to me
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: that the first part of the Mueller report relating to
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: collusion would be more likely to contain a hefty amount
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: of that kind of material. My sense of things from
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the reporting and using common sense, that on the obstruction side,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that a lot of that information, a lot of that
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: investigation involved voluntary interviews, doesn't implicate the grand jury. and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: wouldn't seem at first blush to involve classified information. It
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: was more of a straightforward sort of shoe leather investigation.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: You talked to a lot of people, you looked at
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the public statements, you looked at some documents that maybe
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: you got from search warrants and emails and other sorts
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of things. You put together your narrative and you see.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And so I don't see why there's any reason without
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: knowing more that that information can't be made public quickly.
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: So What possible reasons would Mueller have for not pursuing
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: an interview with Trump, potentially with a subpoena, particularly since
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: he comes to this conclusion that he can't make a
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: determination either way?
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like he did pursue on a voluntary basis.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, that's been a subject that former
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: federal prosecutors have been debating informally the last number of
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: days and weeks. Maybe he thought, my time is limited.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I got to get this done quickly. He's not going
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: to come without being compelled. to compel a sitting president
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: is going to be a long, nasty fight that will
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: end up going to the Supreme Court. I'm not going
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to get anywhere. And it seems, you know, once you
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: go down that, I'm speculating, and he might have thought
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: once you go down that path, now we're not talking
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: about 22 months. Now we're talking about 36 months or
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: 48 months. And, you know, because you can't abandon it
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: once you go down that path. That may have been
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the reason. It may have been he thought he had
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: enough information otherwise. You know, I don't know. You know,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's the case if you already have a provable case,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: which it looks like he didn't on obstruction, at least
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: He just thought it was a close question. You don't
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: have to bother talking to somebody. And sometimes you want
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to talk to somebody so you can get their point
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: of view and have them explain things, which would be
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: good for, you know, doing a complete investigation. But I
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: think there were other considerations here, and that might be
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: why he didn't pursue it on a compulsory basis.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: So one other piece of this is the fact that
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Mueller's not issuing any more indictments, and Barr makes clear
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: that there's no more sealed indictments. So the special counsel's
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: investigation is wrapping up. But from the special counsel's investigation,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: it's thrown off a number of other investigations, particularly in
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: the Southern District. A lot of conservatives and a lot
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: of people in the media who want to claim that
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: this is an unalloyed victory for Trump are saying the
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: fact that there's no new indictments means that we're at
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: the end of this process. We've learned all we need
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: to know. But is it clear to you right now
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: that there might not be more charges emerged from some
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: of the ancillary investigations that have sprung from the Mueller investigation?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, that could certainly be the case. And it's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: not just cases relating to Michael Cohen in the Southern District.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the reasons that I incorrectly predicted
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that the Mueller report was not imminent was you've got
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Rick Gates, you know, former campaign official and right-hand person
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: to Paul Manafort, just as recently as last week, a
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: letter put in by the special counsel of the court
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: saying he's continuing to cooperate in multiple investigations. So I thought, well,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: unless they reassign that, you know, somewhere else like they
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: ended up doing, Mueller's work is not done. And so
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: a final report is not called for.
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: So you have that.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: You have other things that reportedly have been assigned to
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the Eastern District of Virginia and the National Security Division.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Of course, the things that are going on in my
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: old office that I just read about in the paper. Yeah,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: so there's a lot of potential future. And also, the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Manhattan DA's office may have other things that come from
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: their investigation and prosecution of Paul Manafort. You have the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: New York Attorney General. So yeah, there are a lot
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of other things going on. And it's hard to predict,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: just in the same way that some people really thought
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: that you would have more indictments relating to conspiracy and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: collusion coming out of the Mueller investigation, and they were wrong.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: The opposite could also be true. You just don't know.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: It's speculative.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: So are you on board with the idea that Sunday
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: was the best day of Donald Trump's presidency or not?
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: That combined with the prosecution of Michael Avenatti, maybe you
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: could call it a good 36 hours. Also, ironically, by
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: my old office. Look, it almost doesn't matter. Donald Trump,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I guess, did a decent job of PR in saying
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: over and over and over again, making the threshold question,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: was there collusion or not collusion? And even though, you know,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: in different circumstances, had there been no investigation of collusion,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and you had a special counsel say, literally, in writing,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: on the question of whether or not the President of
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the United States obstructed justice... And to say in writing,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you know, anticipating, presumably, which I like, presumably anticipating the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: hot rhetoric that always comes out of Donald Trump's mouth, saying,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: you know, this court proceeding totally exonerated me. It's total exoneration.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: There's no collusion, even though the question of collusion was
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: not presented. There was also no donuts. There's no collusion,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: also no donuts. That's not what was addressed. And so
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Special Counsel Mueller puts in the report, while this report
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: does not conclude that the president committed a crime, It
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: also does not exonerate him, almost as if he's anticipating
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: the retort from the president. The idea that you have
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: someone like Bob Mueller saying, yeah, I did a thorough investigation.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: And it is it seems to be the case that
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: there's a, you know, by definition, if you say you
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: couldn't resolve it and it was a close question, you're
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: saying there's an arguable case that the president United States
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: obstructed justice. That should have been a low point.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: In the presidency.
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: One would hope.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one would hope. I mean, you know Mueller better
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: than we do.
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: Like, that does seem out of character for Bob Mueller
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: to just use the term, this does not exonerate him,
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: if he didn't feel like there, right? I mean, is
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: that just us, or is that a fact?
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: No, that caught my eye also. And what's interesting, and,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: you know, to Bill Barr's credit, he put that sentence in,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the letter. I mean, of course, I think he had to,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: because he's, you know, I'm not sure Matt Whitaker would
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: have been smart enough to do that. Because obviously that
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: sentence will come out later.
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Matt Whitaker is too busy doing deadlifts in the corner,
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: not reading this thing. Can I tell you, is this
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: not a failure by Mueller, at least in the near term,
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: to understand the political impact? Because obviously his assignment was
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: criminal in this investigation. But I can't help but compare
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: his silence and whether that's his fault or Bill Barr's
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: fault is up to others to decide, versus Comey's statement
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: where he exonerated Clinton and but crapped all over her
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: at a press conference and then released a letter right
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: before the election. It's hard not for me to compare
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: the way they rolled out these decisions and the political
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: impact of his relative silence, Mueller, versus Comey's explosive statements.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Well, if you take them one at a time, I
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: think the Comey's explosive statement has been roundly criticized by
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: most people. He had the peculiar experience of being excoriated
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: by both sides. And then you had Rod Rosenstein actually
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: using that, I think, as a pretextual reason for firing
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Jim Comey the way he, you know, he uttered disparaging
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: information about Hillary Clinton, who ended up not being charged
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: with anything. So that's probably not the right way to go.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: There's some argument that Mueller, you know, could have said something.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: You know, typically there's some kind of announcement, and maybe
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: he could have decided, you know, to make clear that
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: he'd be prepared to testify before Congress. You know, I
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: don't know. I think Mueller, probably given the megaphone of
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the president and knowing the lunacy of trying to get
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: into a fight in the mud with the president just
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: decided to keep quiet. I mean, it's the most silent
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: special prosecutor slash independent counsel we've ever had in history.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it.
