“Bad cop”

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Hi there, everyone. Happy Tuesday, it's 4 o'clock in New York. Donald Trump's handpicked Secretary of Defense, the former Fox News weekend host, Pete Hegseth says, Is today sweating under the cleeg lights of congressional oversight and intense public scrutiny? At this very moment, Pete Hegseth is on Capitol Hill alongside other top Trump officials as a bipartisan push to force the release of video of the September 2nd boat strike in which survivors of an initial strike were killed, along with materials relating to other boat strikes in the region, rapidly gained bipartisan momentum. The New York Times reports this, quote, on track to clear Congress in the coming days would compel the Pentagon to provide lawmakers with the specific orders behind the strikes that the U.S. military is taking on boats in international waters as well as unedited video of the attacks. And the bipartisan bill takes a decidedly bad cop approach to forcing Pete Hegseth to bow to congressional oversight. More from that Times report. Quote, it would withhold 25% of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says travel budget if he failed to give the Congressional National Security Committees a copy of the execute orders behind the strikes or to outline how he planned to facilitate future briefings about the operation. with lawmakers in accordance with federal law. That bill, if passed, would wind up on the desk of Donald Trump, who has suddenly flip-flopped on releasing the video of the second strike, complete with unhinged, misogynistic lashing out at a female journalist for asking questions, doing her job, and simply quoting Trump back to Trump. That is just the latest twist in... What is a well-established pattern by the Trump administration of being less than transparent about these strikes? For reference, here's how those who watched the video that Team Trump seems now suddenly so eager to keep hidden described it to journalists at the Atlantic. Quote, the suspected drug traffickers, the lone survivors of a U.S. air strike, were sprawled on a table-sized piece of floating wreckage in the Caribbean for more than 40 minutes. They were unarmed, incommunicado, and adrift. as they repeatedly attempted to write what remained of the boat. At one point, the men raised their arms and seemed to signal to U.S. aircraft above. The gesture, some who watched the video of the incident, interpreted it as a sign of surrender. Then, a second explosion finished the men off, leaving only a bloody stain on the surface of the sea. Footage of the two men's desperate final moments made some viewers nauseated, leading one to nearly vomit. Quote, it was worse than we had been led to believe one person told us.

The harrowing, frankly horrific nature of what's being described as being on that video is one reason why the questions around what exactly the Trump administration is doing seem to be multiplying by the day. And one of the key players in a position to answer those questions, the outgoing head of U.S. military operations in the Caribbean, Admiral Alvin Holsey, he's speaking to the heads of the Senate and House Armed Services Committee today. According to reporting the Wall Street Journal, Hague says asked Holsey to resign. after Holsey expressed concerns about the legality of boat strikes. Congress and the American people now hungry for answers about the Trump administration's campaign in the Caribbean is where we start today. Wall Street Journal, Business and Politics Reporter, Shelby Holiday is here. Also joining us, Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling. He served as the commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe, plus former DHS chief of staff during Trump's first term, Miles Taylor, is here. He's now the founder of defiance.org. Miles, for all that you've pulled the curtain back on about your time in the first Trump administration, I don't remember a chapter on Trump wanting to violate the section of the laws of war Army manual, which explicitly carves out shipwrecked people as being on the other side of a line. Just talk about any exposure you've had to anything Trump has had to say over the years about the laws of war. Well, I hate to say it, Nicole, but this issue is actually no exception because as far back as seven years ago in 2018, Trump's senior advisor, Stephen Miller, wanted to know if it would be lawful for the president to launch airstrikes against unarmed civilians in boats. in international waters. He asked us that on a flight back from Florida when we had taken the president down to a counter drug command post to talk to him about lawful ways to ramp up efforts to fight cartels. And the takeaway, it seemed to me, was that the administration wanted to blow up boats. And that was seven years ago, Nicole. And what did we tell them? We told them that that would be illegal. I didn't have to go to lawyers to ask that question. It would be obviously illegal to blow up unarmed civilians in boats off the coast of the United States. Now, Stephen Miller denied that that exchange happened. And then as we found out in the past few weeks, he has been one of the key architects, reportedly, of this policy. So those denials now look pretty silly in hindsight. But as for Trump himself, Nicole. He was regularly frustrated with us when we brought up things like the rules of engagement. I'll tell you why he knows that term the rules of engagement is because when we were the first group in the administration, he said he wanted to shoot civilians, shooting migrants at the border. And again, he later did that with the defense secretary, Mark Esper. We told him, Mr. President, that would violate the rules of engagement that the military has to operate under. They cannot use lethal force against someone who is not using lethal force against them.

