Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Don Lemon Arrested: Trump, ICE & the Prosecution of the Press

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Don Lemon Arrested: Trump, ICE & the Prosecution of the Press · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
• 0:08
  You may not be aware, but I've been on holidays.
• 0:11
  We banged a bunch of episodes and through the miracle of posting things in advance, you've
• 0:15
  been receiving your constant stream of fabulous uncomfortable conversations, even while I was
• 0:21
  lasing around on my big fat dairy air in Bali and Singapore.
• 0:26
  It was delightful.
• 0:28
  For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, I sympathize with the Arctic blizzards you've
• 0:32
  been enduring.
• 0:33
  I don't mean to rub it in, but I do have a gorgeous tan if you're not watching this, if you're
• 0:38
  listening to it instead.
• 0:39
  So I hit the ground running today and wholenelly is there a lot of news.
• 0:45
  There's a lot going on.
• 0:46
  It's hard to know exactly where to start with the news out of the United States with
• 0:50
  shootings by ICE officers of protesters in Minneapolis, the Epstein files, or growing
• 0:57
  authoritarianism in the United States, but I felt that today, when I'm back in the saddle,
• 1:03
  so to speak, I should focus on something where maybe the rest of the media isn't covering
• 1:08
  it quite as much or quite as thoughtfully, and it's something in which I have an interest.
• 1:12
  If you listen to this show, you too have an interest, which is at the freedom of the press
• 1:16
  and having a media that is courageous enough to have rambunctious and playful and bullshit
• 1:22
  free conversations.
• 1:24
  So what sort of peaked my interest in recent days out of Minneapolis was specifically the
• 1:29
  arrest of Don Lemon.
• 1:32
  Don Lemon worked as a CNN anchor for almost a decade.
• 1:36
  He was a correspondent for NBC.
• 1:38
  He was a regular on the today show, regular on NBC nightly news.
• 1:43
  He was fired from CNN and went on to independent media now as a big show on YouTube and does
• 1:49
  that usual trajectory that we know so well, not naming any names, not like I'd have any
• 1:56
  experience of that.
• 1:58
  And so he was in Minnesota and he was covering the protests and he was arrested, but not
• 2:03
  at the protests.
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  He wasn't arrested by a cop who was just overly aggressive or pissed off at how intrusive
• 2:11
  Don was being.
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  No, he went there.
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  He covered the protests.
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  He'd been covering the protests and then he flew back to Los Angeles and he was arrested
• 2:20
  in Los Angeles.
• 2:22
  We go into the details about why we go into the charges exactly in this interview.
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  But for me, this is something new and something deeply worrying.
• 2:31
  I do make a mistake in this conversation.
• 2:33
  I say that he was arrested while he was on the red carpet and awards ceremony.
• 2:37
  He was arrested while he was in Los Angeles to do the red carpet at the Grammys, but
• 2:42
  he was not there when he got arrested.
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  So apologies in advance for that oversight.
• 2:46
  I had misread.
• 2:47
  Nonetheless, I wanted to talk to someone who understands how this fits as a jigsaw piece
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  into the overall strategy of the Trump administration to silence critics, to find pretexts to hound
• 2:59
  people they don't like, especially people who are doing reporting that they don't like.
• 3:03
  Before we get to it, in fact, you may have been aware that I was on holiday in Singapore
• 3:08
  if you are a substack subscriber because I did a fabulous and hilarious live stream with
• 3:13
  the one and only Michael Moynihan from the fifth column podcast and from the free press
• 3:19
  while I was in Singapore.
• 3:20
  And he gave me a lot of shit and I gave him a lot of shit and it was all wonderful.
• 3:23
  And you would have seen it if you were on substack.
• 3:25
  We've got a big week this week coming up in terms of live streams as well, live stream
• 3:30
  at 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday, Eastern US time, which is 9.30 a.m. wednesday, down under, with
• 3:38
  this show's community manager, Evan Pavanca, who joins us and will increasingly join us
• 3:44
  to review the highlights and lowlights of recent episodes with you asking questions
• 3:49
  and chiming in in the chat.
• 3:51
  That is always fun.
• 3:52
  So that's at 5.30 Eastern Tuesday, then a live stream, one hour later, back to back ladies
• 3:58
  and gentlemen, this old chap don't tire, I'll tell you that for nothing.
• 4:03
  Back to back, right after talking to Evan, we go live with the former last week tonight
• 4:08
  with John Oliver writer, Jeff Mora, who's going to bring me up today on everything that's
• 4:13
  going on in the States and have a conversation about whether or not satire can fix it all.
• 4:19
  Maybe it can.
• 4:20
  Sometimes I think that actually throwing your body in the way of an ice agent and daring
• 4:26
  them to shoot you or otherwise harm you may not be the most efficacious way to take down
• 4:33
  a budding authoritarian tyrant.
• 4:35
  Maybe the way is to laugh at him and to dismiss him while at the same time being generous
• 4:42
  towards people who have the misfortune of supporting said tyrant.
• 4:47
  And that's a conversation that I'll have the following day on a sub stack live, the hardest
• 4:52
  working man in show business, really, let's face it, the following day on sub stack live
• 4:57
  at the same time, 5.30 p.m. Eastern U.S. time Wednesday, that's 9.30 a.m. Thursday and
• 5:03
  Sydney and Melbourne.
• 5:04
  I'll be going back to doing my regular Zeppes live live streams where I basically just
• 5:09
  do an editorial about how I think we could be having better conversations about something
• 5:14
  that's in the ether at the moment and what could be in the ether more than Minneapolis
• 5:20
  and the killing of protesters and the BS that we're hearing, not just from the Trump
• 5:24
  administration, but also from some leftists who seem to think that the blame is entirely
• 5:31
  100%, 1000% and totally on the conduct of ICE agents and not at all on the way that the
• 5:37
  left has framed this particular dispute in the eyes of its more extreme proponents who
• 5:42
  would argue that no human is illegal and there should essentially be no immigration enforcement
• 5:47
  and any immigration enforcement that makes anybody upset is beyond the pale.
• 5:52
  There has to be a better way to talk about this and I will provide my thoughts about
• 5:55
  how we might do so at 5.30 Eastern Wednesday this week.
• 6:03
  So if you're not getting those things, if you don't see all of this stuff, then you're
• 6:06
  probably listening to this as a podcast or you're getting it through Apple Podcasts
• 6:08
  or whatever, more and more of the content that we produce is not hitting this podcast
• 6:13
  feed at all, if you're hearing it on the podcast feed because I don't want to inundate
• 6:17
  you with lots of things that you might not be interested in.
• 6:19
  If you just want to get your episode or two episodes a week of uncomfortable conversations,
• 6:24
  that's totally fine.
• 6:25
  But I would not want you to be unaware that there is a lot more going on at Substack.
• 6:30
  And you can watch it all live without paying anything.
• 6:33
  Just go to uncomfortableconversations.substack.com, it's really not hard.
• 6:36
  It's a one click process, it'll take you two or three minutes and then you can get notified
• 6:40
  every time we go live.
• 6:41
  You can watch that without paying if you want to watch it back after the fact because
• 6:44
  you miss me, then you will have to pay the enormous cost of slightly cheaper than one
• 6:51
  small Starbucks coffee in New York per month, one small Starbucks coffee per month, not
• 6:58
  a Frappuccino, not something fancy with vanilla in it and whipped cream on top, a small
• 7:04
  normal Starbucks coffee per month to support independent journalism and the kinds of
• 7:09
  uncomfortable conversations that we try to have here.
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  Right, enough shameless self-promotion.
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  As I said the question today is whether or not the Trump administration is now basically
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  openly hunting down journalists and finding pretexts to charge them that wouldn't fly
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  in any other administration and probably won't end up flying in court but will threaten
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  a lot of people and will make journalists more wary.
• 7:31
  Seth Stern is our guest, he is the chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation.
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  As you can probably guess, the job title might give you a little tip off.
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  He's not a big fan of arresting journalists, he's a civil liberties lawyer and he's
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  a press freedom advocate and we talk not only about the fascinating details of this particular
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  Don Lemon case, how the government is trying to construct its charges against him and whether
• 7:57
  or not they would stand but also the whole history of American attempts to suppress the freedom
• 8:04
  of the press to punish whistleblowers and this is not an entire tirade against Trump.
• 8:08
  We talk about the Obama administration and Snowden and Assange and Manning and National
• 8:15
  Security Secrets and the Biden administration and the prosecution of Donald Trump in fact
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  for paying hush money to a porn star during an election campaign.
• 8:24
  I hope you enjoy as much as I did the one the only Seth Stern.