• 28:00
  Speaker 6: But doesn't that suck?
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, you have a president who's a fucking lunatic
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: willing to lie and say anything and he's shutting down.
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, we're speculating, but that's, that's a very
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: unfortunate outcome of this behavior from Trump.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: No, I totally agree.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: But that's why we need to, that's why you need
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: to see the report.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: He, he, Mueller has spoken, you know, not at a
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: microphone and a podium, but he's spoken through his indictments
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and the complaints and the court filings. And there was
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: a lot said. And I think this report probably says
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, I do think that Mueller will
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: care about how history judges the investigation, how thorough he was.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: He's also not going to worry that he's disappointed some
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: people who thought that, you know, he would be the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: savior and deliver America from Donald Trump. But you know,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: if he found stuff that's bad, I bet it's laid
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: out in the report. And, you know, I had initially
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: thought that if the report is overall, you know, good
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: for the president, that Bill Barr and others would be
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: rushing to send it to Congress. I was wrong about
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: that because I hadn't fully appreciated that they would have this,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of shrewd strategic move of saying the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: report is great for the president, writing a nice four-page letter,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: you know, giving the highlights of why it's good for
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the president with, you know, one nod to a negative thing,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: And then delaying for a long time while this, as
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I said at the beginning, while this version of the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Mueller memo and report is imprinted on the brains of
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: lots and lots of people. So when later it comes out, well,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a little bit more of a
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: mixed bag for the president. Everyone's moved on and it's
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: kind of old news. And I worry about that. That's
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: why I think this stuff needs to come out right away.
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: Preet, are there any other burning questions that you have
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: about either the report or the process that we haven't
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: asked you that you're... you're looking forward to having answered?
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: You guys are very thorough. Look, there are some odd things.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I keep thinking about Michael Flynn and the plea he got.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not being critical, and I'm sure everything was done
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: correctly and in good faith and above board, and sometimes
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: it happens that you give a cooperator a good deal
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: and you think they're providing substantial assistance, but for whatever reason,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: you can't make some further case. But, you know, there's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff with Michael Flynn is working for
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Turkey and the weirdness of the potential rendering of this
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen. And I have some interest in
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: this because I had some interactions with President Erdogan who,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: before Trump became president, tried to get me fired. All
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: of which, by the way, is outlined in the book.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: But I'd like to see what happened with that. I
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: don't know what happened. I don't know if that'll be
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: in the report. It seems like it, It might not
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: be because it doesn't really address, it doesn't really fall
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: into the category of Russian collusion or obstruction. But there
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: are little things like that that I think are curious
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: that over time we'll have to figure out what happened.
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: Preet, thank you so much for walking us through all this.
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: The book is Doing Justice, A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment,
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: and the Rule of Law. Go buy it. We're always
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: grateful to have you on this podcast. Thank you so much, Preet.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: Thank you, gentlemen. If you buy enough copies, Don Jr.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: is convicted.
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: Yes, please.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: All right, guys.
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: I want to get into the politics of all this,
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: but I want to start with the last question I
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: asked Preet, which is, what other questions do you guys
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: have after reading Barr's letter about the investigation? What are
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: some of the burning questions you're like, hey, what about that?
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: Before we get into the politics.
• 31:23
  Speaker 6: Of it all.
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so... All of them.
• 31:27
  Speaker 6: My biggest question after reading the bar letter... Well, I
• 31:30
  Speaker 6: have two questions.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: My one big question about the substance is why did
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: so many.
• 31:34
  Speaker 6: People lie about all this?
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my big one.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: There's so many lies around Russia, around Russia interference, around collusion,
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: around the Trump Tower meeting, around what happened on the plane,
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: what happened with Roger Stone.
• 31:45
  Speaker 6: There's been a lot of allegations....
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: From Michael Cohen about all of this. Michael Cohen lied
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: to Congress about this. Flynn's going to go to jail
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: for lying about this.
• 31:55
  Speaker 6: Manafort.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: So that's my big question on sort of how did
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: all these lies, why did so many people care so
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: much about concealing this? It may not have risen to
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: a crime, but I'm interested of what is in that
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: report short of.
• 32:07
  Speaker 6: A crime to explain this behavior. That's one. My second
• 32:09
  Speaker 6: question is Barr.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: You know, the coverage of Barr has been very much
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: that he is a serious old guard Republican whose views
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: on executive power happen to align with what Donald Trump
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: wants to happen, which is that he can't be charged
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: with obstruction or a crime, and that all power flows
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: from him as the executive, and therefore he can do
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: whatever he wants at the Justice Department. But that Barr's
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: motivations may be partisan, but he's not a Trump funky.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: He's not some loser Trump pulled from the bottom of
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: a Republican barrel.
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: He's a serious adult.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: He's not Rudy.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: So he's certainly not Rudy, who's lost a step. So
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: my assumption in reading.
• 32:45
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Rudy Giuliani, the smartest legal mind in the game right now.
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's true. He's a fucking.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Rudy Giuliani is the Bill Mitchell of this episode.
• 32:53
  Speaker 6: He's a Rubik's Cube made flesh.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: Rehnquist meets Mitchell, yeah.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: But so my assumption in reading this Barr letter is
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: he is not going to write something that is dishonest
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: to the point where he will be summarily embarrassed and
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: revealed to be a fraud when we actually see the report.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: So my assumption is that this is defensible. But I
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: want to understand just how much he is doing work
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: for Donald Trump in this memo, specifically around collusion. Obviously,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: he's doing a ton of work for Trump around obstruction
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: by basically saying, you know what, Mueller didn't reach a conclusion,
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: but guess what I can, right? I find that strange,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: but you kind of, it's all out there. But my
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: question is, how much work is he doing to protect
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump on the other matters where we don't know
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: what evidence Mueller gathered?
