"Todd Blanche's zeal for retribution"

This isn't the end of a fight. It's the start of one. Lioness, the critically acclaimed original series from Taylor Sheridan, returns August 2nd only on Paramount Plus. In the new season, hidden networks, foreign operatives, and personal betrayals collide while Joe walks the line between duty and family. Don't Miss Lioness. Starring Zoe Saldana, Michael Kelly, with Morgan Freeman and Nicole Kidman, streaming August 2nd only on Paramount Plus. Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Hi there, everyone. It's 4 o'clock in the East. When the history of the Trump era is written, what happened to Todd Blanche will be in the discussion questions at the end of the Weaponized Department of Justice chapter. There is no retribution campaign against Donald Trump's perceived political enemies who... By the way, aren't enemies at all, but merely public servants doing their jobs in every instance without Todd Blanche's zeal for carrying out that retribution campaign. Brand new reporting in the New York Times based on newly released emails from a Freedom of Information Act request revealed just how much Todd Blanche has controlled and caused turmoil in the Department of Justice in his mission to fulfill Trump's wish of punishing all those perceived enemies. According to the Times, what led to Todd Blanche putting himself in the driver's seat of the DOJ's retribution efforts last May. was this. He was, quote, handed a migraine in a detective Colombo trench coat by the name of Edward R. Martin Jr. Martin, a right-wing lawyer who championed the cause of the January 6th rioters, had just been forced out as the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The White House Senate installed Ed Martin as the head of the weaponization working group. Martin put on nothing less than a show for Donald Trump. like when he showed up at the Brooklyn home of New York's Attorney General Letitia James in that Detective Colombo trench coat while he tried to cook up a mortgage fraud case against her. The New York Times reports that Todd Blanche, quote, didn't believe that Martin, a provocateur with minimal prosecutorial experience, had the chops and know-how to do the job. That's according to current and former officials who spoke anonymously. Notably, Todd Blanche doesn't fire him, though. No. He hands him the keys to the car and then supervised his driving by, quote, scheduling a check-in meeting every Friday, according to this trove of internal Justice Department emails. The emails also reveal that Todd Blanche, quote, created an organizational plan for the weaponization working group that assigned key investigative lanes to some of his own deputies.

That ensured, among other things, that he had tight control over one of the most sensitive issues on his plate, demands from Trump and his supporters to identify, investigate, and punish those who have once pursued them. Since exerting control within DOJ, here's what Todd Blanche has directed and managed. all of which he should have to answer for at his confirmation hearing tomorrow. Failed retribution cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey, a renewed effort to target James Comey over a picture of seashells that spell out the numbers 8647. the purging of hundreds of Career Justice Department employees who worked on cases against Donald Trump, the mishandling of the Epstein files, which will dive into in depth in the next hour, the subpoenas served to Minnesota officials amid the Trump administration's immigration occupation, which were later quashed by a judge, and the attempted investigation into the widow of Renee Nicole Good, who was killed by ICE agents in Minnesota. Now, if there is one bright spot in the wake of all of this, as former special counsel Jack Smith told us earlier this month, it is those within the Department of Justice who have resisted Todd Blanche and his efforts. We've seen so many times in these retribution cases where prosecutors wouldn't be a part of it. You know, prosecutors in Minnesota who are like, I'm not going to investigate the family member of a shooting victim. I'm not doing that. Prosecutors who wouldn't go through with retribution. prosecutions. And those people give up a lot. This is their whole career. A lot of them, you know, this isn't a lucrative sort of profession for a lawyer in terms of what you could do in private practice. They have to support their families. And one thing I have hope about is I think the traditions in the department, the people that draw are so strong that we're going to have to rehabilitate the department for sure. But there's a lot of people still there, still in place, wanting to do the right thing, wanting to. follow the facts in the law, not be a part of any retribution campaign.