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  The reason I wanted to reach out to you is of all of the sort of outrages of the Trump
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  administration at the moment and the sense of being on edge that I get from so many of
• 8:45
  my American friends and colleagues.
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  For some reason the Don Lemon arrest struck me as a kind of a watershed or like a new
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  low or a new high, however you want to look at it and maybe it's just because I'm a journalist
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  but it felt like previously quite a lot of the attacks on free speech or the media had
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  either been bombast or they'd been sufficiently behind the scenes like Jimmy Kimball or Colbert
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  or CBS or like what exactly is happening that you can always sort of say well it's a bit
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  of a culture war thing but this isn't a culture war thing this is an arrest which other
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  journalist which to me was of a high profile journalist who has been a long critic of Donald
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  Trumps. Maybe just start with what what was Don Lemon doing that he was and what was he charged
• 9:35
  with? So Don Lemon was covering a protest at a church in Minneapolis and the reason that
• 9:44
  church was targeted for a protest is that the pastor was a higher up in ice immigration
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  and customs enforcement one of the agencies that is arresting non-citizens in Minneapolis
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  and nationwide oftentimes picking people up off the street who are citizens causing quite
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  a bit of chaos with their protest backlash and this was the protest that day I think Don Lemon
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  had been covering a number of other demonstrations and just the unrest in the city he followed
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  the protesters into the church live streamed attempted to ask for the pastor some questions
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  fairly standard stuff the charging documents point to the fact that he met with the protesters
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  beforehand in the parking lot that he followed them that he said he was not going to you know
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  blow their cover he wasn't going to announce the details of the operation journalists see that
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  as source protection people embed with the military all the time on the condition that they are
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  not going to disclose what the military is doing in advance that's just sort of understood it
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  doesn't make you part of the military operation it doesn't make you responsible for any war crimes
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  the military might commit while you happen to be embedded with them but in any event he entered
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  this church along with the protesters and he was charged one on a conspiracy count which assumes
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  that he conspired to break the law to enter into this church as part of this protest when the
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  thing wasn't his idea journalists don't get to choose where the news is going to happen that's
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  the thing with being a journalist you follow if there's a fire you you go to where the fire is you
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  don't you don't set the fire if you did that you would be an arsonist not a journalist you follow
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  the news that's what he did he didn't conspire to demonstrate at a church he found that it was
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  happening and he went to document it he just to port just sorry to interrupt but I'm just trying
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  to bend over backwards to give the most generous possible reading to anyone who might sort of lean
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  towards the other side here in the arson example I suppose the the claim would be that if you
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  knew that someone was going to go and burn a building down and you knew where they were going to
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  do it and you spoke to them beforehand and then you went along and you documented it that maybe
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  you're somehow culpable for having been involved in a conspiracy to do the same through the omission
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  of not having reported it in advance is that the logic presumably well that there is an ethical
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  question I suppose if you're aware that a serious dangerous crime is about to occur are you
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  under a duty to take off your journalist hat and go tell the authorities and actually
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  you know that's that's that's that's a debate among journalistic ethicists I don't think
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  the law has any role in it I've seen that debate play out long story but back when I was practicing
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  law I was at the law firm that represented the journalist who exposed our Kelly the R&B
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  for his sex crimes of which he was convicted years and years later and this was a situation
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  where the journalist received in his mailbox from an anonymous source of videotape depicting
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  our Kelly doing some pretty twisted stuff and you know he decided to hand that tape over to
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  to to law enforcement because he thought it was more important to get this guy off the streets
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  um then you know anything else he was endangering children and you know journalistic
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  ethicists the the the armchair you know journalism caps um we're not happy with him for that
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  there was a lot of backlash because you know journalists shouldn't have anything to do with
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  law enforcement they're not an arm of the government you don't uh you you you you don't
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  assist a law enforcement investigation that blurs the lines I get that mentality in some situations
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  I think when you've got a tape of our Kelly committing you know all sorts of sexual abuses you you
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  make an exception um but that's again a conversation for the ethicists among us to have um it is not
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  up to the government to tell journalists how to do their job now right and then of course I mean
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  even on the even on the ethical question it's obviously different when you're in the middle of an
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  ongoing skirmish between protesters and authorities who a lot of people believe are overreaching
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  their power to document that there's not a there's not a clear moral imperative necessarily to
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  prevent a disruptive protest from taking place the way they would be to prevent child rape right
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  nobody's life is in danger as far as done lemon knows it's a protest um the other aspect of the
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  charges against him there's a federal law in the United States that was mostly intended
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  to um stop anti abortion protesters from obstructing entrances to abortion clinics for
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  interfering with people on their way to get you know reproductive health services um probably
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  I assume I haven't looked into the legislative history but I assume as part of the sort of
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  massage making to create that bill the deal was made where also churches were included places
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  of worship were included um and you know it's a funny it's a funny law I read I read the law
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  you know and it's it's clearly a law which is intended to criminalize uh obstructive protests
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  outside abortion about outside reproductive health clinics as as the law and then the part B of
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  the law says oh and also places of worship and you can just imagine the conservative Republicans
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  whose numbers they needed or you know even the conservative Democrats whose numbers they needed to
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  get the law through going okay I'll tell you what we'll just make it you can't be instructive
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  outside of abortion clinics or churches okay we all agree exactly that's that's what must have
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  happened I haven't studied the history but uh I bet if we looked into it we could figure out exactly
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  which names they needed to pick off to get it you know over the hump to pass this bill but in any
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  event um it makes it unlawful to obstruct interfere with threatened injured um someone attempting to
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  enter a place of worship and and and and and and and worship um it requires intent though so
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  you know Don Lemon didn't threaten anybody he certainly didn't injure anybody obstruction is
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  defined to mean um physically obstructing someone not allowing them to come or go he didn't do that
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  interfere is defined to mean physically interfere he didn't do that um so uh well and uh there's
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  intimidate as well intimidate is designed to mean place people in uh in a reasonable fear of
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  physical harm um I don't think anybody was afraid that Donald that that that that Don Lemon was going
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  to physically harm them um plus there's this intent element his intent wasn't to obstruct a religious
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  service his intent was to follow the news wherever it led him if this protest had happened at Starbucks