• 33:36
  Speaker 6: Those are my two big questions.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, I really would like to know how you
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: prove or disprove corrupt intent if you never interviewed the
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: president about the underlying facts.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: But his intent.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: I don't, and I do not think, I understand Preet's,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: you know, analysis that it would be a really long,
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: onerous subpoena process. But, I mean, that is the precedent.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: And it seems like written questions are completely insufficient. And
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: I think there's a lot of caveats like that, like
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: some of the things Lovett got into, that.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: Make this report clearly a mixed bag, which is why
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: it is deeply frustrating, although I guess not that surprising,
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: that the media is willing to treat this as an
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: exoneration and parrot that language from Trump. I mean, we
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: should be clear. This thing could have said, Donald Trump
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: did a daily conference call with Russian intelligence agents, and
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: he would be tweeting, no collusion, total exoneration, right? Like
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: his spin is, is nonsense, but I, I really, yeah,
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: it's been as a constant. I really struggle how we
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: are asked to take seriously a four page summary of
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: this massive investigation by a handpicked member of his cabinet
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: who applied for the job, exonerating him.
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: Uh, so I have a couple of questions that are
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: smaller ones. What was with Paul Manafort handing sensitive polling
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: information over to Constantine Kalimnik, who the FBI has decided is, um,
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: linked to russian intelligence what is the significance of that
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: we heard about it it only came up in court
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: because manafort lied and broke his plea deal otherwise we
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: wouldn't have heard about it and there's a redaction there
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: was a redaction error right but that's in there um
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: why did the trump campaign when it was being run
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: by paul manafort seek to change the republican party platform
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: at the convention in cleveland so it was friendlier to
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: russia what was that all about um why did jared
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: kushner try to set up a secure back channel communication
• 35:28
  Speaker 5: to russia during the transition what was going on there
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: Who directed Roger Stone to reach out to WikiLeaks? We
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: know that it said in the indictment for Stone has
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: been directed by a senior member of the campaign.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: And where's the Jerome Corsi indictment that we've been reading about?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: And the Jerome Corsi thing.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: That was especially strange, by the way, because because of
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: a leak, we know that there was actually an agreement drafted.
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: Right. There were charges.
• 35:51
  Speaker 6: Corsi leaked it.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: So, like, it seems strange to me that there was a.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: that they got to the point where they were literally
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: writing up the charges, and then we don't hear anything
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: John Corsi, by the way, is a fringe, creepy journalist
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: who lies and creates conspiracy theories about Democrats for decades,
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: including saying Barack Obama is a quiet Muslim. He's a
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: terrible person. He is.
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: Lovett, to your first question, why all the lies, to
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: offer the most generous interpretation to all of these flunkies
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: who are going to jail, perhaps they lied because... they
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: knew that if they told the truth, the media would
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: make a big deal about more Trump-Russia connections. And they
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: thought that they could just, that the more Russia stuff
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: that comes out, the more contacts with Russia, the more
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: they talk about working, talking to Russians, working with Russians,
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: whatever it may be, that it would hurt Donald Trump
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: and it would hurt his political reputation. And so they
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: thought they could get away with those lies and they
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: were stupid enough to lie, even though lying to federal officials,
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: to the FBI, to the special counsel's office, could land
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: you in jail, I guess.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: That's the most generous interpretation.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that raises another question, too, because in the
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: Barr memo, he talks about tacit or explicit agreement. And
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: I think we are owed an understanding, based on the evidence,
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: what exactly that means, right? So there's collusion, which I
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: think we've all seen plenty of evidence of. Donald Trump
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: gave a speech calling on there to be a hackt.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: If you know that night they hacked Don Jr.
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: Saying, I love it. So there's evidence of coordination.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: There's evidence of Donald Trump wanting the benefit of Russia's
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: involvement in the election. What that technically means to Mueller,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: what that technically means legally, I don't think we know
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: yet because we haven't seen the underlying description yet.
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: Of what they gather.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: I've also just never understood what collusion means in a
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: legal framework.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: It doesn't, nothing.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: Right, and I think that's always been a challenge in
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: that we are, it's something that's deeply unethical and un-American
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: and screwed up to coordinate with a Russian, anybody, intelligence agents,
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: the IRA, their social media farm, but it's not necessarily
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: legal unless you can prove this broader conspiracy, which has
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: been challenging because it all happened in plain sight.
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: And from a legal sense, there were just a couple
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: possibilities with that conspiracy. It was either a conspiracy directly
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: related to the hacking and dumping of emails. So, you know, communication,
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: coordination with the Russians had to be a conspiracy related
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: to that crime. Or it had to be related to
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: the social media campaign. It had to be related to
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: that crime. The other theory that some legal scholars put
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: out there was that it was conspiracy to defraud the
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: United States, which went to the, you know, because it
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: is illegal to seek assistance from a foreign government to
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: help you in an election, and that maybe that would
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: be proved.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: So clearly... those, like you said.
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: Tommy, it's hard to actually prove conspiracy related to the
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: two election-related crimes, and it was clearly hard to prove
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: one related to, you know, defrauding the United States and
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: committing an election crime, which apparently, you know, what we
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: know now is that the president has only been implicated
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: in a couple of campaign-related felonies, and those have to
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: do with Michael Cohen.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: Can I just take one other point? I mean, the
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: goalposts shift so often that we don't Are we playing football?
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure. I don't remember. But we know that
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: Trump stood next to Putin in Helsinki and said that
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: he had gotten extremely strong and powerful denial about election
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: interference generally. So if we're exonerating Trump in the sense
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: that we are saying everything he said is actually accurate,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: the report completely contradicts him. Mueller said they absolutely did.
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: The Russians tried to interfere with the election, and he
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: indicted a bunch of Russians for doing so. So like,
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: we know that there was interference in our election, period.
• 39:30
  Speaker 6: We do.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: And we know that Trump lied about it. And we
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: know that Trump lied about it.
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: We know that Trump was told that there was Russian
• 39:35
  Speaker 5: interference in our election as far back as his first
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: intelligence briefing in August of 2016, and yet he continued
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: for months to deny that Russia had any involvement whatsoever. So,
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: you can say that's not a crime, but, and David
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: Corn has a great piece about this today in Mother Jones, like,
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: It is, Trump has, multiple times, Trump has betrayed the country.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: For his own personal gain.
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: He has put the Russians' view of things ahead of
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: what his own intelligence community has said over and over again.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: Including about, like, North Korean rockets.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: That is a fact. That has been substantiated by everyone.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's, I think that, like, stepping back,
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: I think the biggest question for me right now is,
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: you know, we haven't seen the Mueller report.
• 40:17
  Speaker 6: We've read the Barr report. of the Mueller report. And
• 40:19
  Speaker 6: we've watched a lot of.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: The CliffsNotes version.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: And now we're doing the Pod Save America report on
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: the Barr report on the Mueller report. And a lot
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: of what we'll discuss next is the Pod Save America
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: report on the media report on.
• 40:29
  Speaker 6: The Barr report on the Mueller report.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Which, by the way, spoiler alert, not a good grade.