Todd Lynch's role in the perversion of justice is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. The journalist bylined on that piece. New York Times Justice Department reporter Glenn Thrush is here. Plus, former top DOJ official and general counsel for the FBI, our legal analyst, Andrew Weissman's back with us. Also joining us former assistant special agent in charge at the FBI, National Security and Intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg's here. Glenn Thrush, first tell me how you got migraine wrapped in a Detective Columbo trench coat into the pages of the New York Times. I squealed with the light when I read those words. Well, I think my editors must have been on vacation and I got lucky. Sometimes it's like, you know, it's like that final shot at the end of the first Star Wars when, you know, the missile gets to the heart of the Death Star. It's perfect. I want to do the prayer hands emojis to my bosses on that one. But, you know, it illustrates essentially the catalytic event that really prompted Todd Blanche to take control of the so-called anti-weaponization working group inside the Justice Department. It wasn't necessarily Todd Blanche's firm belief in any one of these principles, right? He is broadly motivated by a desire to execute Trump's wishes. It's not like Todd Blanche doesn't think, doesn't agree with Donald Trump that the Justice Department had been mobilized against him and some of his supporters. It's Todd Blanche has a general sense of wanting to control it. I think what these emails, and it's 392 pages, and it was provided to me from by American oversight, a watchdog group, what they really show here is Todd Blanche, really trying to assert control inside the department, probably because he has so little control outside of it, right? And Ed Martin was inserted really against Todd Blanche's wishes because he had flopped as the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia. He had no prosecutorial experience, Ed Martin. He was doing all this crazy performative stuff. And really, Todd Blanche needed a way to neutralize Martin because he couldn't have this operation, the anti-weaponization group, in the hands of somebody he couldn't control. Now, what is interesting is this mechanism, this group, this task force, we had all anticipated that this would be the primary conduit for this vengeance campaign by Trump. It has turned out... largely through the design of Todd Blanche not to have played that role. Instead, Todd Blanche has kind of dealt with these issues, Todd Blanche and before him, Pam Bondi, but we should remember that Todd Blanche, before he was acting Attorney General, was Deputy Attorney General really running the day-to-day operations of the department. And Pam Bondi, while an active player, was never really as... clued in to President Trump as Todd Blanche was for the 19 months of this administration. So Todd Blanche has essentially tried to manage Donald Trump's demands in a way that allowed him to assert some level of control over this.

And I think the argument that Todd Blanche has been making more suggested than explicit to Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee is I have stopped a lot of bad things from happening. I know I've had to agree to a bunch of prosecutions, including the James Comey Seychelles prosecution. But the suggestion, or at least the belief among Republicans on the committee, is that Todd Blanche is the least unpalatable option available to them as a permanent attorney general. So I'm going to, Michael Feinberg, I'm going to call BS on that and show you Todd Blanche bragging to right-wing activist Matt Schlapp about the DOJ Purge. Because I think Glenn Thrush is correct. He's going to present himself tomorrow as the least offensive option. But I'd take Matt Bill Gates over this guy. Watch. There is not a single man or woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions. How many have been canned? Over 200. Over 200 either left before we came in because I knew it was coming or were fired or took early retirement. They are no longer employed by this department.