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  instead of church he would have been in Starbucks um it wasn't up to him to interfere with anybody's
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  religious service he was he and again just to reiterate the point that you made earlier the the
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  the pastor of the church who was at the church with ice him was he was he delivering a sermon at
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  the time or he was an ice agent on the side yeah he was he was an ice uh deputy he was one of the top
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  ice people I don't remember his exact title but he was one of the top ice officials in Minneapolis
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  where of course ice had or border patrol but immigration enforcement under the same umbrella
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  agency uh DHS um had days earlier um shot and killed Alex Freddie and not long before that
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  shot and killed Renee Good um had abducted a five-year-old um the situation in Minneapolis has
• 18:21
  been pretty tense for some time because of the action but I mean just to say that the the church
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  was not targeted because it's a church the church was targeted because you know a person who
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  was who was participating in the behaviors that the protesters object to was located and lemon
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  wasn't charged on the scene when I heard that he'd been arrested I I mean I instantly sort of
• 18:46
  fobbed it off is that right and I don't I mean I sort of thought well maybe he got involved in
• 18:49
  a skirmish and you know he was just sort of wrapped up in things and there was a there was an
• 18:55
  officer there who decided to charge him but he went back to Los Angeles he's on the red carpet of
• 19:01
  an award ceremony and cops come up to him and arrest him right and and to your earlier point um
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  the the the church was targeted entirely because of the ice agent who was the past here there
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  clergy is very much involved in this protest movement this isn't some sort of anti-church
• 19:21
  anti-Christian protest movement um plenty of the protesters themselves um go to church even um
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  you know our our clergy um but right right I mean that's that is an interesting theological
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  aside right there Seth like what is the what is the you know look after the meekest among among
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  stars and the poor shall inherit the earth and you know give your neighbor the coat off your back
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  and the kind of charitable essence of Jesus' message what what how do you reconcile that
• 19:52
  with an extremely hard line and aggressive approach towards yeah I mean even if you agree with
• 19:58
  immigration enforcement the idea that it would be done this way uh in such a sort of spectacularly
• 20:05
  almost proudly authoritarian way just optically is is strange from it it's not the meek shall inherit
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  the earth uh well that much do you understand the the the relationship between religious people
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  and this movement uh I I there there are certainly in Chicago where I live the clergy was an
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  essential component of the protest um people were being uh and that's powerful I think just like
• 20:37
  journalists being arrested are power is is is a powerful scene um not that anyone's arrest is
• 20:44
  more important than anyone else's but it resonates with people when journalists are arrested that
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  strikes people as abnormal as opposed to protesters being arrested you know that's something
• 20:54
  people are accustomed to um when when when when clergy is arrested when when when a religious
• 20:59
  leader from the community is arrested um that stands out to people and causes backlash and in
• 21:05
  Chicago there was a lawsuit to restrain the abuses by ice and border patrol and several religious
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  figures joined that lawsuit as plaintiffs because they had been arrested assaulted um otherwise
• 21:18
  had their rights violated by by ice so now uh we're they're they're sure you they're they're there
• 21:25
  are um certainly religious figures who are in favor of the Trump administration's policies um but
• 21:35
  there are also a lot who aren't um I you know no no religious community is a is a monolith I'm a
• 21:42
  Jewish atheist so far be it for me to be talking about you know the how to how to how to reconcile
• 21:49
  the contradictions between Jesus's teachings and um and the Trump administration I'll leave that
• 21:54
  to somebody else um but but but but but I would say that the uh the religious community has been
• 22:01
  fighting the good fate and you know some some some nuts but no no no different than I used to as I can
• 22:08
  talk that's a very generous and fair minded way of putting it I I just don't quite get how you
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  get from the theology to it of course they're not homogenous it's just you would expect them
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  if they claim to believe that the creator of the universe wrote a book and that the message of
• 22:27
  that book is that you have to be really kind to people who are down on their lap that this would not
• 22:34
  optically be consistent but anyway we're this is not a theological conversation I mean I think
• 22:39
  what's so interesting about your work Seth and your long history of commenting on and fighting
• 22:44
  these kinds of cases is that this is not just a question of whether or not Don Lemon is
• 22:51
  technically guilty or not guilty of these two crimes the question is why are we going why are we
• 23:01
  finding crimes seemingly retroactively to charge enemies of the state with and and you build
• 23:11
  a clear pattern of case after case after case where I mean it reminds me a little bit of who's
• 23:18
  what's the case of the home mortgage fraud the woman issued supreme court justice or someone who
• 23:25
  Trump claims uh lied on her uh second home mortgage and just deduction for something
• 23:34
  great James that's right yeah yeah um yeah so yes it's it's it's it's like I only point to that
• 23:43
  because it's so obvious that they had a person in mind who they wanted who I don't want to find
• 23:48
  something wrong with right and then they go hunting for the crime rather than starting with here
• 23:53
  are the crimes that are important to us and so let's just find whoever it is who is most
• 23:56
  egregiously flouting them and go off to that yeah it's really the opposite of how it's supposed to work
• 24:05
  prosecutors obviously have discretion to choose which case is to prosecute you can't
• 24:10
  prosecute every technical violation of law you normally choose the cases that you believe to be
• 24:17
  um in the interests of the public um to have prosecuted so when journalists
• 24:25
  technically trespass or jaywalk in the course of getting the news um you would expect responsible
• 24:36
  prosecutors to find any reason they could to not prosecute them to only prosecute them if
• 24:42
  absolutely necessary because you don't want to discourage news gathering you don't want to discourage
• 24:48
  um constitutionally protected journalism that is really
• 24:53
  core to our system here and and and and in many other places you know as well um
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  this is the opposite this is an administration that is looking for any legal pretext they can
• 25:07
  find to come after journalists and their sources um they are not looking to avoid chilling news
• 25:17
  gathering to avoid interfering with the first amendment that is what they want to do I don't think
• 25:23
  anybody well I'm sure some people doubt this but um I don't think anybody who's watching this from
• 25:30
  from from our perspective um believes that if Donald Trump was given a magic eraser that could
• 25:36
  erase the first amendment he wouldn't do it in a second he doesn't like you know he doesn't want
• 25:40
  to safeguard the first amendment he's attacking the first amendment he's antagonistic to the first
• 25:44
  amendment so he's looking for any reason to prosecute journalists and as you said this is unusual
• 25:50
  I mean we we do see cases where journalists get arrested at protests they're arrested by a cop
• 25:55
  on the street who gets annoyed with them because they're um getting in his way to take a picture or
• 26:00
  he perceives them as as as obstructive um and you know uh vast majority of the time those cases
• 26:07
  end up disappearing because some prosecutor um takes a look at it and cooler heads prevail and they
• 26:13
  say like we don't really want to be the prosecutor's office that's going around locking up journalists so
• 26:17
  we're gonna we're gonna drop this but it's it's the result of a confrontation on the scene to come
• 26:23
  after him not just once they tried to come after him a week or so ago they they they they they
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  tried to get a judge to authorize his um arrest and two judges actually declined to authorize his
• 26:38
  arrest they said you know the government is is is is is looping the the conduct of I think eight people
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  um together not distinguishing the journalists from the protesters and there's no evidence that
• 26:52
  these journalists committed a crime um so that was already abnormal because as you said they're coming
• 26:58
  in after the fact looking to charge journalists um but then a week later they they they they they
• 27:07
  they went and did it again they went and got a grand jury to authorize similar charges so it's
• 27:14
  really like a relentless pursuit of someone who didn't injure anyone didn't cause anyone any harm
• 27:21
  documented news and you might have a theory that he technically broke the law it's a bad theory
• 27:27
  he didn't technically break the law but let's say he had is this a good use of of of of of our funds
• 27:35
  as taxpayers is this what we want to tell the world about who we are um is this the direction the
• 27:40
  country wants to go where journalists need to just you know be on their toes and think the only way
• 27:46
  I'm safe is if I don't piss off Donald Trump because I don't know what the law is I know what the
• 27:50
  rules are all I know is that this administration is going to selectively enforce any law confined
• 27:57
  to penalize me if they perceive me as an adversary and it's yes no please finish we've been
• 28:05
  talking about Don Lemon there was another journalist also arrested a week later Georgia Ford
• 28:11
  an independent journalist from from Minnesota um so while Don Lemon is the high profile name
• 28:20
  that gets all the headlines I think the administration is being intentional they don't want
• 28:25
  journalists out there local journalists out there who have been so key to exposing all of these
• 28:31
  scandals involving the administration and immigration enforcement in particular um they don't
• 28:37
  want independent journalists to think well we're safe because we're not on their radar they're
• 28:41
  only going after the big names um I think Georgia Ford was was was targeted for a reason to show
