'BradCast' 1/1/2026 (Encore: 'Supreme Arrogance' - John Roberts and His Stacked, Packed and Captured Supreme Court, with former DOJ official Lisa Graves)

Today's broadcast was originally recorded on October 7, 2025. I believe that no one is above the law under our system, and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes. Well, isn't that darling, John Roberts from 2005? You should meet John Roberts from 2025. You wouldn't like them. Well, I don't know why I came you tonight. That's why. I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair and I'm wondering how I'll get down with stairs From Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, this is the broadcast, as heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA, and on dozens of other fine affiliate stations on both the public airwaves. and the internets around the country and the world, blanketing planet Earth. I'm Brad Friedman, your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, muckraker, and all around, swell fellow, says me from bradblog.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. We've got, as usual, a lot to try and get to today, including the first oversight hearing in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Donald Trump's delightful... Attorney General Pam Bondi. Delightful is a very choice word for her. She is delightful, isn't she? That, of course, is the delightful Desi Doyan chuckling there in the background, who actually is delightful. Oh, thank you. But let's begin here as I've got one of my favorite guests standing by today. As Emily Bazelon wrote last night in the New York Times, last year in the months before the 2024 presidential election, the New York Times magazine surveyed 50 members of what might be called the Washington legal establishment about their expectations for the Justice Department and the rule of law if Donald Trump were re-elected. The group was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. They had worked as high-level officials for every president since Ronald Reagan. A majority of the respondents, she says, told us they were alarmed about a potential second Trump term given the strain that he put on the legal system the first time around. But several dissenters countered that those fears were overblown. One former Trump official predicted that the Justice Department would be led by lawyers like those in the first term. Elite, conservative, and independent, noting at the time, quote, it's hard to be a bad faith actor.

at the Justice Department. Now, if you happen to see any of the oversight hearings in the U.S. Senate today with Attorney General Pam Bondi, well, it may be hard to argue that bad faith actors are not allowed at the Justice Department since it is apparently being headed by one now. Back to Bazelon, she writes eight months into his second term, Trump has taken a wrecking ball. to those beliefs. Quote, what's happening is anathema to everything we've ever stood for in the Department of Justice, that according to another former official who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including Trump's first term. Bazelon notes that she recently returned to that same group with a new survey and follow-up interviews about Trump's impact on the rule of law since retaking office. The responses, she says, captured almost... universal fear and anguish over the transformation of the Justice Department into a tool of the White House. Just as chillingly, she writes, the new survey reflects near consensus that most of the guardrails inside and outside the Justice Department, which in the past counterbalanced executive power, have all but fallen away. But if we were only the Justice Department, it might be easier to accept what Donald Trump is now doing and how he is weaponizing the Justice Department in an unprecedented fashion. In fact, in exactly the fashion that he pretended that Joe Biden had done, as ridiculous as that claim has always been. But if it were only the DOJ, the path out of this nightmare, might be clearer. especially if there was a still legitimate U.S. Supreme Court to serve as a backstop against Trump's worst transgressions. But that, too, like the Department of Justice, seems to have fallen. Or at least is on the brink if it hasn't fallen already. This week, the court began its new term after a long hot summer when the court from their fancy vacation homes or gifted top-of-the-line motor coaches largely gave Trump every single thing that he asked for on the court's emergency docket. It's so-called shadow docket where... temporary supposedly emergency rulings are made. And under this court with almost no comment or explanation as to why those decisions were made at all, even when they seem to overturn longstanding court precedent and sometimes even the specific text of the Constitution itself. From firing independent executive branch agency board members in apparent violation of specific congressional mandates and laws to the Trump administration's rescission of the shutting off of billions of dollars in grant money already appropriated by law by Congress to allowing for the deportation of migrants to third-party countries despite.