And when it comes to the FBI, which takes a lot of criticism, especially because of what happened over the past several years, Director Kash Patel has cleaned house there too. There isn't a single man or woman with a gun, federal agent, still in that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump. Now, Michael Feinberg, thanks to Glenn Thrush's great reporting and some of the things you've shared since you left. I mean, they're clapping for the purging of Walt Gerdino, a longtime FBI agent who was fired as his wife laid dying of cancer. Brian Driscoll, someone with decades of experience and counterterrorism, a real national security asset to the United States government under Democratic and Republican presidents. They're plotting the purging of agents who had no say on which cases they worked on, but they got involved in the Trump cases because Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco appointed a special counsel and they needed agents and they needed prosecutors. So that's what those people are clapping for. And those were the applause lines that Todd Lynch fed them. I'd take Matt Bill Gates seven days a week over that guy. Look, choosing between Matt Bill Gates and Todd Blanche as a boss or as a political leader is sort of like flipping a coin between self-administered poison and the self-inflicted gunshot would. I wouldn't wish any of them upon my friends and I wouldn't wish either of them upon my country. But the mere fact that Todd Blanche was willing to go to his partisan and performative an exercise as CPAC and brag about firing people. for doing their jobs that they had been assigned. Because you are absolutely correct. FI agents do not pick the cases on which they work. Half the time, they're sitting at their desk when the supervisor walks by looking for anybody to throw at a problem. So to ruin their lives because they followed the chain of command, It's not just malicious. It goes against this administration's very emphasis on that chain of command. As Kash Patel himself has repeatedly stated, the chain of command is part of what makes the FBI. But I also want to note something. And like, I'm not trying to, you know, throw a fuel on the fire. Tom Clanch is wrong. There's actually quite a few people who worked on all those investigations still at DOJ and still at FBI. These people can't even carry out their purges effectively. These people have nothing on Stalin. They have nothing on the Stasi. Their motivations may be similar, but their effectiveness really leaves a lot to be desired. I mean, that is the hallmark. And that is sort of the gallows humor, Andrew Weissman, that the only thing standing between us and authoritarianism is their stupidity and incompetence, which is cold comfort. But I do want to show you Todd Blanche's inability to even have a consistent message around his own retribution campaign against him James Comey.

It is worth noting that on Amazon.com, we look this up, there are dozens of products with the same terminology. We're showing it right here. 8647 being sold and purchased right now. Should individuals selling or buying 8647 merchandise? be concerned that they're going to be prosecuted by the DOJ. This isn't about a single incident. Okay, this isn't, I mean, of course not. That's posted constantly. That phrase is used constantly. There are constantly men and women who choose to make threatening statements against President Trump. Every one of those statements do not result in indictments, of course. I mean, Andrew Weissman, an indictment is about a, quote, single incident. It's about a single crime that you believe, I mean, until. Todd Blanche, the standard was a single crime for which you had enough evidence to confidently believe that you could convict somebody beyond a reasonable doubt. That has always been the standard. He has rewritten the standard by admitting that the James Comey indictment, quote, isn't about a single incident. I mean, what is the basic law of criminal justice that he has announced on television under his watch at DOJ? Well, what he's announcing is selective and vindictive prosecution as a way to differentiate James Comey from everyone else who uses the phrase 86 or 8647. And to be fair, a federal judge throughout the Abrago-Garcia case that was spearheaded, according to the judge. by Todd Blanche on the ground that it was a vindictive prosecution. And this is where we are in the discussion that you are having with Glenn and Michael, which is Todd Blanche should be confirmed because I can think of somebody who might be worse. That's the argument for the standard for why we should have Todd Blanche as the Attorney General. Well, you know what? The next person doesn't have to be confirmed either. There is a track record here, up one side and down the other, of what Todd Blanche has done. James Comey and the 8647 is just... is just the tip of the iceberg. We could, as you've mentioned, you're going to talk about the Epstein matter. You can talk about trying to indict six members of Congress. You can talk about indicting Letitia James. You can talk about grand jury subpoenas to the sitting. governor of Minneapolis, the sitting mayor of, sorry, sitting governor of Minnesota, the sitting mayor of Minneapolis of a grand jury subpoena about election fraud in Fulton County, all of which were quashed. The grand jury subpoena with respect to the Federal Reserve was quashed. All of this was under the leadership.