• 28:47
  no matter how small you are um well we'll we'll get you and what would Georgia's charges
• 28:54
  same thing he she she she she also covered the protest at the church right so conspiring to
• 29:00
  ferment uh uh I mean it's a funny I have the law here I just thought it was it's a strike I don't
• 29:06
  actually understand the first one the second charge I I do understand um because you know it's
• 29:13
  it's a it's a law about not obstructing people's access to a place of worship or a an abortion
• 29:19
  clinic so I suppose you could argue that maybe they obstructed people's access to the uh to the church
• 29:24
  but the first one it can you explain this to me it says if two or more persons conspired
• 29:30
  a injure oppressed threaten or intimidate any person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any
• 29:35
  right or privileged secured to him by that the constitutional laws of the United States I see so
• 29:40
  by impeding a person's participation in their expression of religious faith because it's at a
• 29:46
  church you are intimidating a person's right to free freedom of religion okay yeah right it's a
• 29:54
  conspiracy statute there needs to be an act in furtherance of the conspiracy I see I see not
• 30:01
  everyone who was there is a conspirator unless they actually furthered the conspiracy so if you
• 30:06
  want to say that the protesters here conspired to deprive the congregants at that church of their
• 30:13
  religious right to worship which is flimsy in its own right because that is not what they conspired
• 30:20
  to do they conspired to protest um a pastor who was part of the militia that's kidnapping their
• 30:27
  neighbors um right but i mean to be fair to the other side they would they would say that they
• 30:31
  knew that inside doing they would inevitably impede the religious freedoms of the people who are
• 30:35
  of the congregants yeah and uh i suppose a criminal lawyer could talk about the exact
• 30:44
  intent that is required to be deemed part of a conspiracy but regardless that certainly wasn't
• 30:52
  a conspiracy that done lemon or Georgia fort acted in furtherance of the conspiracy the conspiracy
• 30:59
  the quote unquote conspiracy was happening with her without them this was a protest yeah and i
• 31:04
  mean if it were then anything i mean anything that any reporter reports on that's illegal they're
• 31:11
  they're sort of a part of because they're they're privy to it in a way that other people aren't
• 31:17
  presumably certainly that opposite villains aren't that's why they're reporting on it because
• 31:20
  it wouldn't be a story if everybody already knew about it so to some extent they're conspiring in
• 31:24
  something secret in the in the way that they're doing their work and i mean when you talk about the
• 31:30
  impact that you think the that Georgia's uh not the state but the person Georgia sorry i'm blanking
• 31:36
  on her last name the reporter yeah who was also arrested along with lemon the impact that that
• 31:43
  could have on sort of chilling the enthusiasm of local reporters in Minneapolis and all other
• 31:48
  jurisdictions where this might take place in reporting fearlessly on the transgressions of the federal
• 31:53
  government i mean one also must just remember that all of us has broken a law like you know there's
• 32:01
  no it's hard to everyone has spared on the highway everyone has jay walked everyone has done
• 32:08
  something that if you found yourself in the crosshairs of you know officialdom could somehow be
• 32:17
  used to make your life miserable even if you ended up winning the case uh because it would cost you
• 32:22
  so much and be so stressful um so it's it's almost beside the point to be arguing over the legitimacy
• 32:29
  of the charges in the sense that a journalist was doing his job and then was arrested and every
• 32:37
  journalist now knows that there's probably something that they can be arrested for uh so they'd
• 32:43
  better watch their back i mean it's fascinating that the federal government went to two did you
• 32:48
  say two judges to try to get them to agree to the charges and it was and they were rejected twice
• 32:55
  and so then they went so a grand jury is that is a grand jury just a panel of people who essentially
• 33:01
  essentially yeah it's sort of like a juror a juror pool type thing yeah yeah except they only
• 33:07
  hear from the prosecution and you know if you're looking for a grand jury to invade someone you're
• 33:13
  you're going to find it um people to make political points often say well this person was
• 33:19
  indicted from a grand jury of their peers as if that is um as if that's an indication of guilt and
• 33:25
  indication of legitimacy um no usually if you want to find a grand jury you're going to find a grand
• 33:31
  jury um all of these people who Trump has charged who uh ended up being acquitted and rather
• 33:38
  humiliating humiliating defeats for the administration you've mentioned some of them um here in
• 33:43
  Chicago uh there was this guy uh Juan Martinez who had sent some snapchat messages um about Greg
• 33:52
  Bovino um the administration came up with this narrative that he was sorry Greg Bovino is uh one
• 34:02
  of the border patrol higher ups who has been very visible both in Chicago uh Minneapolis
• 34:09
  Los Angeles as well um he was recently let go for Minneapolis he was kind of the fall guy I think
• 34:18
  for the Alex Freddie shooting but chaos seems to follow Greg Bovino um he's someone who's
• 34:24
  never met a camera he doesn't like never met a tear gas canister he doesn't like
• 34:30
  gives his officers uh pap talks where he's you know who said he is this hour city oh it's
• 34:35
  actually not you're not from here um he he's he's he's he certainly he was from here that's not how
• 34:41
  the mom does he works it's not your city it's the people city we live in America you know not yeah
• 34:47
  I mean Greg Bovino is an absolute manist and I don't in any way want to downplay um his you know
• 34:55
  reign of terror um but it is disturbing however one's sort of like oh well Greg Bovino is gone
• 35:01
  from Minneapolis Tom Homan another person with an absolutely awful track record is replacing him
• 35:08
  and people are treating it like Tom Homan's you know the adult in the room and everything's
• 35:12
  going to be okay now I it was the instant whitewashing of Tom Homan that you started seeing
• 35:18
  um on on on on television was was was a bit um bothersome but but anyhow um wasn't Homan just
• 35:26
  as an aside in Trump's first term like the bad guy he was well he he has been involved with
• 35:35
  immigration enforcement since since the Obama administration at least um he's sort of a
• 35:43
  career-based guy but now he's now he's unrestrained you know now he's being I mean I may be I
• 35:49
  may be misremembering but the point I'm making is that in the first Trump administration I think
• 35:53
  Homan was the boogie man for the left who was like the worst possible guy because he was presiding
• 35:58
  over children in case yeah right and now he's the now we've gone so far it's gotten so much worse
• 36:06
  that he's brought in as the nice guy to be the moderate against the excesses of Bavino
• 36:13
  yeah I don't know if you even need to go back that far you know until a couple of months ago no
• 36:17
  and I'd heard of Bavino Homan along with Cristinaum was sort of the face of the operation
• 36:22
  Bavino came in as I said he's kind of like a flamboyant guy who loves to get in front of the
• 36:28
  cameras loves to talk his nonsense um dresses kind of like a Nazi um probably intentionally um and
• 36:39
  as you know he's he's kind of been hugging the cameras for a while you know he's he they okay so
• 36:44
  this guy who this guy who was mocking him on social media what what was that case yeah
• 36:49
  we're okay so this the one I was just citing that as an example of these defeats that the Trump
• 36:55
  administration keeps encountering in court they made up this whole narrative about how this guy was a
• 37:00
  cartel tied Latin kings higher up who was putting out bounties on the heads of Bavino and other ice
• 37:07
  agents um he was a union carpenter who had sent some messages to someone else on Snapchat that
• 37:15
  it seems like you know neighborhood gossip um about you know 50k for Bavino or something nobody
• 37:22
  who had any power to actually put out a hit I'm Greg Bavino um was acquitted and my point was
• 37:29
  only a grand jury indicted him too um grand jury I mean as the famous saying goes they'll
• 37:35
  then die to ham sandwich here uh yeah grand jury on the die of ham sandwich exactly right in front
• 37:40
  of him uh spinning the the right words um I mean the the question of tar that had prosecutions here
• 37:48
  and sort of making an example out of people and finding the person who you want to bring down and
• 37:53
  then finding rationales as to why as to what you can charge them with uh post hoc that if if I talk
• 38:00
  to my Trump supporting colleagues who are not fully in the bag but you know sort of support him
• 38:06
  grudgingly they'll say yeah this is bad this is exactly what the left has brought on itself through
• 38:12
  it's overreaching the past does anyone deny that uh you know going after Trump for the
• 38:18
  hush money that he paid to a porn star was actually a judicious application of the law uh you know
• 38:25
  when it was obvious that they wanted to get Trump for something and that was the easiest thing to get
• 38:29
  him but for what do you say to that is is this a both sides epochs on both your houses situation
• 38:35
  is this different well I don't think it is a both sides situation um the Trump administration is
• 38:45
  particularly egregious in the way it targets its opponents particularly brazen that doesn't
• 38:52
  mean it hasn't been done before I don't want to go and defend everything that the Biden administration
• 38:58
  ever did we were pretty tough on the Biden administration of freedom and press foundation as
• 39:01
  well in fact when they attempted to prosecute project veritas which is a right wing outlet here
• 39:10
  that is known for doing some pretty unsavory stuff but when they attempted to prosecute project
• 39:14
  veritas for obtaining a copy of Ashley Biden the president's daughter's diary we were pretty upset
• 39:25
  about that as well um point being that journalists are entitled as long as they don't break the law
• 39:32
  to obtain source material and the project veritas itself was not accused of breaking law it was
• 39:38
  accused of obtaining the diary from someone else who stole it um so you know that that to us was a
• 39:45
  very problematic prosecution for press freedom in the Biden administration they went after a guy
• 39:50
  named Tim Burke who managed to find outtakes of a Tucker Carlson interview with Kanye West
• 39:56
  where Kanye West went on what proved to be the first of many anti-Semitic grants um Tucker Carlson
• 40:02
  cut that out of the interview because at the time they were looking to make Kanye this you know
• 40:07
  reasonable person who was being vilified by the left for supporting Trump and his ramblings didn't
• 40:15
  lend themselves to that narrative so they just cut it um we found that very problematic you're
• 40:21
  prosecuting a journalist for finding information online so you know I'm not here to say the Biden
• 40:28
  administration was perfect or any prior administration was perfect you know Obama went after more
• 40:32
  whistleblowers than anybody in history um there's plenty of blame to go around um but
• 40:39
  showing up two weeks later to arrest a journalist for petty vindictive charges that are very
• 40:51
  clearly not in the public interest that is a line that prior administrations um did not cross
• 40:57
  just a couple of weeks ago rating a journalist home seizing terabytes of data after it had come