term got seared into his brain. And that's why I think you've heard Trump and especially his defense secretary Pete Hegseth in the second term talk about loosening the rules of engagement. He was frustrated that he heard it so much in the first term. He saw it as a restriction. He doesn't want to abide by those rules this time. And apparently, even if that means committee murder on the high seas. Why did he want to blow up boats? I mean, the honest answer, I'm just assessing the president's psychology here, is I think it's for power and deterrence. I mean, this is the common question you get with any strong man. Why do they want to engage in excessive uses of lethal force against their adversaries? Because they want to intimidate others. To put it in a much more simple fashion, think about mob bosses. In every movie and TV show we have seen depicting how mob bosses start to flex their muscle, what do they do? They carry out egregious acts of violence against their enemies to show that they are tough, to show that they will do anything. That's the only reason I can think that Donald Trump is doing this, because I will tell you from an operational standpoint, it is completely, totally, and entirely unnecessary. But worse than that, Nicole, it is counterproductive. If you want to dissemble these networks, if you want to crack the cartels, what you need to do is roll up and arrest these low-level guys, follow them up the chain, and use the intelligence to break those organizations. Trump says he's trying to save Americans from drug overdose as well, what he's doing is destroying the evidence that would help us prosecute and dismantle those networks. He's not helping this case. He's hurting this case. And in the meantime, to me, very clearly is breaking the law. I mean, Miles, I guess I asked why I wanted to blow up the votes because a lot of lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans seem to. Except the premise that it's in pursuit of stopping drugs from coming into the country. But if you, even if you follow their logic, that makes, that's nonsense. If you want to, I mean, and I think 100% of the American people believe that illegal drugs are a scourge. But that includes the illegal drugs that are killing the most Americans. And those are not on the boats. And a boat with 11 people on it, really most people think doesn't have very many drugs on it at all. So what is it about pursuing the boats as opposed to pursuing the sources of fentanyl, which are China and Mexico? Why are we sort of sleepwalking along with even the premise of this? Well, look, Donald Trump likes imagery. And I think that they feel like they can attack these boats and it sends some sort of message to deterrence of deterrence against anyone who would cross Trump, not just drug dealers, but any other threats he might face. But I'll tell you this, Nicole, even some of the presidents.

own close allies are now breaking with him over this. Look at Laura Lumer. She today noted that, you know, the drugs that are on these boats coming out of Venezuela are largely cocaine, not fentanyl. Donald Trump has said that the focus of this is on fentanyl. And even Laura Lumer came out and said, you know, fentanyl's mostly coming from China and Mexico, not Venezuela. So he's not even selling his own supporters on this. And I think that shows that the real purpose of this is not to stop fentanyl coming into the United States. It's to strengthen Donald Trump's power. It's to show that whatever he says is the law becomes the law. And potentially, you know, it's meant to be a prelude to this possible land invasion and campaign of Venezuela. But if that's the case, even then the administration has done. a terrible job explaining that story to the American people and explaining why it matters. So all of this seems to be falling apart. And Nicole, given the reporting that you opened the program with, to me, it seems like the walls are closing in on Donald Trump on this issue. General, I want to ask you about the Atlantic's description of the video. We've had the privilege of getting to talk to you, I think, just about every news cycle. And this is the most explicit description of what is on the video. And I wonder if you hear anything that squares the circle we've been trying to get our brains around here as to why up and down the chain of command the second strike takes place. Nothing in my mind, Nicole, justifies a second strike on this. There are going to be debates between both sides of the aisle about the legality of it. I understand. that there are some lawyers now requesting that the Department of Defense and the General Counsel give them the papers that authorize this. And this harkens back to me exactly to something I experienced in 2003, and that was the Abu Ghreb scandal. It was something that was illegal. You don't treat prisoners the way they were treated at Abu Ghraib. The same way, you don't treat those who are Narco-terrorists give the description to an immediate death sentence. And if I can, I'd like to kind of expand on what Miles said because there is a history of Secretary Pete Hegseth countering rules of engagement or thinking there are too strict. But they are things that are illegal. That's what they try and prevent. But they also try and prevent things that are immoral. And I'll use another RO indicator, and that's R.O. The return on the investment of this, like Miles said, is contrary to what we would expect in any kind of operational campaign, to not capture prisoners, to not find out where the supply chain leads, to not know who the key figures are in this kind of operation, and to trace them backwards, and then bombing a boat with a...