of Todd Blanche. And so the argument, which is Bill Barr's argument, which is, well, there could be somebody worse, I don't buy that, not just because, yes, there could be somebody worse, but the Senate does not have to confirm either Todd Blanche or somebody who was worse. I mean, Glenn, let's put aside that that. All of the presumptions of good faith, conduct, and regularity are gone. That is what Todd Lynch has ushered in in 18, seemingly endless months, but 18 short months. He also sucks at the criminal justice part. The whole, you could indict a ham sandwich is gone. He now can't indict U.S. Senators. He failed to indict James Comey two times, failed to indict Letitia James two times. Wasn't. able to provide enough evidence to even proceed with a criminal investigation of Jerome Powell, something Trump's been obsessed with since he waved around papers at a construction site wearing a hard hat. I mean, the department doesn't function under Todd Blanche. What about the incompetence argument against having him serve in the big boy role as permanent attorney general? I mean, I think that's a point that's going to be raised. I mean, there seems to be, and I've heard it from political appointees in the department who aren't there any longer, that there is this idea, and you see this at the state level and in other countries that you bring charges to name and shame. the individuals, with full knowledge that you're not going to be able to obtain a conviction, in some cases, that you're not even going to be able to obtain an indictment. You know, and we've seen this proliferation of no true bills, particularly under Janine Piro in Washington, D.C., I think one of the most infamous one was the sandwiched chucker. And there's a sense that... That allows you to tell Trump, who is the immovable object in this system, that you did the best that you possibly could. And that, and really, that is the whole ballgame here. Todd Blanche in defending Donald Trump against the charges made by the special counsel made a maximalist argument about Article 2 of the Constitution extending to former presidents. And that has just completely been the foundation of Todd Blanche's interpretation of Trump's role in dictating terms. to the Department of Justice. So I think to the one area of complete consistency in Todd Blanche over the past couple of years is the through line of Article 2. He has justified all of those firings that he referred to at CPAC and so many of the other decisions, particularly.

essentially filling, you know, executing Trump's list of people to go after by saying it was Trump's right under Article 2 of the Constitution to tell Todd Blanche what to do. And the one thing I want to say is we have at least one senator, two actually, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who have explicitly said that independents, the independence of the Justice Department, are the primary motivator in what their vote would be. The question that I have is, If they examine the record that we have discussed here, how does that not justify at this point in time a no vote? Well, I also would suggest that Bill Barr was as big a fan of Article 2 as ever walk the planet. And even he had to navigate attorneys general like or U.S. attorneys like Jeff Berman, who refused to bring some of these political cases. So it isn't always interpreted as meaning you indict whoever you want to. I mean, that is the Justice Department in a third world country, not in the United States of America. So I think those two senators and frankly all of them are going to have to decide. where we live? I mean, do we still live in the United States of America or is this somewhere else? We haven't dealt with Minnesota yet, but there was also an attempt. to investigate elected officials there on the family members of shooting victims. We'll talk about that part of Todd Blanche's record. Also ahead, he once declared, quote, it's not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. Yes, we're still talking about Todd Blanche. We'll have much more on his confirmation hearing tomorrow. And how his cover-up and obstruction of the Jeffrey Epstein files could also get in the way, or at least tarnish his... opening act as Attorney General. But first, we'll get to the latest spring of ICE shootings, one in Texas, then one in Maine yesterday, and why now the Trump administration is making some very public changes to its deportation policies. Plus, Trump is... Going to be escalating his 2020 election lies live in prime time on Thursday, the weak in confidence in our country's upcoming midterm elections. He's going to do that with a big assist from his housing person, the guy named Bill Pulte, who we promoted to the head of the nation's national intelligence agencies. We'll talk about what we should expect to hear on Thursday coming up. All that and much more when Deadland White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. This isn't the end of a fight. It's the start of one. Lioness, the critically acclaimed original series from Taylor Sheridan, returns August 2nd only on Paramount Plus. In the new season, hidden networks, foreign operatives, and personal betrayals collide while Joe walks the line between duty and family. Don't Miss Lioness. Starring Zoe Saldana, Michael Kelly, with Morgan Freeman and Nicole Kidman, streaming August 2nd only on Paramount Plus.

Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Monday.com AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. You don't need to take my word for it. You can listen to exactly what Donald Trump is saying, and he's saying, and many of those that work for him are saying this is about some form of retribution. We would be getting targeted, in fact, are getting targeted for doing one of the most basic things that we are required to perform as public servants. And for me, that's speaking on behalf of my constituents. I take that responsibility very seriously. and that somebody would be investigated for it, of course, should be deeply concerning, not just for me, not just for Minneapolis, but that is concerning for the endurance of our republic. We're back with Glenn, Andrew, and Michael. So, Michael, the public officials, public elected officials, having the presence of mind. to couch the retribution campaign in their sort of tectonic context in the moment is one of the extraordinary hallmarks of these first 18 months. It's also one of the hallmarks of Todd Blanche's tenure, that everything was so hyper cartoonized that these efforts led to these mass resignations. New York Times at the time that he attempted to investigate. Mayor Fry and Governor Tim Walz and the widow of Renee Nicole Good reported that, quote, six prosecutors quit over a push to investigate ICE shooting victim's widow. Just talk about the hollowing out around the country of DOJ under Todd Blanche. Yeah, well, that's actually one of the things that gets mentioned less in light of the other scandals involving direct litigation is Todd Blanche's... either intentional or incidental utter destruction of the Department of Justice's workforce. The number of individuals who are no longer there for completely spurious reasons add up to centuries of subject matter expertise and institutional knowledge that has served presidents of both administrations for decades. In a weird way, he's shooting himself in the foot because he has all these political ambitions for what the department should be doing. But he's getting rid of the very people who would most likely ensure his success in doing so. But I do want to point out one thing about the actions Todd Blanche is taking.

Every single thing he does, cements his place in American history as a villain with more and more firmness. To the people who care about the rule of law, He has time and time again abandoned constitutional norms in service of political errands for his president. To the people who support that president, nothing Todd Blanche does will ever be enough. And as a result, someday this administration is going to end. Someday memoirs are going to be written and a generation after that monographs and a generation after that narrative histories. And there is no way that in any of those volumes, Todd Blanche comes out as anything other than an unprincipled underminer of the very institution he was supposed to safeguard. So Andrew Weissman. Just put into context the stakes. I mean, tomorrow's hearings, if they are anything like anything that's happened over the last nine years, will be a charade where even... Republicans who were on the fence will pretend to be concerned about the things that everyone on Earth One sees clearly. But in the end, it would require a first in nine years event for Republicans to block what Donald Trump wants. What are the stakes of Todd Blanche taking over as the country's Attorney General with this as his record? So I think that's a great question because I think there's two ways to think about that. One is rather than think about, oh, there might be somebody worse in the wings if we don't confirm him, it is blessing what he has done. It gives him a green light to continue doing all of the things and more that we have talked about, all of the ways that federal judges. up to just yesterday have talked about his engaging in wrongful illegal unethical conduct. These are federal judges who have found that. And this would be a green light saying that you now have the Senate saying, go forward. I know you're going to talk about Epstein, but it's a way of saying, you know what, we don't stand with the Epstein Transparency Act. We don't stand with the Epstein Victims. We stand with the people who are obstructing the turning over and disclosing pursuant to the law, millions of documents.