• 41:06
  out that that journalist was talking to a large number of government sources um that's a line
• 41:13
  past administrations had not crossed in fact was against federal law there was a federal law
• 41:18
  the Privacy Protection Act passed in 1980 in response to a raid of the Stanford Daily newspaper
• 41:26
  where I think like three pages were taken from the newspaper and the cops called advance in advance
• 41:32
  to tell them what they wanted um a law was passed in reaction to that because it was considered so
• 41:37
  offensive to the notion of press freedom now we've got hard drives and even smart watches being
• 41:45
  seized from journalists um conditioning access to official spaces to the president on language
• 41:58
  choices um on pledging to not publish unauthorized information to not essentially do your job
• 42:06
  these are lines that nobody in the past um has has has crossed and of course the
• 42:14
  depletion of public records the destination of the Freedom of Information Act the firing of
• 42:19
  FOIA officers because you know the a lot of attention is paid and rightly so to um the associated
• 42:26
  press being barred from Air Force One for not saying Gulf of America so on and so forth you know
• 42:32
  that's important and it it's it's constitutionally significant and it sets a terrible precedent
• 42:37
  but ultimately the associated press reporter will probably get a better story not being on Air
• 42:43
  Force One like it's kind of good that they get that hour back to not have to listen to a bunch of
• 42:48
  lies and they can go do some real journalism um but when they go do that real journalism if they
• 42:54
  can't get public records you know that's a really big problem so that these are some some some
• 42:59
  some pretty unprecedented attacks on the press specifically that we're seeing from the Trump
• 43:06
  administration the Trump administration didn't invest they didn't invent politics they didn't invent
• 43:13
  political repribution they didn't invent pardon invent partisanship but they're they're they're
• 43:18
  they are certainly escalating that to the next level when it comes to the press and and and
• 43:23
  everything else and they're dispensing with any pretense um other yes I mean the dispensing of
• 43:30
  pretense is is an interesting component of it I mean the one reason why this feels so new
• 43:36
  is precisely because of the lack of pretense and the lack of even a nod towards it being
• 43:44
  virtuous to try to have a sense of comedy and respect in a democracy and a respect for
• 43:52
  investigative journalism and a respect for the truth and a skepticism towards authority like
• 43:59
  when Obama was you know going after whistleblowers there was no doubt I don't think in anyone's mind
• 44:06
  even people would hate him that it was a question that he was taking seriously and that the
• 44:11
  administration felt that it needed to wrestle with and they might have come down on the wrong
• 44:17
  side of that for libertarians but they probably felt that there was a greater national interest in
• 44:24
  these facts not being known than in there being known and that it was worth breaking a few eggs in
• 44:31
  order to achieve a a better outcome in what for everybody I think what
• 44:36
  but it became hard for a lot of Republicans to swallow was the hush money case on Trump because it
• 44:44
  did seem like Trump was guilty of something that if not criminal was at least highly immoral and
• 44:53
  completely contrary to American democratic interests and traditions when he fermented the
• 45:01
  January 6 riots and didn't tell them to stop and kept on talking about all this evidence that
• 45:06
  the election was stolen and got on the phone to Raffensberger in Georgia and asked him to find
• 45:11
  1100 votes for him so that he could swing Georgia and tried to bring fake electors into Congress
• 45:18
  on January 6th just hoping that his vice president would allow them to vote in place of the real
• 45:24
  electors like there was a real conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in 2020
• 45:29
  and the fact that that didn't become an instant rationale for prosecuting Trump
• 45:37
  and the fact that the one that got all the headlines was ultimately the case about
• 45:42
  did he break election spending rules in some fairly arcane way because actually the hush
• 45:49
  money that he paid to a porn star who he had sex with could constitute a donation to his own
• 45:55
  election campaign because it was you know while he was running for presidents I mean that whole
• 46:00
  thing gave so much I think license to conservatives to disingenuously say look everybody does target
• 46:10
  of prosecutions um the Trump administration is just as you say lacking pretence about it it's almost
• 46:17
  like the the claim that they'll make about Trump's lies where you know do you think that Hillary
• 46:23
  Clinton wasn't lying all the time she was you know she had her case street lobbyists and she
• 46:28
  was cozy with Wall Street and she'd go off to Davos and then she'd come back and say all the
• 46:33
  all the right social justice he thinks here in America and she was just a hypocrite Trump lies
• 46:40
  and he lies to your face and you know exactly what you're getting and he throws shit at the wall
• 46:44
  and he hunts his opponents and everybody does it but at least he's honest about it and in some
• 46:49
  respects I think that's the most corrosive thing because you're right this is this actually is new
• 46:54
  like with the exception of the hush money case against Trump none of the cases that I can think of
• 46:59
  none of the overreach or the illiberal missteps of the Obama or Biden administrations were motivated
• 47:06
  by obvious political animus they weren't going after personal enemies people who had said mean
• 47:11
  things about them they might have been making mistakes about who they thought it was okay you know
• 47:16
  about what the balance should be between freedom and national security but they weren't just
• 47:22
  hunting down people they hated because those people said nasty things about them on the air
• 47:28
  yeah yeah that's a fair point in fact they they they ran from the perception of doing that
• 47:36
  many people wanted Obama to prosecute W Bush for any number of things to come after figures
• 47:43
  from his predecessors administration which he easily could have done considering some of the
• 47:48
  things that happened in that administration um he chose not to because of the optics of it he
• 47:54
  you know he didn't want to set that that that that that precedent um I very much of course
• 48:04
  oppose his prosecutions of whistleblowers I don't know to what extent they were entirely
• 48:11
  in good faith I think there is always an element of saving themselves from embarrassment in
• 48:17
  addition to whatever national security and other interests are at play but I can imagine Obama
• 48:26
  and his advisors and his cabinet having a serious conversation about what is for the greater good
• 48:33
  and debating policy debating what is in the interest of the American public I cannot picture
• 48:39
  Donald Trump, Pete Hexeth and Pam Bondy in a room having a serious policy conversation about
• 48:44
  what's good for anyone else other than than themselves um and you know that that that that matters
• 48:50
  that matters even if people do cross the line even if people um do allow the personal and the
• 48:56
  political to creep into their decision making um knowing that it's wrong knowing that it can't be
• 49:04
  the norm um having some pretense and I'm yeah I get like okay at least Trump is at least
• 49:11
  Trump is honest about it but you there there is an advantage to having the rule breaker kind of
• 49:19
  know that there is a rule that they should only break um when they believe it
• 49:27
  absolutely necessary only break you know cautiously um it's it's like
• 49:34
  well you know yeah we we we we we've got red lights not because nobody's ever going to run a red
• 49:40
  light but because fewer people will run red lights um fewer people will run intersections and
• 49:45
  crash their cars if they're red lights than if there aren't um if if everyone just starts ignoring
• 49:50
  the red lights altogether it's a bit of a problem so especially if people start to frame it as a
• 49:56
  virtue to stand up to those uh red light ninnies who are trying to exactly yeah take us all over with
• 50:03
  their stupid red light nonsense and we're gonna just smash the norms because who they who gives
• 50:08
  a shit about all these stupid rules that uh everyone has put it in our way uh America first we're
• 50:13
  gonna run red lights you know it's like let's make it right again not have to stop
• 50:19
  and what's the logical outcome of this philosophy of well Biden did something similar so it's okay
• 50:24
  for Trump to do it so what are we just going to get progressively more lawless with each
• 50:30
  administration because anything the last person did is fair game for the next person you know what
• 50:35
  outcome does that lead to if you're so offended by something Biden did then you should be coming
• 50:40
  after your own guy um doubly as hard saying hey we voted for a change you're acting just like
• 50:46
  that guy we didn't like um that seems to me to be the reasonable thing to do if if if you didn't
• 50:53
  like Biden and you voted for for Trump because you wanted something else be why are you in favor
• 51:01
  of Trump doing the exact same shit you didn't like when Biden did um and and you know the obvious
• 51:08
  outcome okay a democrat gets in next and says well Trump did this i'm allowed to do it too what are
• 51:14
  you gonna say that's the same thing you did that that's that's the same excuse you made for Trump
• 51:18
  so at some point it's gonna descend into absolute lawlessness if that's if that's what we're
• 51:23
  if that's the agreement that our politics is formulated on you know and i mean
• 51:30
  totally i mean it and it only ratchets one way you know it's very and the further you
• 51:35
  ratchet down the harder it is to climb back out of that hole of tit for tat and rebuild a you
• 51:41
  know a civil society um i mean just to be maximally generous to Pam Bondy and Peter Hanks
• 51:47
  Donald Trump that the fear would be not that they sit around talking about how to enrich
• 51:53
  themselves openly but that they think that the best thing that they can do is to win on behalf of
• 52:03
  the good people in America i mean i suspect that's probably how they frame it for themselves right
• 52:09
  that you don't you don't want to wear cotton gloves when you're going into a fight with people
• 52:16
  who are trying to destroy the country and lawless anarchist protesters and sniveling snide journalists
• 52:27
  you know who are chirping from the sidelines and always undermining you every time you try to do
• 52:31
  something great uh need to get a swift kick in the ass and that that's the way to you know make
• 52:40
  America great again i mean i imagine that that's the way that they think about it and that in some
• 52:44
  ways is even more dangerous than if it was just raw self-interest because as you say there's
• 52:48
  going to be a democratic administration someday and if they come in with an equally divisive and
• 52:55
  blinker view of what the good is by defining it only in their version of America the pure and
• 53:03
  good version of America that is going to stomp all over the faces of the bad guys um yeah i don't
• 53:09
  know how you get out of that hole yeah yeah um i don't know i you're being pretty generous there
• 53:16
  thinking that they even have justification in line i actually do think they sit in a room and
• 53:23
  think about how they can profit and grift um i that's that's my perception i could be i could be
• 53:29