Immigration court rulings blocking such deportations to allowing for the arrest of suspected migrants based solely on their skin color, language they speak, way they dress or place that they may work or congregate in seeming direct violation of the text of the Constitution itself and, of course, longstanding case law supporting it. In the latest edition of her grave injustice newsletter, headlined John Roberts got us into this mess and he is making it worse. Our friend Lisa Graves argues, quote, we are in the midst of an unprecedented set of constitutional crises. Of course, Donald Trump's belligerent and erratic orders and his appalling musings are shaking the foundations of our nation, but it is the U.S. Supreme Court with John Roberts at the helm that is recklessly and aggressively emboldening him. The court, that is supposed to be a guard against the erosion of the law, is rewriting the law largely in the dark to allow Trump to take actions that were forbidden to his predecessors, writes Graves. If it feels like we are trapped in a live action sequel to Joseph Heller's Catch 22, that seems about right, she says. One character in that novel remarked, quote, Catch 22, Says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing, unquote. This administration, this seven day a week, chaos machine is the worst unscripted TV show I've ever seen, writes Graves. Worse, it is playing out across multiple channels, multiple times every day and in real life. And we are paying for its expense in every sense. America, she observes, is unmoored. Not just because of right-wing propaganda fueling Trump's distortion of facts and big tech billionaires profiting off of hate for the other, the scapegoats that Trump names. The fever being stoked could be contained by the law in significant ways if we only had people of principle on the nation's highest court. But Chief Justice John Roberts and his fellow Republican appointees, she explains, have used the court to aid Trump while failing repeatedly to protect core principles, longstanding legal precedents, and baseline procedures that other judges have been faithfully following to try to protect against irreparable harm, to people, to science, and more. The most substantial breach occurred 15 months ago she observes when John Roberts wrecked the vital tenant anchoring our nation to the bedrock of our founding that no one is above the law. At least until last year, with the court's invention of immunity from criminal prosecution for Trump retroactively and prospectively observes graves. At that point, it seems to me, at least, the jig was up. It should have been clear to all of us at that point that the backstop of the Supreme Court at least when a Republican was in the White House or at least when the Republican was Donald Trump. The backstop to the rule of law and the Constitution itself was all but gone thanks to a wholly corrupted 6 to 3 Republican majority with three of its Republican appointees seated by Donald Trump himself. And yet.

Still, here we are. Another Supreme Court begins. Dozens of supposedly temporary emergency actions taken by the court may now work their way back to the court to be heard in full. And the catch-22 game of Donald Trump seemingly having the right to do anything we can't stop him from doing continues. Even if his new deployment of U.S. military troops into the streets of U.S. cities to be used against American citizens is underway unless we can stop him. Joining us now is the great Lisa Graves, who has a unique perspective on all of this with a background in all three branches of government, legislative, executive and judicial, as a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Justice Department, former Chief Counsel for nominations in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. And a former deputy chief for the Article III Judges Division of the U.S. court system. She's now founder and executive director of True North Research.org and the author of the brand new book Without Precedent, How Chief Justice John Roberts and his accomplices rewrote the Constitution and dismantled our rights. Oh, Lisa Graves, it has been too long, but welcome back to the broadcast. Brad, thank you so much for having me back. It's been a pretty hectic year, but I really, really appreciate the chance to talk with you. And I have to say your dramatic reading of excerpts from my column was lovely, lovely to hear. That's not really dramatic. Yeah, it's not really dramatically. That's just how I talk. Unfortunately. It's true. I appreciated your your heartfelt reading, your heartfelt reading of it. Well, there you go. You know, I got to say with this unprecedented set of constitutional crises now underway, as you described it, I'm not even sure where to start with you, Lisa. I initially thought it would be great to talk about a preview of the new SCOTUS term, but I want to get to your new book and how you sort of set John Roberts at the middle of these various crises now underway. way. But with a new court term now underway, are there any specific cases that you are looking at or that you are worried about or is it essentially sort of everything everywhere all at once at this point that has you most worried? Well, it is everything everywhere all at once that movie's title has become reality for all of us. And I don't trust that this John Roberts Court will do the right thing on any of the cases that are before it. It's demonstrated that it is willing to bend and distort the law to aid Trump at every turn.