missile that probably cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars just doesn't make sense to me at all from a military perspective or from a business perspective. And there's one other thing that I'd say, and I'm almost hesitant to say it, but this is the kind of things that will... take our allies and push them away from us. We are already seeing that in the countries surrounding Venezuela. We had a 30-year counter narcotics campaign in Colombia that was relatively successful. You've got several nation states in Latin America and South America that are now saying we don't want any part of the United States and we don't understand what they're doing. That may be one of the things that Admiral Halsey is talking about today. But you also have European allies and several other allies saying this is not the America that proclaims values and ideologies. So we're losing more than just the argument on illegality in terms of what's being done in this campaign. The Trump administration is also losing what they've enjoyed for the better part of 10 years, which is a firewall or a moat or however you want to describe the Republican Party. Here's three prominent Republican senators saying that the video, the second strike, should be released. about this double-tap strike. Do you think it would make sense for the administration to release this video? I'm okay with it being released and I'm okay with what happened. Listen, if there's a way to release the video, which I have not seen, but if there's a way to release that that does not compromise our intelligence gathering, I would urge him to do it. And tell us has also said we've got to release the video. We've got to get any videos that do not in any way compromise mission integrity down there. Just get the stuff out. Almost an urgency on his part to get the video into the public arena. The administration has already released 20-some videos of boat strikes. So. to hold it up against on the terms of not wanting to reveal intelligence methods or weaponry is a bit of a stretch. I think a lot of Republicans see that and realize you can't release 22 videos and then not this other one. However, because of what we've heard based on the video, you can understand why they may be sensitive to release it. Pete Hegseth has now the authority to release it given to him by Trump. President Trump said he would release it. Then he said it's up to Pete. Secretary Pete Hegseth. indicated this weekend that we have to be careful. We don't want to reveal too much. What is revealed in the second strike that isn't revealed in the other 22? What I don't understand is how you, again, like how you can say, we're holding this up on the basis of this when we've been so transparent about all of these other strikes. But I don't know if releasing the video will...