  wrong um maybe they are true believers i don't know um anything's possible but but but but right
• 53:37
  that's um you know i remember like when i you know and you take logic in college they tell you
• 53:41
  slippery slopes or or a logical fallacy um i i don't think that is correct because we were saying
• 53:50
  you know left in right yeah it's it's something only a logician could say because
• 53:54
  it's not on to the world it is not it is true logically and also completely irrelevant
• 54:00
  right it's a phenomenon that exists um yeah yeah for us just since you said in passing
• 54:06
  stuff about the uh the whistleblower the abama's attacks on whistleblowers that is something that
• 54:12
  has been memory hold in my consciousness can you tease that out for us what did he do who did he go
• 54:17
  after are there any cases that come to mind well uh studens perhaps the most famous one um Chelsea
• 54:27
  Manning Drake they're there they're a number of them um he went after i think i think he prosecuted
• 54:36
  nine whistleblowers either eight or nine but it was more than every prior president
• 54:41
  combined and part of that was because of technologies that hadn't previously existed that both
• 54:49
  made whistleblowing leaking documents easier and easier to do and easier to detect
• 54:56
  that was certainly part of it part of it was also just a deliberate crackdown um on his part we've
• 55:01
  got a law here in the United States the espionage act that was uh passed uh over a hundred years ago
• 55:08
  and is really poorly written really vague but if you take it literally it makes it a crime to
• 55:18
  obtain possess distribute publish national defense information it uses that term national defense
• 55:27
  it doesn't say classified because the classification system didn't even exist yet back then um
• 55:33
  that is a law that could at least in theory based on how it's written criminalize national
• 55:43
  security reporting criminalize what journalists at the New York Times in Washington post do every day
• 55:48
  they obtain national defense information they report on it sometimes nowadays they even embed the
• 55:54
  PDF you know in a story classified or not doesn't matter under the espionage act motives don't matter
• 56:01
  under the espionage act you are treated exactly the same way whether you're a spy doing the bidding
• 56:07
  of Russia and China or whether you're a whistleblower acting out of conscience so that law is on
• 56:13
  the books and is rife for abuse and it is one of those we've seen so many things with the Trump
• 56:20
  administration these these sort of honor systems that existed these norms that existed um and that it
• 56:26
  was just assumed certain lines would never be crossed um the espionage act uh you know uh
• 56:32
  Nixon wanted to use it against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon papers um
• 56:37
  Alberto Gonzalez under the Bush administration threatened to prosecute journalists a lot of
• 56:42
  Ford did a lot of presidents threatened to prosecute journalists under the espionage act
• 56:47
  no one actually has because they have realized um the extent of the backlash the closest
• 56:55
  that has come was Trump in his first term inditing Julian Assange the WikiLeaks publisher
• 57:01
  which um the Biden administration then carried out through a plea deal and press freedom
• 57:07
  organizations warned of the dangers of that prosecution um because no matter what you think of
• 57:15
  Julian Assange what he did the elements of the crime he was charged with are no different than
• 57:21
  as I said then what the Washington Post in New York Times does every day um and and and Biden
• 57:27
  persisted in that prosecution even when he knew Trump was running for office even when he knew
• 57:34
  he was far behind in the polls and Trump was likely to be the next president and was looking for
• 57:38
  any weapon he could find to wield against journalists for whatever reason the Biden administration
• 57:43
  nonetheless decided to hand Donald Trump that that that that that precedent of extracting a plea
• 57:49
  deal um from Julian Assange so that's the the the the the highest danger of the espionage act the way
• 57:55
  that it had been used before the prospect of going after journalists was on the table was to go
• 58:02
  after their sources to go after leakers um whistleblowers even that though was very rare
• 58:10
  before the Obama administration because journalists and sources have a have a symbiotic
• 58:19
  relationship you can't have one without the other um and there was some recognition that yeah this
• 58:25
  wall like you can you can argue that under the plain language you can prosecute um a leaker a whistle
• 58:33
  blower for going to the press to reveal government misconduct to reveal corruption to reveal war crimes
• 58:40
  even you can make that case but but should we do we want to actually discourage that activity
• 58:46
  shouldn't we stop the war crimes rather than going after the people who exposed them you know is
• 58:51
  that is that the right is that the right look is that the message we want to send um most of the time
• 58:58
  this no and Obama change I know I would yeah I would maybe I'm maybe this is just my political bias
• 59:06
  because I like to bomb up but my sense was that it really was a new technological moment and his
• 59:11
  administration was trying to grapple with something that had never been possible before which was
• 59:15
  what my fellow countryman Assange did which is just dump a tremendous amount of unanalyzed,
• 59:23
  unredacted um material onto the web which to me is different from and just to also on Biden
• 59:35
  negotiating a plea deal with Assange I mean yes it's bad because it sets a precedent that they
• 59:41
  didn't to quit him and stop going after him but they did free him I mean he is back in Australia
• 59:46
  now a free man the Biden administration right right right um so I mean but this was also the
• 59:54
  consequence of a change of government in Australia where there had been a long there'd been a
• 59:58
  it was a conservative government in power for 11 years who made absolutely no uh requests to
• 1:00:02
  the United States or the UK to sort out the Assange matter because they were right wing and they
• 1:00:06
  didn't give a shit and Australia elected a center left government and they started talking
• 1:00:11
  aggressively behind the scenes with Washington and saying you've got to do something about Assange
• 1:00:15
  he can't just stay in prison forever like this right so for Assange personally yeah he's he's
• 1:00:23
  he's free and obviously being free is a lot better than languishing in in prison in poor health
• 1:00:30
  but a plea deal is still a conviction and I say it doesn't it doesn't set a legal precedent
• 1:00:38
  the way that an appellate court ruling would it validates the legal theories under which he was
• 1:00:45
  prosecuted if they had been challenged more successfully you couldn't use them again um or at least
• 1:00:51
  you would have to think of a different way to take them up um it validates them it it shows that
• 1:00:57
  the government successfully extracted a plea deal from a defendant for nothing more than obtaining
• 1:01:04
  and publishing national defense information um under the espionage act it gives future
• 1:01:09
  administrations cover to pursue similar charges so while there might have been a political compromise
• 1:01:16
  but I say yeah yeah but that's the help help me think through the the legitimate national security
• 1:01:21
  it concerns that would be the limiting case for you here because I felt like the exemplar of who
• 1:01:29
  did whistle blowing correctly was Snowdon who took the information he didn't dump it all on the
• 1:01:37
  web he took it to the most reputable news outlets that he respected the most and he let them pour
• 1:01:41
  over it and and then they took it to the administration into the government and they were able to go
• 1:01:46
  back and forth about like is there anything in here that we're missing that we don't understand
• 1:01:50
  is going to cause some you know someone to die or something and then they published it anyway
• 1:01:54
  whatever was responsible to publish like that was perfect and the fact that Snowdon was punished
• 1:01:59
  for that is is awful on the other hand obtaining nuclear codes and just handing them to North Korea
• 1:02:08
  or just publishing them in a way that you know North Korea could find them or some some incredibly
• 1:02:13
  deleterious thing to America's national security or the private addresses of you know every
• 1:02:21
  American secret agent who's out there so that the you know the mullers in Tehran can just
• 1:02:28
  execute the model that is presumed that presumably deserves to be criminalized does it not and
• 1:02:36
  to me assigned did something not dissimilar I mean he definitely got people killed we know he got
• 1:02:41
  people killed because they were there were there were spies on the subcontinent who were outed in
• 1:02:47
  those materials who subsequently disappeared what's the where is the line well I don't know
• 1:02:54
  that he got people killed the judge actually found that he didn't in authorizing the plea deal found
• 1:02:58
  that there was no showing that he had caused serious serious harm of the sort that was I have to go
• 1:03:06
  back to those cases but wiki leaks was massive so there was a lot of I mean there was a huge
• 1:03:10
  amount of stuff there and there was a lot that was there was certainly people scrambling even if
• 1:03:16
  you dispute the claims that people got killed there were people scrambling for their lives to get
• 1:03:21
  the hell out of places because all of a sudden they were exposed that that that could be
• 1:03:28
  I would put the onus on the government to protect its information if you're talking about new
• 1:03:35
  technologies yeah there are new cybersecurity gaps there are also new fixes available the government
• 1:03:43
  has practically infinite resources to be on the cutting edge and safeguard the information
• 1:03:52
  that it absolutely needs to safeguard for the sake of national security I think it's time
• 1:03:56
  would be better invested in patching up whatever holes sources exploited than in prosecuting the
• 1:04:05
  messenger that principle is is is pretty clear in us law outside of the espionage act that is
• 1:04:14
  sort of the one statute that makes an exception to that principle that it is not the job of a
• 1:04:21
  journalist to decide or to determine what information the government wants or doesn't want
• 1:04:31
  released what information the government wants them to have even we may not be a journalist job
• 1:04:36
  but isn't it isn't that the job of the person who's working for the government who's agreed to
• 1:04:41
  keep those secrets in other words the whistleblower like I agree that once you're a professional
• 1:04:45
  journalist doing journalism which means talking to which mean I don't think Assange becomes a
• 1:04:52
  journalist just because he dumps a bunch of files on the web if you're a journalist you're reading
• 1:04:55
  through things you're pouring through things you're contextualizing things you're writing about
• 1:04:59
  them you're interviewing people you're going to the government and asking what their opinion is
• 1:05:03
  you're trying to balance things you're trying to balance trade-offs and then you're publishing
• 1:05:06
  something you know just viewing a fire hose I don't think that's journalism but even
• 1:05:12
  setting aside the Assange question if you're if I'm a whistleblower and I've signed in signed on
• 1:05:17
  to work in the Pentagon and I find out that Israel is about to preemptively strike Iran tomorrow
• 1:05:26
  and I just leak it and then Iran can move its assets or for a strike or whatever and I
• 1:05:33
  blow up that plan is that should there be no penalty is there no legitimate penalty for that?