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: No, no, low grade. Not a crime, not exonerated. No exoneration!
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: We're just going to sell yelling.
• 40:45
  Speaker 6: No exoneration here. No exoneration. Episode title? Or we could
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: say it's clearing a low bar. There's a lot of options.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Again, what we're talking about then is, the interpretation of
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: the interpretation of the interpretation of Donald Trump's conduct, which
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: again will be written up, which is why we need
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: the underlying report. But the big question I have is look,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: conservatives cheering over playing their hand right now. Uh, the media,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: I think fell into the trap of it and said,
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Oh look, no collusion was the big headline, right? There's
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: a chance that this feels a little bit like how
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: we felt on election night in 2018, which is, uh,
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: it took weeks to discover that what we were actually
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: looking at was, uh, in the actual substance of what
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: took place, a much better event, a much worse event
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: for Republicans than we realized at the start.
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: The Los Angeles County Registrar is the people digging through
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: the Mueller report right now.
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: Absolutely.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: And I think because, look, there is a chance that
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: we'll eventually get huge pieces of the Mueller report and
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: it bears out Barr's reading faithfully, right? That what Barr
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: describes is a fair rendering of what Robert Mueller lays out. However,
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: it is, I think, a good possibility that what we
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: end up with is a document that says Here's a
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: ton of evidence that Donald Trump obstructed justice, and here's
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: a ton of evidence of a huge number of incredibly
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: despicable acts and behaviors that maybe did not rise to
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: the level of a crime, but nonetheless rose to the
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: level of a betrayal of the country. And oh, by
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: the way, here's a list of all the other people
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: we have indicted and will indict based on this investigation,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: the culmination of which is a massive, successful investigation into
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: a criminal presidency.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: We're into the politics, but let me just set it
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: up here. Despite.
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: Mueller's specific intention that the report does not exonerate Trump.
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: Trump tweeted, No collusion, no obstruction, complete and total exoneration.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Keep America great. Later, he said to reporters, quote, This
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully someone's going
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: to look at the other side. This threat to investigate
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: Democrats and the Obama administration was repeated by Trump's family,
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: Republican members of Congress, and just about every right-wing pundit
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: in the Fox universe. Meanwhile, the New York Times ran
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: an analysis piece with the headline, A cloud over Trump's
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: presidency is lifted that says, quote, the end of the
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: investigation without findings of collusion with Russia fortified the president
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: for the battles to come, including his campaign for reelection. Guys,
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: how has the political dynamic changed today and how many
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: clouds have really lifted?
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, certainly the fact that there were no
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: further indictments in the report is good news for Trump. Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: Like fact. But. again, we don't need to put aside
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: our skepticism. We don't need to put aside our feeling
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: that it is weird that all these people lied about
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: their connections with Russia. We don't have to put aside
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: the fact that we now know, thanks to a lot
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: of what was learned in this investigation, that there was
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: a major campaign finance violation committed by the President of
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: the United States. We don't have to feel weird about
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: the fact that we had Mike Flynn sitting in the
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: National Security Advisor's office getting briefed on literally the most
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: sensitive intelligence that exists on the planet while he had
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: done a bunch of things that have led him to
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: be talked to by the FBI for a very long time.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: So like, I don't fundamentally think the politics have changed
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: because the politics out in the country have not been
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: about the Mueller report. I think that's pretty well reported,
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: well trodden territory. In DC, the Mueller report is likely
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: to be the beginning of a conversation about the substance
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: of the report that we haven't seen yet. So again,
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: I just, it would be really great if, I know
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: we don't live in this world where people wait and
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: read documents before commenting on them, but if people would
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: just take a beat, and see what the thing says,
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: and then let's decide the political impact.
• 44:21
  Speaker 6: What a stupid idea, Tommy.
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: I know, I know. I ironically talk about it.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: How should House Democrats handle this?
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: Jerry Nadler, head of the Judiciary Committee, has joined every
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: other Democrat on the planet in demanding the full report
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: be released. And he also said this on Fox. Quote,
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: the job of Congress is much broader than the job
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: of a special counsel. We have to look for abuses
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: of power. We have to look for obstruction of justice.
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: We have to look for corruption. How hard and publicly
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: should House Democrats be looking for these things? Some people
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: are saying, oh, this is going to take the wind
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: out of the sales of the House Democrats' investigations?
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: I think it's really important that they go very hard.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: And I say that because I think, when I was
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: watching the reaction from conservatives today, and when I saw
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: the Barr letter, I was like, oh, wow. I was
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: not imaginative enough to understand just how exactly this would
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: play once the Mueller report happened, because it is a
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: good cop, bad cop thing. The good cop is Barr,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: who's ostensibly laying out a legal rationale, who mixes in
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: his own opinions with Robert Mueller's conclusion, right? Mixes in
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: his views on obstruction, mixes in his views on the
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: interpretation of what he says about collusion to provide this
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: gloss on the report. And from that, it gets into
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: the hands of Lindsey Graham and people like Trey Gowdy
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: and people like Brit Hume and people on the right
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: who then go on television and basically say, Robert Mueller
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: finally did it. He proved that the real criminals are
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, loretta lynch and james comey that
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: they are the real villains and so what is amazing
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: is how quickly transition happened between robert muller being on
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: a witch hunt to robert muller now being brought onto
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: the side doing the hunting.
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: I know i thought that today too like you know
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: when trump was asked today uh do you you know
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: respect robert muller do you think he did a good
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: job and trump basically gives him the thumbs up today
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: you know and was like yeah it's like i might
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: wait until i read the report although i mean That's
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: if Trump was being prudent. Trump doesn't care. He'll read
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: the report. If the report's bad, he'll just be like, no,
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: it's a witch hunt.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: He's the worst. Right. Throw him in jail.
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: It's literally the job of Congress to provide oversight of
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: the executive branch. Yeah, literally. It's in the Constitution. And
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: yet there is this DC conventional wisdom that voters are
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: somehow aware of or concerned about the number of hearings
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: that are happening on a very like that would be
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: news to the people at C-SPAN who actually air these
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: things and get like six people watching them. So I
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: think everything short of impeachment will never be noticed by anyone.
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: No one cared that there were 10 Benghazi investigations. And
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: you know what? Because there were, we found out about
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: Hillary Clinton's frigging email server. And that was the thing that,
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: you know, changed the course of the election. So there
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: is a precedent set by House Republicans who, you know,
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: Devin Nunes and all these goobers demanded every single document
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: about the Hillary investigation. Peter Strzok's texts, like all these things.