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That was a witness account, one of the witnesses to the horrific ice shooting of Johann Sebastian Guerrero. He's a Colombian immigrant in Biddeford, Maine earlier this week. The shooting has sparked massive protests by residents there who are outraged by the killing of one of their neighbors. Boston Globe is reporting this about Guerrero. Neighbors described him as a hardworking father who was trying to build a stable life for his family. He was often seen driving a small white sedan. which he used to make DoorDash deliveries. He was behind the wheel Monday morning when the immigration agent opened fire shooting into Guerrero's car. According to the Department of Homeland Security, immigration agents were trying to serve a deportation order. According to Maine Senator Angus King's office, however, Guerrero wasn't even the target of that deportation warrant, and it is the second fatal shooting by ICE agents during a vehicle stop this week. after ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo, Salgado, Arruho in Houston last week. In both that shooting and this one, in Maine, ICE agents have attempted to blame the victims for their own killings and deaths. Earlier today, ICE announced that it would be pausing some vehicle stops until the officers can be retrained on vehicle stops. For their part? Neighbors are still reeling from the killing of their neighbor. One of them telling the New York Times this, quote, I heard agony, said a local resident who said she saw a screaming woman on her knees next to a young girl. Quote, I heard a howl that came from your soul, but your whole life had just changed and it was never going to be the same. I want to bring in political analysts, host of the Bullwark podcast, Tim Miller. Michael is still here. I mean, the thing about this is, There's coverage and conversations about policies that are abhorrent. And then there are killings that are happening in all of our name, regardless of who we vote for, regardless of the old trope, elections have consequences. These two have been killed in our names as Americans. This is American policy, and they're being killed on American streets by Trump's immigration officials. Tim Miller, your thoughts. Yeah, well, it's the second state murder this week of the wrong person. So, you know, I think that stopping or pausing some kinds of vehicle stops, changing policies around vehicle stops, and the short term, while they get more training, is like basically the bare effing minimum that we can expect from a government after the agents of the state, like you said, people that we pay with our tax dollars, killed the wrong person twice. In Maine, they killed Mr. Guerrero. He was fleeing. Like, they didn't even do the thing that they did with Renee Good and pretend like she was a threat and that she was turning her car at the age on, which we all saw with her eyes. She didn't. They didn't even say that. Like, they said he was driving away, he's fleeing. Well, in what possible world? Does it make sense to fire on the wrong person when their car is driving away? And like you have the license plate. Like, you know, you don't have to be a policing expert to understand the options here. You can show up to the person's house if you're worried about it later, give them a ticket. If that's a crime that requires detention, you could even serve them a warrant at their house, right? Do you to open fire six times of a dad in front of the kids and it's the wrong person. It's totally, totally unacceptable. And to do it in Biddeford, Maine.

In the name of immigration enforcement, it's like, what? Like, this killing on the street, this murder was about 20 minutes. I googled this morning from the bush compound in Kenabungport. I'm sure you visited Nicole. It's like, this is... This is a peaceful hamlet, you know, a place people summer in Maine. Like this is not the border. Like this is not cartel country. So it's totally crazy that they're armed officials of the state there at all. So the thing is nuts. The one political thing I think is worth mentioning. So there's been a lot of discussion about the Maine Senate race and the Democrat and the issues with him over the past few weeks. But Susan Collins is the chair of the Appropriations Committee. In January, and there have been a bunch of examples of this, but there's one example particular. I did an interview on the block YouTube with a guy who had witnessed a correction officer who was legally. He was an agent of the state himself. He was a correction officer in Maine. Get detained and bullied and manhandled by ICE officials wrongfully. sent, like there's this big controversy in Maine, like the correction officers, the local sheriffs, there were press conferences about it. This was all five months ago saying ICE was acting with, you know, malice in the state acting wrongly, going after Maine citizens. After that incident, Susan Collins was fighting for more funding for ICE. Like, she wanted to give more money for people to go into her state and menace the citizens. And so that's what she's running on as we look at it to November. I mean, the politics are terrible and the predicate is non-existent. I mean, the political promise was to go after, quote, the worst of the worst. This was a father and a driver and not even the subject of the warrant, Michael Feinberg. Yeah, I don't want to minimize what I will refer to as state-sanctioned murderers, but I do want us to think about them in a larger context. Even if these shootings never happened, everything leading up to the moment when the ICE officer pulls the trigger and everything afterwards in terms of how they behaved is not remotely in line with best law enforcement practices or the norms of democracy. I just want to pause and think about how utterly unimaginable it would have been even five years ago to contemplate the notion of masked federal agents, obfuscating their identity, driving unmarked cars, ramming individuals for whom they do not have warrants, and then when it goes south, executing those citizens. This is not what is supposed to happen in a functioning democracy. There are cities in the United States that for admittedly temporarily limited time periods, but still, like, you know, Minnesota.