And Lindsay, who are two of the most sort of stalwart wanderers of Trump, not just policy, but foreign policy, saying release the tape? You know, to Shelby's point, they've released 22 of these already. There's nothing from a technological standpoint or in terms of what you see that's different about the second strike. Well, it's just convenient that it's the most damning video that they're having trouble releasing. I mean, this is why I think this is the new Epstein files, Nicole. As Trump said, he would release these unconditionally. Then he backtracks as the controversy starts to boil over. And then Congress starts demanding the files. And now the administration's getting caught in lies and looks like it's engaged in a coverup. I mean, it's the same pattern we saw with Epstein. But, you know, what I'll say is I've not. been a part of nearly as many operations as General Hurtling, but when I was at Department of Homeland Security was involved in a lot of counter drug operations because the U.S. Coast Guard engaged in those all the time. And I will tell you, in those years at DHS, there was not a single time ever, ever that anyone in the Coast Guard said, hey, it would help us to be able to kill these suspects instead of arrest them. And, you know, the general mention the rules of engagement. There's also the law of proportionality. I mean, you don't engage with a higher level of force than you're being engaged with. And again, the Coast Guard always knew they could go arrest these boats. They would shoot out the engine. They would arrest the suspects. But apparently, there's other reporting that shows that this, you know, when this was happening in September. and advisors around Pete Hegseth were raising concerns. He called them cissies and he called them weak, reportedly, for saying that there might be a problem here, that maybe they couldn't just kill these guys at a standoff distance who didn't represent an imminent threat to anyone. But that's apparently what happened. And again, I've never heard, I don't think the general has either. I've never heard a single person say, this is what we have to do. All right. No one's going anywhere. Still ahead for us. General, were you trying to jump in? Did I get you off? We'll be back on the other. Everyone sticks around. Also, head press. We'll talk to a Democratic lawmaker who has seen this video that we're all talking about of the second strike. We'll ask him what he makes of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth says changing statements and their current decision, which is to keep it private. Plus, Donald Trump and his Department of Justice's desperate bid. to indict one of Trump's so-called enemies for committing mortgage fraud, maybe getting another try today. Just as new reporting fines, wait for it. Donald Trump may have done the very same things that he claims are crime on the part of Letitia James. And later in the broadcast, Trump going into damage control mode, trying out a new message on the issue of affordability. After calling it a Democratic hoax over and over and over again, we'll bring you all those stories and more when Deadland White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. 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. Now, you can watch Ali Valshi five nights a week in prime time on MS Now as he takes command of the 11th hour. The Justice Department is facing its own legal obstacles over this case. Putting today's stories in perspective. This one is perhaps one of the more interesting surprises. And tomorrow's headlines in focus. Economists are warning that American consumers are soon going to feel the hurt. The 11th hour with Ali Valshie, weeknights at 11 p.m. Eastern on MS Now. To our partners, all men and women are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Those words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I think they speak volumes today as I think about this region and our shared neighborhood. To be clear, partnerships are our best determines to counting shared security and economic concerns. We will always be there for like-minded nations who share our values, our democracy, our rule of law, and human rights. So that's Admiral Holsey. That was him in 2024 when he was promoted to head of Southcom stressing American values and democracy and the importance of cooperation and partnerships with our allies, countries in the Caribbean and Latin America. We're back with Shelby, General Hartling and Miles. So Shelby, the journal's reporting that Pete Hegseth said, asked him to leave after he expressed a lack of comfort with the legal rationale for the campaign. What else do we know? We know that Secretary Pete Hegseth also butted heads with him over some other issues like the Panama Canal. And there were tensions throughout the year. But as the- What did Trump want to take it? What was that? Yeah, American control of it. As the boat strikes started ramping up, things became more and more tense. And my colleagues reported that earlier in the year when Secretary Pete Hegseth met with him on a teleconference, he said, you're either on the team or you're not. When you get an order, you move out fast and you don't ask questions. That set the stage for a lot of tensions throughout the year. When the boat strikes started, Admiral Holsey was also sort of sidelined. We see in the first strike, that was a strike that was executed by SOCOM, not Southcom and not under Admiral Holsey's authority. So discomfort with the campaign itself, but also just the fact that things were happening outside of his control. And he is the commander of Southcom. I think one thing that will be important for congressmen to ask him today at this gang of eight, or I'm sorry, ask him this morning and then also ask Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Gang of Eight briefing is, where is this all going? Are the boat strikes in their own right a campaign, or are they a smaller part of a bigger campaign? We saw even earlier this year the labeling of Trendy Aragua and other groups as foreign terrorist organizations. We've seen the boat strikes as maybe a prelude to something bigger in Venezuela.