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: That's the precedent. So we need to get our hold
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: of all these documents, all the underlying investigative work. There
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: will be things that are not released for sources and
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: methods reasons that are classified, but we should push to
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: get literally everything out and to look into any leads
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: that were not followed up on by Mueller because he
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: was looking at criminal actions, not ethical, moral, legal questions.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: I will say one thing.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: I do think it makes impeachment tougher, not because of
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: the underlying facts that may still come out, but because
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: of how the Democrats handled this over the last several months.
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: I remember when, um, the president was implicated by federal
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: prosecutors in multiple campaign felonies after Cohen went down, thinking, like,
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: this is the moment that if House Democrats, we don't
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: know what Mueller's going to come up with, right? Like,
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: at that point, we had no idea what Mueller was
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: going to come up with. They could have said, yes,
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: that is an impeachable offense. If he wasn't president right now,
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: it is very likely that Donald Trump would be indicted
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: for what happened with those hush money payments. Very likely,
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: because they are, it is a crime that Michael Cohen
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: already pled guilty to. And We just they didn't make
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: the case. And then, you know, you had Nancy Pelosi
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: a couple of weeks ago who said it's got to
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: be bipartisan if we do it. Clearly, after the reaction
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: of Republicans over the weekend, there is not going to
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: be any. But it was probably clear before that, in fairness.
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: But clearly now there's not going to be any kind
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: of bipartisan, you know, rush to have any kind of
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: impeachment hearing. So I do think, you know, it makes
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: impeachment trickier.
• 48:28
  Speaker 6: Absolutely.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: I think it's also worth saying, like, you know, it
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: may turn out, by the way, that this report, is
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: incredibly disappointing, right? It may turn out that the lack
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: of evidence to prove even non-criminal collusion may turn out
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: to be what Mueller found. And if so, that means
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: this report is not as advantageous to Democrats as many
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Democrats would have hoped. That said, I've seen a lot
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: of people saying, oh, look at how flat-footed the Democrats have.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: They've been waiting for Mueller, that Mueller was going to
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: be their rescue. And it just doesn't accurately describe reality.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: I actually think That doesn't.
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: Even come close.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: It's so insane.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: The other side of the coin to what John said,
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: which is absolutely true, that this idea of waiting for
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: the Mueller report for the basis being bipartisan for holding
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: out until we have the Mueller evidence, I think has made,
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: at least in the short term, this impeachment question harder
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: to answer at the same time. not cable news, not Twitter,
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: elected Democrats, particularly elected Democrats in a position of power
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: and in a position of access to information related to
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: these investigations, have been very responsible in their discussions of Mueller.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: They have not said... It's going to be the end
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: of the Trump presidency. They've said wait and see. They've
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: been very responsible about their role versus Mueller's role. And
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: Democratic candidates on the campaign trail have, A, not been
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: talking about it, and, B, not been counting on it.
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: That has been the case.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: And there have been some people who said, oh, it's
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: because they were waiting to see the smoking gun.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: No.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: Look at 2018. 2018, we just won a midterm election,
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: and it was never about Mueller. That tells you something
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: about how Democrats have been campaigning. and about how the
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: next campaign will unfold.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: How many times have we said that here?
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: How many times have you yelled into the microphone, Bob
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: Mueller's not going to save us? We've said it for
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: like fucking two years.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: And we did it because we wanted to be able
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: to say this right now.
• 50:13
  Speaker 6: We were ready.
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: There's nothing better than blue checkmark Twitter going back into
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: their archives to find the one time they cast doubt
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: on this thing and then retweeting myself. Who are you
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: doing this for, people?
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: I mean, here's the other thing. A hostile regime attacked
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: our election on Donald Trump's behalf. The president knew about it.
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: He encouraged it. He welcomed it.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: He lied about it.
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: And then he tried to cover it up with more lies.
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: All of that is fact. We've seen that in the indictments.
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: Mueller has described that. That has been in reports that
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: have gone unchallenged.
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: He also.
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: lied to the American people about having a massive financial
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: interest in pushing a foreign policy that was favorable towards
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: that same hostile regime. This whole time, he was being
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: nice to Russia during the campaign, saying, oh, my policy
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: is going to be nice to Putin, blah, blah, blah.
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: He didn't tell us that he had a $ 50 million
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: Trump Tower at stake that could have made him $ 300 million,
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: more money than any of his former projects. Lied about
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: it the entire time. Lied about it the entire time.
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: It doesn't, in some ways... Whether this rises to the
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: level of a criminal conspiracy or not, it doesn't matter.
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: It was presidential misconduct and wrongdoing that is out there
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: for all to see.
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: Exactly. And which is why I've never really been concerned
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: about the question of whether we should start impeachment proceedings
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: or not. I don't really care about the moral obligations.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: I just care about the politics. And I think the
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: House oversight committees or the various committees in the House
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: should investigate everything they can to get more facts, to
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: find more information. And all of it will be part
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: of a conversation about around Trump's reelection. And that will
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: be the important part, not what's in this thing.
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: And look, and obviously people are going to talk about
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: health care, they're going to talk about jobs, they're going
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: to talk about all the issues. But weighing the consideration
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: of whether Trump should have a second term, as voters
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: weigh that, part of what should be in their minds
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: is what has come out of this investigation. The president
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: last time he ran for election told you he liked
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: Russia and he told you just trust him. He liked
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: Russia for all these real ideological foreign policy reasons. In reality,
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: he was hoping to build a tower there that made
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: him a lot of money. He lied to you last election.
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: What kind of financial interest do you think he's lying
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: to you about this time? The president lied to us
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: all the time. He stood, as you said, Tommy, he
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: stood on stage in Helsinki next to Vladimir Putin and
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: accepted Vladimir Putin, the guy who attacked our election, his
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: findings over the intelligence community.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: All of this stuff is true. I don't know if
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: this is any kind of exoneration.
• 52:30
  Speaker 6: Well, yes. It's certainly not.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Again, you know, You've seen a lot of people say
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: the conservative line today. And I do think they're way,
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: way ahead of the information, even more than usual, is
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: to say, you know, this is McCarthy called on Schiff
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: to resign from leading the Intelligence Committee. You know, all
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: these conservatives on television talking about how this is a
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: black mark on the on the on news organizations that
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: have been investigating this. whether or not the president committed
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: a crime, something the special counsel was looking at, something
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: I think is quite a reasonable source of journalistic inquiry.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: Several newspapers have won Pulitzer Prizes based on their reporting,
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: none of which has been conflicted. To me, the sin
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: of this weekend is the sin of the past two
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: and a half years, which is recency over importance. This
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: special counsel investigation has produced dozens of charges against a
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: ton of people. It has produced an incredible mountain of
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: misconduct and other evidence of wrongdoing. The evidence of Donald
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: Trump's obstruction has been available to us since he sat
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: across from Lester Holt and said, yeah, I obstructed. I
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: was trying to stop Comey from doing his job, right?