• 1:05:41
  No I wouldn't say that there should be no penalty the problem with the espionage act is as I said
• 1:05:47
  there is no good faith defense motive is not a consideration um that that that person who who
• 1:05:54
  leaks information about the Israeli strike is going to be treated the same whether they were
• 1:06:01
  acting out of conscience in an attempt to stop a strike that they thought was wrong as if they
• 1:06:07
  are selling that information to the iradians or to the Russians or or wherever it may be it's
• 1:06:13
  called the espionage act because it is intended to combat espionage not whistleblowing and the penalties
• 1:06:19
  under the espionage act reflect that intent so when it is used against somebody who right or wrong
• 1:06:27
  was acting out of conscience was not intending to cause the United States harm was in fact intending
• 1:06:33
  to help the United States perhaps avoid becoming engulfed in a war or committing board crimes
• 1:06:39
  that should be a factor I mean even in murder trials you get to say what your motive was
• 1:06:45
  you get to say this was a crime of passion you get to say I was acting in self-defense
• 1:06:50
  you don't get that opportunity with the espionage act and when it comes to a sange
• 1:06:54
  you know there we can we we there there's discussion to be had about whether he released too much what
• 1:07:01
  he should have redacted how he released the information fair fair academic discussion to have
• 1:07:06
  but under the espionage act it doesn't matter and that's why it was so problematic for the Biden
• 1:07:12
  administration to put that weapon in the hands of Trump nothing in the espionage act limits
• 1:07:18
  prosecution to people who dump documents on redacted onto the web as opposed to people who publish
• 1:07:26
  and contextualize one limited item that they believe to be newsworthy that you can morally justify
• 1:07:36
  okay well here is why prosecutors use their discretion to go after a sange and that they don't use
• 1:07:42
  that discretion to go after the New York Times that is what the Biden administration did they said
• 1:07:49
  well we assure you that we would not use this statute to pursue charges against a traditional
• 1:07:59
  journalist but they can only make that premise for themselves they can't make that premise for
• 1:08:03
  Donald Trump right exactly yes and of course it just means that journalists are forever more
• 1:08:09
  and whistleblowers sort of serving at the pleasure of of the state in a way this is trusting that
• 1:08:16
  the state is not going to maliciously misuse a law that it allows the state that permits the state
• 1:08:22
  to do extraordinary things just back on let's just wrap with I just want to go through some of the
• 1:08:28
  other things that the Trump administration has been doing that concerns you with regard to press
• 1:08:31
  freedom you write about the North Carolina journalists of the blade in Asheville who were just
• 1:08:39
  explain what happened there this was in 2021 yeah and this was local authorities it wasn't the
• 1:08:45
  Trump administration but the point always attempting to make there is that the Trump administration is
• 1:08:51
  not as creative as people give them credit for the playbook that they are using now is generally
• 1:09:00
  a playbook that we have seen at some point or another at the local level or on the fringes or
• 1:09:07
  somewhere that people weren't paying as much attention so just as Don Lemon according to the
• 1:09:13
  Trump administration should have dropped his camera and not followed the protesters into the
• 1:09:19
  church even though that is clearly where news was occurring these two Asheville North Carolina
• 1:09:24
  journalists metilda bliss and Veronica Coyte were publish it were we're covering a a homeless
• 1:09:29
  encampment sweep in Asheville when the clock struck 10 and that is when the park curfew was
• 1:09:35
  and according to the Asheville police even though news was occurring in front of their faces and
• 1:09:41
  it is their job to document the news they should have just turned around and gone home and not
• 1:09:46
  covered the news after the clock struck 10 because the public park was was was was closed and that was
• 1:09:52
  I'm sorry you say a homeless encampment sweep does that mean that authorities were rounding up
• 1:09:57
  a homeless people yes yes authorities were evicted with your authorities on the were the authorities
• 1:10:02
  trespassing I assume I'm not an expert in the Asheville North Carolina municipal code but I assume
• 1:10:09
  the authorities are exempt from the park curfew but in any event the notion that a journalist
• 1:10:18
  is supposed to have news happening again in front of their faces and not cover it what if someone
• 1:10:24
  got shot in that park what if what you know what not that far fetch particularly a Minneapolis now
• 1:10:29
  what if what if an officer at that park took out a gun and shot one of the people they were
• 1:10:34
  evicting from that homeless encampment were these journalists supposed to just pretend it didn't
• 1:10:39
  happen not look not go ask questions because they can't because I believe that is precisely the purpose
• 1:10:43
  of the prosecution is not to make sure that right right exactly what they are covering things
• 1:10:49
  so the point I was making was what was that that we have seen this at the local level people dismiss it
• 1:10:56
  because the Asheville blade is a fairly radical leftist publication the founder identifies as an
• 1:11:06
  anarchist most of the staff are transgender they have a long history of feuding with the local
• 1:11:14
  government they have there are so many ways that people can other and outlet like that and say
• 1:11:21
  just like Julian Assange well they're different than the real journalist this will happen to them
• 1:11:25
  it won't happen to you know Don Lemon or the Washington Post well then it does and this
• 1:11:32
  conspiracy stuff against lemon too we've seen that in a number of other context recently where
• 1:11:40
  prosecutors at both the federal and state level have been using Rico laws racketeering laws to
• 1:11:51
  issue these indictments these prosecutions for wide ranging so-called conspiracies where the dots
• 1:12:00
  between the people who actually committed crimes and those who are indicted as conspirators
• 1:12:07
  really don't connect a famous one is there's in Atlanta Georgia there is a police training center
• 1:12:14
  called that that has become known as cop city it's like this sprawling project to basically create
• 1:12:21
  a police you know funhouse it's and it's being built if you've ever been to Atlanta
• 1:12:29
  Atlanta's kind of a city in a forest I used to live there it's unique in that sense
• 1:12:34
  and it's being built on forest you know land that that that that that that environmentalist would
• 1:12:40
  like to see preserved so there's been a pretty active protest against cop city in the course of
• 1:12:46
  those protests a couple of people have attacked officers damaged police vehicles so on and so forth
• 1:12:57
  the indictment connects those folks with people who merely distributed literature spoke to
• 1:13:07
  the media press conferences held certain ideologies anarchists essentially with very little
• 1:13:19
  actual connection evidence of their involvement in any crime it's essentially they were like
• 1:13:26
  minded people who traveled in the same circles and therefore they're all they're all conspirators
• 1:13:34
  that's also happened in cases at the federal level one guy was indicted solely for possessing
• 1:13:42
  and transporting literature anti-establishment sort of pamphlets and zines
• 1:13:49
  with absolutely no Daniel Sanchez case his wife he wasn't even there his wife was at a protest
• 1:13:57
  where allegedly an officer was shot there's no allegation that his wife was the shooter
• 1:14:06
  um that's not even under and yeah that that's not even in the in the atmosphere um but
• 1:14:13
  Daniel Sanchez was arrested for the sole reason that he moved some anarchist literature from
• 1:14:19
  their home to somewhere else they're calling that concealment of evidence evidence of what of
• 1:14:25
  of reading anarchist zines I don't know um my point is that these tactics start on the fringes
• 1:14:34
  and before you know it end up with Don at Don Lemons doorstep you know this idea that by being
• 1:14:43
  around certain people by even potentially being sympathetic to them because you know
• 1:14:50
  journalistic objectivity people forget is is an industry norm it's not a matter of law if Don
• 1:14:56
  Lemons was sympathetic to those protesters that's his business that has no bearing on his
• 1:15:01
  constitutional rights um but these these these loose net conspiracies that tie first amendment