Was he uncomfortable with just the boat strikes himself or more of the stage setting for something potentially bigger? General Hurling, your thoughts about what the journal is reporting. Others have said about this very high-level departure after not very long in the post. Yeah, that was a great explanation, Nicole. And let me just elaborate a little bit of it. When you're a combatant commander, you are a battle space owner. That's the term that some use. So Admiral Holsey is responsible for all the countries in Latin and South America that are part of the Southcoms. Southern Command area of operations, area of responsibility. He also has the sea outside. So anything that happens inside that area of operation, he's responsible for. When special operations forces come in, they don't take orders from him, but they do cooperate with him. When he sees the relationships as he just gave in his change of command speech taking the organization, when he sees a disruption in the alliances, our partners not playing well with each other. That's part of his responsibility to talk with the ambassadors of the various countries. I was once a battle space owner in Iraq where special operations forces were playing in my sandbox, as it were. And it was first General McChrystal and then Admiral McRaven, who were the J-Soc commanders, who would talk to me on a nightly basis saying what they were about to do in terms of killing or capturing terrorists in my area that were high-value targets. It was great because we had a great partnership. If something disrupted that partnership between SOCOM, Special Operations Command, and Southcom, Southern Command, or the Joint Special Operations Task Force that were killing people, when Halsey has a relationship with all the countries, he has to explain it to him. He has to tell them what's going on. So he may not have just... been aghast at some of the illegalities or the potential for illegalities. He wanted to know how he can talk to the ambassadors and the country chiefs and the other navies and armies that are in the area. So I can understand very quickly how he got crossways with, and oh, by the way, I should add too, he's an expert in the area. I mean, he was not only the new commander in 2000. 24, but he had been the deputy commander for a couple of years prior to that. So he knows the region better than anybody. So when you have someone coming in with a carrier strike group and a bunch of special operators, you would think they would pay attention to some of his advice. Sometimes that doesn't happen. You would think. Shelby, thank you so much for being here at the table for your reporting. General Hartling, Miles Taylor. Thank you both for starting us off. We'll have a chance to speak to Senator Chris Coons, who has seen the video coming up at the top of the next hour. After the break for us, Donald Trump was discovered committing the exact same alleged crime. He's trying desperately to attach to some of his so-called political enemies. We'll bring you that new reporting next.

There's a lot of news to cover. Money. The economic fallout from the war. Is it temporary? Power. Is this White House for sale? Politics. What is your message to the country right now? Money power politics with Stephanie Rule. Weekdays at 9 a.m. Easter on MS. Now. The Trump encouraged mortgage fraud case against New York Attorney General Letitia James is such a colossal prosecutorial nothing, failure for his Department of Justice that it has already come upshore, collapsed two times. It was first dismissed because DOJ unlawfully appointed prosecutor Lindsey Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia. She was, of course, appointed when the U.S. attorney, who was supposed to be there resigned suddenly under... pressure after he resisted bringing the cases against James Comey and Letitia James. The second time, a federal grand jury saw the evidence and rejected the attempt to indict James the second time, an incredibly rare occurrence for any federal prosecutor on any case ever. Now, the Trump Justice Department and its prosecutors are expected to actually try this big... Stinky failure of a case a third time. They're going to try a third time to indict Letitia James, despite the fact that none of the facts of the case have changed. Letitia James is one of many perceived political enemies of Donald Trump, who his administration has targeted and accused of mortgage fraud. and saying that she claimed more than one primary residence. But new reporting in ProPublica reveals that Donald Trump has done that very same thing. According to that ProPublica report, quote, in 1993, Donald Trump signed a mortgage for a Bermuda-style home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom marble floor neighboring property. Attesting it, too, would be his principal residence. In reality, Donald Trump, that a New Yorker does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone use them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Maralago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent. Exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud. How about that? No response to questions about this. A White House spokesperson told ProPublica this, quote. President Trump's two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender. There was no defraudation, end quote. I want to bring in senior investigative reporter Carol Lenig and former top official at the Department of Justice. Our legal analyst, Andrew Weissman, is back with us. Andrew first on the ProPublica reporting, what if any distinction is there between what Trump did and what they're trying to build a case saying Letitia James did?