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: So we are in this situation where the Barr letter
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: is the most recent thing. It looks helpful to Donald Trump.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: I think we will look back on this period of
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: time as a low watermark for the but not the
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: end of things like impeachment. Time moves very quickly in
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: this sort of endless Twitter present.
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: And I will say to all the journalists out there,
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: you have a choice right now. You can either go
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: on record defending the dogged reporting of your colleagues that
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: has turned up so much information about this investigation, all
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: of it that's been accurate, except for the stuff that's
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: already been corrected. I think the only thing that has
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: gone without a correction is the fact that Michael Cohen
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: was supposedly in Prague, which wasn't right. You can count
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: on one hand the things that the media has gotten
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: very wrong about this, right? So you can either defend
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: your colleagues and defend their reporting, which has been some
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: of the best reporting we've seen in this country in years,
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: or you can give in to the fucking bad faith
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: attacks by Fox News and the Republicans who are just
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: based on nothing and are trying to just fight this
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: fucking media bias war that they've been fighting.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: For the last 20 years.
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: But you have to go on record. You've got to
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: take a side here.
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: I like that. I mean, look, you can also, if
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: you're Jeff Zucker, you can rethink the emphasis put on
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: repeating news panels about the same stories over and over
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: and over again on evening cable news programs. I think
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: that's a worthwhile debate. But I also think back to
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: during the campaign when people who are at the DNC
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: or on the Clinton campaign said that they believed that
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: the Russian intelligence had hacked their emails and were releasing
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: fake these documents via WikiLeaks. And they were treated like
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: they had tinfoil hats on.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: Like they were crazy people, like they were left-wing Infowars.
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: And that was all proven to be true in the
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: bar summary of this document. So we've come a long
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: way on the facts. There's no reason to be self-flagellating here.
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: There's a lot more to learn since none of us have,
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: you know, read the report.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: And regardless, we just have to go win an election
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: in 2020. And that's going to happen by organizing and
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: talking about issues.
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: I never trusted this Republican Robert Mueller. Never trusted him
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: from the fucking start. Honestly, that square jaw, I don't
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: trust it. That jaw is too square.
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: All right? That is up.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: So, Breitbart's going to take this clip out of context.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: I can't wait. It's going to be great. No, you know,
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: we all accept Robert Mueller's findings. That's what we do here.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: We love Bobby.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Let's do a quick rundown of the latest 2020 news.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: On Sunday.
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand formally kicked off her presidential campaign with
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: a speech in front of one of Donald Trump's Manhattan hotels.
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: Gillibrand called the president a coward and touted her legislative
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: record on the Hill and the frequency she's pushed back
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: on Trump's agenda. Using the theme of bravery, she said, quote,
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: the people of this country deserve a president who is
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: worthy of your bravery, a president who not only sets
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: an example but follows yours. Guys, what did you think
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: of the message of the speech and the strategy of
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: giving it in front of a Trump hotel? Think she
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: was trying to get a reaction from Trump?
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: Poor Kirsten Gillibrand.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: It was a tough day. The timing is tough.
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: The timing is so unfortunate. It's so brutal.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: I think the reality is the only thing that mattered
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: was the timing. You know, Kirsten Gillibrand, I.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: Think, has.
• 56:48
  Speaker 6: I actually.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Look, as I've said before, every single announcement video works
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: on me. I am for every candidate for five minutes
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: after I've seen their announcement video. I'm a huge supporter
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: of them, and they must be the nominee for five minutes.
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: That said, I think Kirsten Gillibrand shares a problem with
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: a number of other candidates, which is they need to
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: find a case for themselves that makes it clear why
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: it should be them over others, why it should be
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: them now against Trump, and a case strong enough to
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: break through. And giving the speech on this Sunday means
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: that nobody heard it.
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: I don't know what the answer to that is.
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: Even before the Mueller news broke and I think sort
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: of swamped all coverage of literally everything in the world, Um,
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: you know, I think that they were probably not totally
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: enthused by the crowd size. I mean, you're going to
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: have a lot of people comparing that crowd size to
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: Kamala Harris in Oakland, getting tens of thousands of people
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: versus several hundred in New York city, which is a
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: bigger place, uh, where you should be able to crowd.
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: So look, it's going to, we got a long ways
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: to go. Uh, all these little inflection points are about
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: getting your name ID up or, or getting donors to
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: believe in your campaign. So they'll give you more money
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: or whatever you need to do. And you know, it,
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: It sucks to have made an announcement on a day
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: when there was news people have been waiting for for
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: 22 months.
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I also think, look, there's a risk in
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: playing off Trump too much, right? Like, how you handled
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: Trump is sort of a big question for all these Democrats. And,
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: you know, we've seen everything from Elizabeth Warren gave her
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: announcement speech, and I don't think she mentioned Trump once, right?
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: It was just a speech that was devoid of Trump altogether.
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, Kirsten Gillibrand's announcement speech was horrible.
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: mostly about Trump. It was about Trump, and in fairness,
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: she had a lot about some of the activists who
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: have pushed back on Trump. It was basically a speech
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: about the resistance to Trump over the last couple years.
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: That's sort of what her message is, and I understand that.
• 58:40
  Speaker 5: But it was a lot about Trump. And I think
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: then someone like Bernie Sanders was sort of in the
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: middle of those two, Warren and Gillibrand, where Bernie was
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: mostly about issues, but he did use this portion of
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: the speech to talk about why him versus Trump would
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: be quite a contrast, right? So you see these candidates
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: doing all kinds of varied ways of trying to figure
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: out how to deal with Trump. But look, Gillibrand talked
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: about paid family leave. That's her big issue. I heard
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: her talk about that in her MSNBC town hall a
• 59:06
  Speaker 5: couple weeks ago. And that to me is a very
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: fruitful area. for conversation, even more so than Trump. She's
• 59:12
  Speaker 5: got this great paid family leave plan, provide all workers
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: the ability to take three months of paid leave, whether
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: they're a new parent, caregiver for another family member, or
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: ill themselves.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: It's like, great plan, go talk about it.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's also, I think one of the appeals
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: of the message of bravery is, I think there are
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: a number of issues where she really did stick her
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: neck out, right? And I think that's true around sexual
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: assault in the military, right? That was a difficult issue,
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: a thorny issue to take on, right? You are going
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: into an organization that is one of the last organizations
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: respected by the American people at a time in which
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: we have such diminishing support for institutions and saying there's
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: a huge problem here.
