Trump’s Fatal Mistake Exposed By Legal Expert as Playbook Collapses

Remember this exchange, not even two weeks ago, between Senator Chris Van Hollen and Deputy Attorney General slash Personal Counsel for Donald Trump, a guy named Todd Blanche. Take a listen. You're not going to submit this proposal to any federal judge or independent. There is no judge. Any independent authority? An independent. What does that mean an independent authority? It means not somebody who's getting to pick five of the members who is the president's former personal attorney. That would be somebody who would be independent. I'm the acting attorney general, okay? The fact that I used to be President Trump's lawyer is just a fact, but I'm the acting attorney general. So don't say the president's former personal lawyer will do something. The acting attorney general will do something. Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney. And that's the whole problem. You've got his whole, you have a whole banner of his face hanging over the Department of Justice and you and everybody else walks under it. And you are acting like you're his current. personal attorney. Chairman, I have no further questions. The amazing Barb McQuaid has a new book out. It's coming out today. It's called The Fix, Saving America from the Corruption of a mob-style government. And that exchange that we just saw, somebody who, I think, doth protest too much, is Todd Blanche. When confronted with the reality, that he has never given up his role as personal lawyer for his mob boss convicted felon Donald Trump, he gets really defensive and very fast. But as Barb addresses in her book, she not only saw similar tactics when she was prosecuting corruption and those types of crimes and defendants, but she's seeing a lot of similarities in the way that Trump runs his current administration. But the thing about Barb's book is she also comes to the table with proposed solutions, fixes. That's the reason why the title for the book, the fix. She also says that, look, today, there are the opportunities for us. To get together, to fight back, and to be able to find common ground, to be able to figure out what we have more in common than we have in differences. Take a listen to my interview with Barr McQuade. Joining me now is a dear friend and somebody who I consider to be one of the most brilliant legal minds that we are blessed to have, Barb McQuaid, Barb, your new book, The Fix, Saving America from the Corruption of a mob-style government. First of all, congratulations on the second book, but second of all, the title. Talk about the title, because that's pretty compelling in and of itself. Yeah, thanks. I'll do a shameless plug. Out today, The Fix, yeah, saving America from the corruption of a mob-style government. You know, the title of the book is intended to be sort of a double entendre. Talking about first, you know, the fix is in, a system rigged against us. In Trump's second term, I can't help but see similarities to many of the cases I prosecuted or saw prosecuted when I served in the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Exactly. And that's what he was looking for in Jeff Sessions and William Barr and didn't find. Even Pam Bondi, who came closest, wasn't enough. But perhaps he's found him in acting attorney general Todd Blanche. As we heard from Michael Cohen, I don't have to give the orders. I can just say things like, you know, James Comey is a dirty cop or some of these other kinds of things, and people understand what that means. It means revenge and retaliation. That's not the way the Justice Department is supposed to work. It is about not securing convictions, but about doing justice. And instead, in my view, we have seen it turned into Trump's not just personal law firm, but his personal retribution machine. And that's one of the ways the mob operates. You have to punish your enemies and you have to do so visibly so that it's not just your enemy who is punished, but everybody else sees that punishment so that they dare not act up in the future lest they find themselves in the crosshairs. Your book, though, does speak, though, to the fact that there does come a point in time, right, where even the dullest knife in the drawer figures out that they're being taken for a ride, that no matter how subtle or not subtle somebody like Trump could be. that he's doing it just for himself. The grift is real, but the beneficiaries are usually, it's going one way. Talk about why your book addresses that, because I do feel like that is a scale falling from their eyes kind of moment that I think is a critical part of kind of getting over this obstacle of a mob-like government. Yeah, you know, I share some lessons learned from prosecuting corrupt public officials and others involved in organized criminal activity. And there are a couple things, I think, have learned. One is when there's an extortionist, people sometimes think that when they pay off the extortionist, now they're going to be good. Everything's going to be fine. And of course, that's not the case. The extortionist... identifies you as an easy mark and keeps coming back for more. But I also look to the world of fraud. And one of the things you see in the world of fraud, you know, Ponzi schemes and other kinds of fraud cases is eventually people realize that the con artist is not delivering what he said he would. Sometimes the early people to buy into the scheme get paid off by the later members, but eventually the whole house of cards falls down. I would have thought that would have happened long ago, but of course, Donald Trump throws enough red meat to his supporters to keep them interested, whether it's attacking immigrants or minorities or...