So the thing for everyone to remember is that our legal system to have a rule of law is built on the idea that you treat like cases alike. That is what it means to have a rule of law. It doesn't matter how powerful you are. It doesn't matter who you know. It doesn't matter whether a Republican or a Democrat. And so based on this reporting and what was alleged against Letitia James, so essentially to bodies of allegations. You have minor, minor differences, but nothing that would distinguish the two. You have to also put this in the context of other cases. We know from Manhattan, from the Letitia James case itself, where the judge made findings, that he already has been found liable for mortgage fraud, because if you remember, he inflated, as just one example, the square footage of his Trump condo threefold, claiming it was about 30,000 square feet. Something he would presumably know, whether it was true or not, but in fact, it was only about 10,000 square feet. In fact, I remember his lawyer at the time, a wonderful, really reputable lawyer, basically conceded that point, said, I don't really have an argument that that wasn't a fake number that was put in. That's how blatant it was. And, of course, the reason that you would inflate the number is that it increases your assets so that you can get more leverage out of it. And so... The one final thing that sort of is something from personal knowledge, which is in the Mueller investigation that I worked on, Paul Manafort, one of the many crimes that he was charged with was mortgage fraud, where he had a condo in New York, and he claimed it was for his... personal use when in fact it was being used as an Airbnb. And of course, he did that because, as we alleged, and he later admitted, it was being done because it would give him an advantage in terms of the mortgage rate that he would have to pay. But what does this tell you? It tells you that it's like it is a prosecution for enemies, but with respect to Paul Manafort and Donald Trump, it should all be absolved. Paul Manafort was pardoned by Donald Trump. This is the antithesis of the rule of law. where everyone is supposed to be treated the same based on what they did or didn't do. So if you take those three sort of cases of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, and Letitia James, and you see them going after her again and again and again, which in my experience just is un...

heard of that this would happen for a third time. And just, I'm going to make a prediction since I rarely, rarely do that. This is, if they do, in fact, get an indictment of her, this is just fodder for a judge to say this is a vindictive and selective prosecution. I mean, it is, it's going to be exhibit A, B, and C. for her to claim that this is improper. And it's very, very hard for me to see that a court will not dismiss this. Of course, that won't stop Trump from blaming the courts for doing this. But it really is antithetical to the rule of law. Carol Lenig, how many times are they going to keep trying to indict to his shame? Well, I mean, it depends on how compliant the acting or special or inappropriately appointed U.S. attorney feels about Donald Trump's wish that his enemy, Lindsey Halligan, forgive me, his enemy, Letitia James, is indicted and is... brought to some sort of punishment for having brought a case against Donald Trump. You know, I was struck by Andrew saying it was just unheard of to bring this case a third time. And he's absolutely right. There is no case. in the history of the Department of Justice reviewing its history of cases in modern times for it ever to have done this. And I don't think it's very speculative. I know Andrew's careful just as I am about predicting the future, but I don't think it's particularly speculative to say that a third attempt to re-indict her will be absolutely paragraph one, two, and three in a selective and vindictive prosecution motion. I think that's already been hinted at. And it's striking. There's so much that's unheard of. It's unheard of for a U.S. Attorney's Office to bring a case where the probable cause is so low that a majority of grand jurors refuse to indict someone based on a supposition and a probability that a crime may have occurred. Well, I guess I have to sing in a break, but I want to ask both of you, how do Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche keep putting the Department of Justice through the reputational woodchipper? Why do they let this stand? I guess that's a spoiler alert. We'll sneak in a quick break. I'll ask both you to answer it on the other side.

So Carol, the New York Times is reporting that the judge suggested the prosecutor on James Comey and James cases should resign as U.S. attorney. There has been... defeat after defeat after defeat legally. I imagine in legal circles there's reputational damage that is seemingly unrecoverable. They've repelled prosecutors who stayed on after Trump's inauguration. So we're either MAGA adjacent or copacetic or folks who had no problem with anything until they were asked to bring these clearly political prosecutions. Is there a line for Pam Bondi or Todd Blanche? You know, it's interesting that you ask that question, Nicole, because I've been thinking a lot about, and reporting a lot, about the things that Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi are concerned about. They keep their concerns fairly private. Sometimes they're worried about things they'd rather not share with the president, and they have publicly denied that they have concerns about a few things. One was the recent pardon of Representative Henry Quayar and his wife. Todd Blanche was in support of that case and believed very strongly that it should proceed. And so it was striking that the... Congress member got a pardon. And most of the people in the Department of Justice had no warning that that was coming. That is a case that is described by some lawyers as a laydown, meaning there was no way that Mr. Quayar or his wife, forgive me, Congressman Quayor or his wife had a chance of winning at trial. That was the view of many of the lawyers who'd reviewed the evidence. So there are lines. There are lines in that Todd Blanche has privately expressed great concern about some of the mortgage fraud cases that have been pressed and pushed by Ed Martin, a former acting U.S. attorney who did not make it to remain in that job in D.C. And Todd Blanche has, again, privately expressed concern about those cases. being weak and being ultimately unflattering for the department, particularly with regard to Senator Adam Schiff, who has been under investigation for some time in the federal prosecutor's office in Maryland, but has not been charged at this point. I mean, Andrew, I guess I asked the question because...