If you're a Latino during certain times of the past year, it's no different than being a political dissident in Romania under the Iron Guard or being a Uyghur in China. Like we should not let our outrage at the murders. And that is what they are and the outrage is deserved. But we should not let that outrage accrued. the equally justified outrage at the entire environment that is leading to these murders. Such a good point. We'll dig into that. Tim has a fantastic new interview with Pete Buttigieg, and he addresses these ice killings and those issues. I'll show you that on the other side of the break. Stay with us. This administration's Homeland Security Department. has already been caught in another case saying that somebody was trying to ram federal agents and that turning out not to be true, right? So I think we have more questions at a moment like this than we would if we could trust our federal government. And then you think about people who are caught up in this. I mean, if these reports turn out to be true about a three-year-old child on the scene. Six shots, like what could possibly? And, you know, whatever else anybody winds up learning or saying or claiming, like, for God's sake, like, obviously she does not deserve to be mixed up in any of this. And I don't know, we'll learn more, but it's so upsetting. And again, it's happening in this context where we keep hearing word of this kind of violence that is not making anybody safer or better off. It's not making America a better place. And it doesn't have to be like this. A really important interview at a really important time. Tim, your thoughts. Yeah, we were talking kind of right as the news of Maine was starting to come out. And so, you know, I think that he was kind of broadening out a little bit like Mike was. Like in the broader context of what we're seeing from this administration and how it's not making us safer. And we got to talk a bit about the experience he had with CPS and, you know, coming to his house based on that lie, based on that criminal prank. And, you know, I think connecting all these things together is this notion that. You know, you aren't in a free democracy. You aren't in a free country. You aren't feeling safe if the government is going to use state violence against you or your neighbors or the government would separate you from your kids. And you can't even trust that after something like that happens, if they make a mistake, that they will try to own up to it. You know, every... administration every police force every everything in history has made mistakes like that happens like what is happening now is that you can't trust that the guys in power that the guys with the guns will you know even be honest about their behavior and that they could go and menace you based on your skin color based on your political orientation

and not have any accountability for that. I mean, you know, that is not how things should be in a free country. And I think that Pete was pretty compelling on both of those topics. Tim just share with us what he said about the basically like the child protective service version of swatting against him and Chaston and their kids. He's angry. Pete doesn't get that angry. You know, my emotional range is like, you know, all the big top and bottom of your TV screen, which is probably not good for a leader. You know, Pete's a little more even keel. But he cussed. He was really upset. You could tell that it really upset Chaston and his family and that they're still kind of recovering from it and processing it. He talked about how there was part of him that made him just want to go. step away from this stuff and hug his family and hug them tight and care about that. And then there's the other part of them that's like, you know, something like this makes him want to fight even harder. So, you know, and I think that's kind of what a lot of us are going through and thinking about it. It just was really acute and tragic in his case. And I guess the other thing he said was that he does, you know, He could only say so much because he does want there to be an investigation on the person that did this. It was criminal. And again, it's like it's a little disheartening to think, can you trust that this administration or this Department of Justice will actually do what they should do to go after that person? And I guess that remains to be seen. Right. Like swatting is a crime. And there used to be a unit at DOJ an FBI that investigated it and followed up if you'd been swatted and told you about it. Tim Miller, thank you so much for talking to us today. Michael Febler, thank you for spending the hour with us after the break. Some good news for E. Jean Carroll to tell you about that's next.

If you're looking for something to cheer about today, we've got you. It is payday for E. Jean Carroll. More than three years after her legal battle against Donald Trump began, three decades after Donald Trump allegedly sexually abused her. Court records released today show that more than $5.5 million have been transferred to E. Jean Carroll's legal team. Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the news in a statement saying this, quote, three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury. found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment. The jury awarded her as a result of that verdict. The larger potential payout, the $83 million award in a separate defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll is still working its way through the courts as Donald Trump continues to appeal it so far to no avail. We'll stay on top of that as well. When we come back, Jonathan Swan joins us on the extensive reporting he has done on how connected Todd Blanche is to the cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein files. We'll bring the latest when Deadland White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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