owning the libs, you know, those are things that make people happy. But eventually, I think they realize that they're not getting what he was selling. Forever wars. Here we are in Iran. Inflation, here we are with $5 gallons of gas. And as you mentioned, the grift, while people are struggling, 35 million people living in poverty, middle class families struggling to make ends meet, we see President Trump. profiting off of his cryptocurrency, his meme coin, his $400 million jet from Qatar. So he's getting richer while the rest of us are getting poorer. I think eventually people catch on already. I think we've seen some splintering from his mega supporters, not only with war in Iran, but with their separation on the Epstein files. People who pushed for the full release of the Epstein files who stayed true to that that notion have now been purged from his good graces. And so I think eventually people will catch on. They're already catching on. Barb, you and I have spoken previously. publicly and privately about the group that I call the enablers, because you kind of ticked off a list of them starting with sessions, Barr, Todd Blanche, Pam Bondi. I guess there should be another B, somebody in there. Oh, Bovi. We could stick Bovi in there if we really wanted to. You know, but I've always said that but for this group of enablers, you know, there's a lot of the efficacy of Trump that would be stunted, I think. And you being a former federal prosecutor. And you not only actually knowing some of these people as well professionally, too, I mean, how critical is it for us to apportion the blame, though, towards those that should know better, that take different oaths than other people do? And especially as people that, quote, grew up in the Department of Justice like several of them did, they know what they're doing is not in service of the people of the United States of America, but in service of one man only. Yeah, it is disappointing to see people who take an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, who are part of a branch of government that is told in the Constitution they are to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to see them serve not our Constitution, not the people, but the president. They surround them, with whom he surrounds himself. This is, I think. disappointing. I suppose there are times in our nation's history when we have had people looking out for themselves. One of the things I think we've seen in this second Trump administration is a replacement of people with expertise, experience, knowledge, people like Sessions and Barr, who were people who had worked in the Justice Department before, and replacing them with people who are ambitious and far less competent.

Ruth Ben-Giott, the historian who has studied authoritarianism, talks about this as engineered incompetence. And so choosing people who could never get a job in any other administration. I mean, Pete Hegseth would never be anybody's Secretary of Defense in an ordinary administration. But to get ahead, to get this big plum job, what does he have to do? He has to lick the boots of the president. And he is more than willing to do that because it means it gets to be Secretary of Defense. It's incredibly... profitable job. It can be very lucrative once he leaves office and explores opportunities in the private sector. And so there are opportunists who are willing to put their loyalty to the president over their loyalty to the Constitution and the United States. I imagine that these people in the end will likely get pardons from the president, but I hope that the voting public understands their ability to hold all of these people accountable by throwing a lot out of office. So, Barb, your book, The Fix, out today, what it does unlike other books, and this is not a ding or a knock on those other books, which are still good, but your book actually comes to the table with solutions. I think we're all very quick to show the negatives of what's happening in our world. And for you and I and others, we're very steep to the eyeballs in the nuances and the details of it. But your book actually has proposed solutions, one of which, of course, that I'm very much interested in, is your proposal, and it's very relevant to what we're talking about right now, is your proposal about guardrails vis-a-vis the independence of the Department of Justice. Again, no spoilers, because I want everybody go out and get the book and read it. But can you talk briefly about what summer is just an example of how we could maybe restore and protect and preserve that independence of something like the DOJ, which we know has been weaponized, courtesy of Trump? Yeah, and I'm happy to give some spoilers. There's plenty of ideas in the book, and I'm happy to share some of them. But certainly, you know, across government, there are a number of things that we can do to make things better. I mean, one is Congress gets to decide what the qualifications are for a job. We currently have U.S. attorneys around the country who've never served as prosecutors or even trial lawyers. They could make it a requirement of the job. Certainly the president gets to choose who should be a U.S. attorney. All we have for the Attorney General is that it be someone learned in the law, but we could require both for Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General and U.S. attorneys that these be people who have served before as prosecutors or trial lawyers. I think that would help. I think that we could preserve the independence of the Justice Department. by codifying the current policy manual, which is called the principles of federal prosecution. Now, I don't think this can be a congressional act of Congress without running a foul of separation of powers, but we could codify it as regulations in the code of federal regulations, publish it in the federal register, because it would make it far more difficult for future administrations to disappear it with a stroke of a pen. And that code that policy says, among other things. One, partisan politics may never play a role in selecting charges. Two, a prosecutor