• 59:49
  Speaker 6: I'm going to take on the brass. on a very
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: difficult issue.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: I think that is part of a worthy case. And
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: I also don't want to be saying, oh, you know,
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: because she caught a bad weekend to announce it, it
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: means her candidate, like that is, that is punditry. So
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: I would say like, you know, to anyone who didn't
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: catch it, everyone should go check out her speech because
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: the truth is a lot of people may have missed
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: it because of what happened over the weekend. But I
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: think she still deserves, right. There's the, there's the punditry
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: that says, oh, people didn't see it. That will hurt
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: her campaign. But that's what each of us should do.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: And each of us should go seek out what she
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: had to say, and make a decision on her own.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: That's the best way to do it. Watch these candidates talk,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: watch their speeches, watch their events. You're going to find
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: more from that than any kind of analysis, including ours.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: How dare you? I know, I know.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders spent the weekend campaigning in California, staging
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: rallies in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco that
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: were quite large, an estimated 12,000 in Los Angeles, 16,000
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: in San Francisco. The Jewish senator also made news by
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: visiting an Islamic center here in Koreatown in L.A., calling
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: on Americans to, quote, stand up to hatred of all
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: kinds and saying, Your background is different than mine. What
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: a joy it is to share that. Guys, what do
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: you think of Bernie's big city strategy here? Not only
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: did he do these rallies in California, after he announced
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: in Brooklyn his next big event was a big rally
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: in Chicago. That's not an early state. What do you
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: think about his big city strategy with all these rallies
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: and also then his visit to the Islamic Center?
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: I'm very impressed that he went to the Islamic Center.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: Me too.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: Not that that... And I hate that I said that
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: because it shouldn't be an impressive thing to do. Everybody
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: should be willing to go to a mosque or an
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: Islamic center and speak with Muslims at a time when
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: they're being targeted by right-wing white supremacists. But it's impressive
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: that he did it, and he did it first, and
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: he deserves credit for that. I find the strategy of
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: going to these big cities and doing big rallies very interesting.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: I still think this is going to be an Iowa-first race,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: and the early states will create momentum for candidates that
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: it's impossible to match. But It does seem like if
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: you can go to San Francisco and collect a ton
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: of data about a lot of people who might volunteer
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: for you when the California primary comes around or give
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: you five bucks to get your donor base even broader
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: and reduce the average contribution, that's a strategy that could
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: pay a lot of dividends down the road. So, you know,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: it also gives you a sense of momentum and excitement
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: and makes people want to be a part of a campaign.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: And that's a critical thing, too. So it seems smart.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think you.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: You rob a bank because that's where the money is.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: He's going to these places where he has a huge
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: base of support. It also speaks to the fact that.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Are you accusing Bernie Sanders of theft?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what I'm doing.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: Come at me, excerptors of the left. Excerptors of the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: far left. Bernie's a bank robber. What I was going
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: to say is it speaks to, I think, the possibility
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: of a long, drawn-out process where we end up going
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: across the country. And it speaks to the fact that
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: at a time when there are so many candidates, when
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: some of the candidates who are, say, below 10% are
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: trying to break through, it is a show of strength amongst, say,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: Bernie and Biden, who are the two people that are
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: at the very top trying to maintain that edge. It's
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: something that Kamala, I think, has been proving. She has
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: a kind of compelling argument that she will rise up
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: there by showing that she can bring out the same
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: number of people. So I do think it's a show
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: of force and a way of maintaining a kind of
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: leadership position.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: I think it also shows that none of these candidates,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: especially some of these top-tier candidates, are going to concede
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 5: any of these states to the candidate whose home.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: State it is, right?
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a silly narrative.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like California is a very big delegate prize.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: There's 39 million people or so over there.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and Californians will start voting by mail on the
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: day of the Iowa caucuses, right? And it's also, as
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: we know, it is going to be very expensive to
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: compete in the California primary.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: There is a lot of media markets.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: It's going to require a lot of money, and I
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: think Bernie is saying, and just as Kamala did, by
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: the way, by going to Texas this weekend, she's saying,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: I'm not conceding this to Beto O'Rourke or Julian Castro.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: And Bernie is saying, I'm not conceding California to Kamala Harris.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: These candidates are going to compete everywhere, and that is
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 5: why this could be a very long drawn-out race.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: Also, it's just worth remembering, too, another sign of at
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: least the thinking that this could be drawn out is
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: one of the reasons you compete, even if you expect
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: a home state advantage, is California is a huge state
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: with a ton of delegates. If you compete well, even
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: if you lose, you can get more delegates out of
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: California than you can by winning several other states.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: Well, we should let people know what that is because
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: I don't know if everyone knows this. It is not,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: the Democratic primary is not winner-take-all. In the Republican primary,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: there were, at least in the last election, there were
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: still some states that did winner-take-all. You win the state,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: you get all the delegates. Here, it's proportional. And so
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: in the Democratic primary, it's proportional. So in some of
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: these states, like I remember, you know, Hillary beat Obama
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: by maybe 10 points in California, but I think she
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: only netted a couple more delegates than us, we beat
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: her in a caucus in Idaho and probably netted like
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: 10 delegates compared to what the California Hall was.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: What a process.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: We did better out of Idaho than she did in California.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: I don't want to talk about it.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: I know, but it's something that every campaign is hopefully
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: planning for if they're a good campaign with smart delegate people.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you damn well better be planning past the first
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: four states or else you're.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Going to get destroyed.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 5: Finally, Kamala Harris made headlines this weekend by holding rallies
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: in Houston and Atlanta. She announced her first new campaign
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: policy proposal, an unprecedented federal investment to improve teacher salaries
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 5: across the country. Her campaign will reportedly be unveiling the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: details of the proposal and how she plans to pay
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 5: for it this week. At her 2,300-person event in Houston,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: Harris said, quote, right now teachers are making over 10%
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: less than other college-educated graduates, and that gap is about $ 13, 000
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: a year. I'm pledging to you that through the federal
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 5: resources that are available, we will close that gap. Guys,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 5: what do we think of Kamala choosing this particular policy
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 5: as her first big proposal? Her other big proposal is
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: the LIFT Act, which is a middle and lower class
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: tax cut. That was one that she proposed while she
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: was a senator. So this is sort of the first
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: policy proposal of her campaign, the first major one.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you, I want to reserve judgment until we
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: see the proposal. We haven't seen the actual details of
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: the proposal. And teachers should be making more money. There
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: have been protests across the country and strikes across the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: country about how we are underpaying teachers at a local
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: level that runs all the way from liberal Los Angeles
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: to conservative states in the middle of the country and
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: in the south. So this is a big and roiling issue.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: I think the question I have is, you have candidates
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who are basically making
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: the centerpiece of their argument a policy debate around structural
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: inequality and larger structural forces that have been developing over
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: 30 years or longer, holding back the middle class and
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: concentrating power in the hands of a privileged few. That
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: is the organizational principle of both their campaigns. They have
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: different approaches beyond that, right? Warren says she's a capitalist,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: but here's what she would do to regulate. Bernie is
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: a democratic socialist. But that is a huge argument about
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: the nature of the American free enterprise system. I understand
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: that paying teachers is a really, really important issue. And
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: this may very well be a really, really good policy.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: But to me, it speaks to something that is very,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: very popular and may very well be an important and
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: good thing to do. But I step back and I wonder,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: what is the ideological reason for doing this? What is
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: the larger case you're making about the state of our economy,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: the state of of work in this country, the state
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: of power in this country, and that to me is
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: my reservation about a very politically popular policy like this
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: being first out.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: Of the gate.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: I will say something, and it made me think of
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: this when you talked about Sanders and Warren. Obviously, you know,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 5: the surface difference there is she says she's a capitalist,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: but here are some rules that I want to put
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 5: in place.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: He says he's a socialist.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: But, for example, you know, Bernie talks about Amazon, and
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 5: he said Amazon needs to pay their workers $ 15 an hour.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: We need to increase the minimum wage.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: Elizabeth Warren talks about Amazon, and she wants to go
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: to the source of the problem, which is we need
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: to break up.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: Amazon, right?