Bill Barr, who doesn't ever deserve a parade or any accolades or praise for the job he did, he put his thumbs on the scale of justice in cases involving Donald Trump's allies. He repelled career prosecutors from the department. But his line was saying Donald Trump had won in 2020 when he really hadn't. And he now rather famously has laundered his reputation with his televised recorded testimony for the January 6th Select Committee in which he called it Bull Bleep. And so even Bill Barr had a line. And I wonder what you think it's like for the men and women of the Department of Justice to work for someone. who seemingly doesn't have a line when the likes of Danielle Sesson leave and write letters explaining why they left and the lack of integrity at the highest levels of the department. People who go and sit with convicted child sex traffickers who engaged in child rapes like Ghislaine Maxwell ahead of her being moved to a comfy spa. People who repel men like Eric Siebert, who was the prosecutor in the Eastern District. I mean, what is, what is it like for the men and women of the department to work for something like Todd Blanche? Well, let's remember just going back to Bill Barr, his line, this is the Attorney General of the United States, the highest level law enforcement person in the federal system. His line was not giving absolution for an insurrection. So let's just make sure we understand his line was, like, unbelievably low, you know, not engaging in a horrendous felony. But turning to the current Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, the thing I think that is useful to remember in evaluating this is they are both experienced prosecutors. You may not think that they're the best people for the job, but they have been prosecutors. Pam Bondi had a career at the state level. Todd Blanche at the federal level in the Southern District of New York. So they know and they know better. And how do we know that? Because Eric Seiber, the Trump-selected U.S. attorney who resigned rather than bring the James Comey and or the Letitia James case with somebody they fought for. So we know that they understand what is happening. And yet. And yet, you know, when you're, when you are asked to do something, you cannot stomach, there you have to be willing to resign rather than bless it. And to pretend that you're not doing that when you let this go forward in the Eastern District of Virginia or in any other place. is a fiction. If you are the number one and the number two at the Department of Justice, and this is going on, and you privately know and understand that it is wrong and it is not a righteous prosecution, you need to not only privately, as Carol said, stand up and say this is wrong, but you have to have the moral fiber to be willing.

to leave and say, I cannot be a part of this in the way that Bill Barr had a line also. So to me, that is the thing that I find so deplorable here, which is that it's one thing to sort of voice your opinion privately, but not to take any action means that your views and your voice and your opposition can be overridden. Carolyn and Andrew Weissman, thank you for helping us see behind what is a pretty opaque Department of Justice with all these threads today. We appreciate you. Ahead for us, the latest step taken to what one Democratic governor is calling the Trump administration's inhumane depravity. That's next. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker today took a major step in fighting back against one of the more disturbing things we've seen come out of the Second Trump administration, an aggressive immigration enforcement campaign. The Chicago area faced a huge influx of ICE agents this fall, and DHS has launched similar operations in cities all around the country. While today, J.B. Pritzker signed into law a measure that restricts enforcement outside state courthouses. colleges and daycares, and makes it easier to sue immigration agents. Democratic lawmakers from New York have just introduced similar legislation. Stay on top of that. Up next for us, that gang of eight briefing on the boat strikes has ended. We'll try and get a readout on what they learned, if anything, right after a quick break. Stay with us. 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.