• 1:15:08
  protected free speech constitutionally protected activity to alleged crimes through this
• 1:15:19
  reach to connect those dots that's something we've been seeing for a while but it's been relegated
• 1:15:25
  to again the fringes i mean it's interesting you mentioned rico laws south because i mean correct
• 1:15:31
  me if i'm wrong but my recollection is that these laws were created to type at the mob because the
• 1:15:36
  mob was so good and all organized crime is so good at keeping everything arms linked that you can
• 1:15:41
  never get the people who you really want to get because they can always keep themselves a slight
• 1:15:45
  distance away from any proof of their connection to it so these laws allowed prosecutors to say
• 1:15:52
  you don't have to prove that the person was actually involved if you can prove that
• 1:15:56
  they're part of a general collective who were responsible for doing these things then
• 1:16:01
  the individual can be you know found guilty and incarcerated even if they there's no proof
• 1:16:07
  that they actually did it because we all know the way the mob works but the idea of transposing that
• 1:16:12
  onto something like some Texas activist who happens to have anarchist literature whose wife was
• 1:16:18
  at a rally where someone was shot you know that that means that he is culpable for the shooting
• 1:16:25
  a it's completely authoritarian and be how can the right wing not see that this could be flipped
• 1:16:34
  in the next democratic administration and Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and Ben Shapiro and
• 1:16:42
  Stephen Miller could all be linked to some crazy person who does something that they would not approve
• 1:16:48
  of you know an anti abortion activist could be held liable for someone who assassinates an abortion
• 1:16:56
  doctor I mean there is how tenuous does the connection have to be in order to constitute a
• 1:17:05
  yeah do you want to just what how would you frame how would you fix this like what do you get rid
• 1:17:10
  of the espnage act and get rid of rico laws do you add extra laws on top to clarify their use
• 1:17:18
  like what is the do you rely on the courts to interpret them better assuming that we can't rely
• 1:17:23
  on politicians and presidents to fix the problem certainly not this administration if any how would
• 1:17:32
  you want you know how would you shore up press freedom in America well there in terms of the
• 1:17:37
  espnage act there have been legislative proposals to fix it that we very much support one of them is
• 1:17:45
  either it is soon going to be reintroduced by representative to labe who obviously is not going
• 1:17:52
  to have many friends on the right so I'm under no illusion that it is going to pass this time around
• 1:17:59
  but yeah I would hope that as the right does does sort of grapple with the idea that the
• 1:18:06
  shoe is one day going to be on the other foot you know I think when when Trump first that into
• 1:18:10
  office people were kind of thinking the party was going to go on forever the prospect of the cards
• 1:18:17
  being reversed was the furthest thing from the minds of of some on the right that that that might
• 1:18:23
  change soon and maybe then there can be more support for closing some of these loopholes by
• 1:18:30
  reforming the espnage act Rico I think the guy who wrote Rico has essentially apologized for
• 1:18:38
  creating this mess so it's not exactly a radical idea that we should get rid of of Rico like you
• 1:18:46
  said it was intended for mob prosecutions and has morphed into something totally different and
• 1:18:53
  and although what Rico changed was you didn't need to independently have committed a criminal act
• 1:18:59
  to be considered part of a criminal enterprise you needed to commit an action in furtherance
• 1:19:05
  of the criminal conspiracy still that in furtherance element has has almost been been been
• 1:19:10
  read out of it transporting the anarchozine or giving press conferences about stop cap city
• 1:19:18
  is in no way in furtherance of some other protest or thrown a rocket a police car so
• 1:19:25
  Rico has just been expanded into a total mess and and it's not really a press freedom issue as
• 1:19:31
  much as a free speech in in in in general issue but more broadly I don't know that it's a problem
• 1:19:43
  we can legislate our way out of the judiciary plays a key role the judiciary has upheld
• 1:19:50
  the first amendment to an extent with with with with some exceptions but even that as Trump
• 1:19:58
  knows better than anybody isn't an effective solution because legal services in the United
• 1:20:07
  States are prohibitively expensive and we've got a media that is in dire financial straits defending
• 1:20:15
  a lawsuit let alone going on offense to get an injunction to stop the administration's practices
• 1:20:22
  is a drain on time a drain on resources a drain a drain on money even if you even if you ultimately
• 1:20:30
  win nobody wants to be fighting those battles so when it comes down to it I think the backlash needs
• 1:20:36
  to come from the public and from the press itself you know never go to war with the guy who owns
• 1:20:43
  the printing presses the the the the old adage but too often the press doesn't want to insert itself
• 1:20:49
  into these battles they feel like it's naval gazing they feel like they're making themselves the
• 1:20:53
  story that makes them uncomfortable I think that needs to change the press needs to stand up for
• 1:21:00
  itself the press needs to fight these battles and covering the story is is is not naval gazing it
• 1:21:08
  is crucial news it's our democracy kind of depends on these freedoms persevering so if if you
• 1:21:15
  don't cover that story because it feels a little bit awkward to you you're doing your readers
• 1:21:21
  a disservice you know get over it and cover the news and if you're the news so be it that wasn't
• 1:21:25
  your decision that was that was the administration's decision and I do think the American public
• 1:21:33
  cares about this stuff no disrespect to people like Don Lemon and Jimmy Kimmel but I don't think
• 1:21:41
  that the backlash we see in those cases is because this these people take into the streets are Don
• 1:21:47
  Lemon and Jimmy Kimmel super fans um both of their shows are I mean I don't like I've seen both
• 1:21:56
  of their shows they're fine they're not best journalism or the best late night television on the
• 1:22:04
  planet I don't recall the public being overly upset when Don Lemon was taken off of CNN I'm sure
• 1:22:12
  he had people who were into his show who were slightly bummed but it's not as though these are
• 1:22:18
  like these iconic cultural figures um but their names people know and people that's what it takes
• 1:22:25
  to get people involved maybe a name they know but these are the people who are upset about this I
• 1:22:31
  don't think it's like a personal Don Lemon thing I think they're upset about the principle the American
• 1:22:36
  public still cares about these principles um despite the efforts of the administration and many
• 1:22:43
  before them to demonize the media whatever people think of reporters they do appreciate press
• 1:22:51
  freedom despite the loud contingent on the right that that that that might celebrate this kind of
• 1:22:59
  stuff um there is a public backlash and it's unfortunate that it requires you know celebrities like
• 1:23:05
  Kimmel and Lemon to get involved before people really speak up but you know I get it it's more
• 1:23:09
  relatable it's a name they know um when when when it's putting people's faces like that they they
• 1:23:15
  care um and and you know a politicians should pay a political cost and I think until until Trump
• 1:23:23
  I doubt that I'm pretty certain that prior presidents would have loved to arrest journalists
• 1:23:31
  who criticize them I don't think Trump's the first one who had that impulse um I think in the past
• 1:23:38
  they figured there would be political consequences to doing that um Trump made a bet that there
• 1:23:44
  wouldn't be and he needs to lose that bet so uh because because you know the the the law we're seeing
• 1:23:52
  right now the law is only worth so much um the court system even when it works in the long run
• 1:24:01
  um it's almost an afterthought the intimidation comes from the charges or the lawsuit not from the
• 1:24:06
  eventual outcome the only thing that can save us is is is is is the public hmm all right let's hope
• 1:24:14
  the democratic party gets his shit together and uh things go their way in November uh Seth fabulous
• 1:24:20
  to talk to you thanks man thanks and we'll keep an eye on the democrats too if they do exactly see it
• 1:24:30
  you