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: And so she has been more willing to talk about
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: sort of regulatory changes that get to the heart of
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 5: why big corporations and banks and everyone else are screwing
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: people over and how we can change the rules so
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: that it's a level playing field. Bernie has been much
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: more willing, and probably because he's a socialist, to talk
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 5: about ways.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: To spend a lot of money.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 5: to alleviate inequality in this country so she actually has
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 5: a different theory that's not just capitalism versus socialism but
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: it's sort of a different theory of the case on
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 5: how people are getting screwed which is interesting and i think.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: That it's a defense of a version of capitalism says
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: i want a capital system to work there needs to
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: be uh... as very a stronger social safety net at
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: the bottom and a much stronger star regulatory regime at
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: the top.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 5: And i think most of these other candidates as they
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 5: have either put forward policy proposals of their own or
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: endorsed other proposals that exist have been much more sort
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: of traditional, democratic, liberal, mainstream proposals. I think Kamala fits
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: in that category. I think Beto fits in that category.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: I think Booker fits in that category. All of their
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 5: stuff is proposals you could have seen in 2016 from
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton, in 2008 from Barack Obama. They're very mainstream.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: The LIFT Act feels very much in the mainstream of
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: democratic thinking over the past 15 years.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: And it may be very popular.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: I also think that teachers are a well- and potent
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: base of support in an election. That's also true. The
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: Iowa State Education Association is like 35,000 strong, I believe,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: in the state, based on my Googling while you two
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: were talking. And I remember we courted teachers hard during
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: the 2008 primary. They show up. They volunteer. They organize things.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: so it's a smart political move.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: And they've been on strike for the last two years
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: in all kinds of different states.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to diminish the proposal before we've
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: fully seen how exactly she lays it out, how she
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: pays for it, because paying teachers more is a really
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: good thing, and if the federal government can help teachers
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: across the country make more money and attract more people
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: to the profession, that's a really, really good thing. That said,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't want to argue against it, but
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: I do want to offer some of the arguments that
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: occurred to me when I saw it. So, One of
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: the reasons we've had to have teachers strike across the country,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: one of the reasons teachers are so underpaid across the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: country is that, first of all, that there's been a
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: concerted nationwide conservative effort to promote austerity at the local
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: government and disconnect cause and effect in terms of taxes
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: and what taxes pay for. We've seen that across the
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: country with draconian cuts, with massive tax cuts followed by
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: draconian cuts to services that even in conservative states, even
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: very red.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 6: Conservative states have started to rebel against.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: But even broader than that, we have seen a lack
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: of confidence in local government, a lack of confidence in
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: what we get for our taxes. in part because we
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: do get such a low, we get such bad value
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: for our tax dollars as Americans. Whether you think Americans'
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: taxes should be higher or lower, we get a terrible
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: deal for it. We pay for a massive, bloated defense budget.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 6: We pay for interest.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: We pay for an incredibly expensive healthcare system that costs
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: more than any other country that gives us terrible results.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: The end result, which is a lot of people feel
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: like they're not getting good money for their taxes. And
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: so my question is, How can we do a better
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: job at the local level of showing people just how
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: important it is that people come together as a community
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: and pay their teachers, pay for their roads, pay for
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: the good work that their government does to help their community?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: And my worry is this is an effort to put
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: a Band-Aid on that deeper problem. It may be a really,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: really good Band-Aid. It may be really, really important. But
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: that's why I come back to these structural questions that
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: some of the other candidates have raised.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 5: And I would say, in defense of the proposal, that
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 5: a lot of these teacher strikes have been in very
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 5: deep red states where there is no hope because of
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 5: the politics in those states that they are going to, uh,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 5: you know, have any kind of significant state spending to
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 5: improve the quality, even though a lot of these teachers
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 5: unions have done fantastic job negotiating and getting themselves a
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: better deal. Like at some point you have to look
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: at the inequities in this country in education and say,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: even though that they're mostly education is mostly the province
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 5: of state government. At some point when there is a
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 5: teacher shortage, when there are teachers going on strikes, The
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: federal government, that's what the federal government's there for. It
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 5: needs to step in to alleviate these inequities.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess I would say the one caveat I'd
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: add is a lot of the inequities in schooling have
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: less to do from state to state and more rich
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: communities and the property taxes going to schools in those
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: neighborhoods and in poor communities where states, where localities aren't
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: doing enough to help those people. So all of this
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: is just a way to say we should see what
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: the proposal.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: Has to say.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: You want to privatize schools.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 6: I want, I want, I want. Stop it. Cutting this
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 6: shit out in the 30-second excerpt.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: This is the thing today. Now I'm just having fun
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: with it.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: Privatize the schools. I want everyone to learn at Koch
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: Brothers Academy.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 6: On that note.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: All right. I think we're done. And we already had
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: our guest.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks to Preet Bharara for joining us today. Preet.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: And walking us through this.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 6: You buy that book. All right.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 5: Listen.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: He did a good job selling his book on the show,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: but we can do a better job.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 6: All right. We've got to buy Preet Bharara's book, right?
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: Every copy of Preet Bharara's book that you buy is
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: money people didn't spend on one of those Killing Lincoln books.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: One of those people where Bill O'Reilly has a ghostwriter
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: talking about killing people.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: Those kind of books are flying off the shelf today.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: God help us.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: That's all we have. We'll see you later this week.