although they only have to prove probable cause at the grand jury, should bring a case only when they believe the evidence is sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction. That means you shouldn't go to a grand jury just because you can squeak by on probable cause if you don't think you can win the case at trial. And I think that's what we're seeing in some of these name and shame cases against James Comey and Letitia James and some others. Maybe we can punish you enough just by indicting you even if we don't think we have the evidence at trial. And I think one other thing I would mention is trying to get our arms around communications between the White House and the Justice Department. Since the Watergate era, there has been a prohibition on communications between the White House and the Department of Justice on specific cases. And that is to avoid not only political influence in cases, but even the appearance. of political influence. Again, I don't know that we can constitutionally prevent that, but I think we could have a reporting mechanism through the inspector general to report whenever there is some sort of consultation and the general subject matter. Certainly, if they're talking about issues of diplomatic sensitivity, that seems fine for communication. But when the president is saying, Pam, you need to indict James Comey, I think that's the kind of thing that runs afoul of our notions of an independent justice department. Your book The Fix also speaks to not just legal avenues of trying to turn this Titanic that we're currently in, but you also talk about the power of the people, which is something that I like to emphasize, how collective action can be incredibly powerful that you don't need a law degree to be able to affect change. But I did want to ask you about that. That proposed solution of collective action, because it really reminded me of your first bestselling book, Attack from Within, because... Your first book spoke barb to the idea that if you have disinformation and misinformation, sometimes you can't even land on a common nucleus of facts, right? Because of how powerful that disinformation and misinformation can be. How do we get collective action from the people if we can't even get an agreement on what the truth is? Because we know that's become a huge wedge, I think, between the people. Oh, sure. And I think it is a tactic. We see it coming in from hostile foreign adversaries like Russia and North Korea and Iran, but also within our own government and with political operatives who push now not just false information, but AI generated images to create false impressions of things people didn't say or didn't do. And so that is a real challenge. But I think one of the things that we can do is talk to the people around us. And that's where collective action comes into play. of the goals of an authoritarian or a mobster is to isolate people, make them feel alone and hopeless. But when we're together, we have a lot more power, maybe than even we think we do. One of the most influential sources in our lives are the people around us, our friends, our loved ones, our neighbors, and just getting out and talking with them about what's happening can be so important. You know, you don't have to agree on everything. There may be policy differences that we all share, which is but we have to agree on a certain set of facts. And so sometimes just talking with your friends and neighbors when they say something, you know, that immigrants are voting in elections, for example, as one example of disinformation, asking them, what makes you think that? What's your source on that? Where's the data on that? Where's the evidence on that? Just even causing them to question their own premises.

may plant a seed of doubt that can be a place to begin to have a conversation. This is one of the real myths out there that non-citizens are voting in significant numbers. It's just not true. And so if we can help our fellow citizens understand those things. Maybe we can reach some common ground where we can begin to work together. I think coalitions are really important at this moment. Whether you're progressive or populist, we kind of all want the same things, right? We want life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, prosperity and health, and a better life for our children. And so working toward those things on which we agree and maybe spending a little less time talking about the things on which we disagree can be a way forward against this kind of mob style. regime. So I want you to lift up your book cover again because I wanted to ask you about it. One of the things that I love Barb about your new book is the plate. So Kinsugi, which is this Japanese art form, and if folks look at the cover of your book, they see that there's veins of gold that show and reflect the cracks from the original plate. I was so excited to see this bar because it is such a beautiful form of art. And I think it speaks a lot to what you just said, this idea of taking... a fractured democracy and putting it back together and being able to move forward together, we still see where we kind of had some divisions, but we're back together as a whole, unified moving forward. I wanted to, though, ask you your thoughts on that book art because I really do like that you are referencing the Kansugi type of art form. Yeah, I wish I could take credit for it, but the cover was designed by a cover artist named Rodrigo Corral. He has designed a lot of books, including a book by Jay Z. So I'm in good company. He also did my last book cover, and he's tremendous. He works for as a... you know, a freelancer, but was hired by the publisher of my book to produce it. But yes, he really clearly read and understood what I was trying to communicate in the book. I also think it speaks to this idea that we've seen in this administration to kind of whitewash history. Our nation has some moments that we are not proud of. Slavery is certainly one. You know, Jim Crow, lack of suffrage for women. There have the internment of Japanese Americans. There have been many shameful moments in our nation's history. And I see those as some of the cracks. The division in our society are some of the cracks. But we shouldn't erase those cracks. We should memorialize them and remember them. And so when the Trump administration wants to remove.

displays at the Smithsonian Institutions or the National Park Service because they make people feel ashamed of our country or hate our country. I think that couldn't be further from the truth. It causes us to reflect on some of the good and bad moments in our nation's history. And I think what makes us an exceptional country, what makes America great is our ability to embrace our past and change and move toward a more perfect union. Well, your book The Fix certainly speaks to all of that. And then so, please let people know where can they go and find your book? Well, you can find it at barbara McQuade.com, but you can also find it anywhere books are sold. Your independent bookseller, Amazon, or any other place where you can get books, you'll find it. Well, Barb McQuaid, I am incredibly proud of you. I'm not quite sure how you managed to do it to write these amazing books and to speak and make all of us so much smarter. So, and to teach and do everything that you're doing. So thank you, Barb McQuaid, for joining me, especially on the launch of your amazing new book, The Fix. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Katie. It's an honor. Thanks. Katie Fang here. We launched the Katie Fang News channel in partnership with the Midas Touch Network so we could bring you the latest in legal and political news. Straight, no chaser. So if you're a fellow truth teller, hit that subscribe button and share the word about this channel so we can build a high information America together.