We've, of course, been talking a lot about the emergency docket over the past, whatever, eight months at least, which some now call the shadow docket, and how that was supposed to work. Can you talk a little bit about what it was there for originally as compared to how it now seems to work or not work, as some of us may see it, in the Trump era and how it's being used really to justify anything and everything that Donald Trump wants, whereas, oh, just a year or so ago, it was being used to block just about anything and everything that Joe Biden wanted. Well, the emergency docket is a way for people to appeal to the court on an emergency basis for an actual emergency. And it exists in part because the Supreme Court receives between 8,000 and 9,000 petitions a year. And under John Roberts, it's been accepting only about 60 to 70 cases, so less than 1% of the cases in the normal order of things. are taken by this court and they're handpicked by this republican majority uh you know to target a particular issue of the year or a set of issues of the year um they they're they're not cases that are chosen just because there's a difference of opinion in different circuits. Some of these so-called circuit splits are manufactured by some of these groups that are aligned with the Republican agenda, with the agenda of the court is opening. But the emergency docket, you know, often we've heard it over the years where someone is about to be... executed in a death penalty case. And there's an appeal to the court saying, please stop this execution, this person is innocent, or the prosecutors have said this case shouldn't have been prosecuted, that sort of thing. This year, what we've seen is the Trump administration repeatedly going to the court on an emergency basis to overturn lower court rulings, temporary restraining orders against it. Those temporary restraining orders are predicated on... key factual findings and legal findings by those lower court judges. Those findings are, you know, the two biggest parts of that are that there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, meaning that the people who are challenging a particular Trump initiative or action or directive that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail because what Trump has done is in violation of the Constitution or statutes or precedents. And also that if the court allows the action to proceed while the merits are being considered, while the substantive issue is finally ultimately litigated, that the plaintiff would face irreparable harm if the policy were allowed to continue while the litigation proceeds. And so that's the baseline. And what the John Roberts Court has been doing has been turning that on its head.

It has been upsetting, overturning lower court rulings from both the district courts and intermediate appellate courts, stopping key actions by Trump that have been demonstrated to be deeply destructive and harmful. And it has basically acted as though it's Trump that would face irreparable harm if he can't do whatever he wants, which is actually the opposite of the way this longstanding legal standard. has operated, whether someone's a Republican or Democrat or no party or any party, that TRO standard has not been treated this way as the Supreme Court has done. So what the court has done, what the John Roberts Court has done is reverse almost two dozen of these orders and has done so without offering an opinion about... why they're reversing these lower court rulings that are usually very detailed findings of fact, very detailed descriptions of the binding law. And then some of the justices like Gorsuch have had the nerve to lecture lower court judges for not just going along with whatever the dictate is, as if they're supposed to like, if the court allows the gutting of the Department of Justice, then therefore every other thing is okay, you know, without even having the... the sort of manufacture of pretext, which I'm sure we're going to see in this term, where the John Roberts Court is going to be unspooling, you know, lengthy rationale to justify or try to justify what they've allowed Trump to do. But it's really just pretext for empowering Trump and his agenda, which is aligned with the people who were chosen by these right-wing billionaires with the money that they spent on fueling Leonard Leo and others. to get this court packed, stacked and packed. And this comes as the lower courts are trying to, you're right, they're being asked to sort of discern what the majority on the high court means by their emergency docket rulings when they offer no explanation in most cases for those rulings. Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently argued that the reason that the majority usually offers no explanation in those shadow docket rulings at all is that the court doesn't wish to. to tie its own hands in a supposedly temporary ruling for, you know, when and if the cases, the questions make their way back up to the high court for a full hearing on the merits. Do you accept that explanation or does it seem to you as it does to me, Lisa Graves, that the court is essentially signaling what they are almost certainly going to do later on a permanent basis after they ultimately take up the case in full down the road? Well, Brett Kavanaugh is a documented liar, and I have documented his lies. Yes, you have. He's someone who lied under oath repeatedly when he was seeking a position on the D.C. Circuit and then the Supreme Court. So I don't trust the thing that Brett Kavanaugh says. And quite frankly, this knows that they're not trying to tie their hands. What they're doing is that they are rebuking lower court judges who are following the law. And in essence, what's, I guess, implied by what Brett Kavanaugh is saying, if you give it any credit, is the court wants more time to develop a rationale for what they've just allowed. For what they wanted to happen anyway. Yes, what they want to happen anyway. Yeah. And so, and the idea that they're going to allow people, for example, to be taken out of the United States, removed from this country to other countries that they have no connection to, that is.

irreparable harm. Some of those people may die in those other countries. There are things that cannot be repaired. People who have been awarded grants based on congressional budgets that were passed by Congress, signed the law by a president, and those grants are underway. They were authorized by law, and Trump is just unilaterally stopping them. People who had employment contracts, the Department of Education and other agencies who were, you know, performing with merit as civil servants who've lost their jobs and may lose their homes. So many of these actions that Trump has taken unilaterally in defiance of laws passed by Congress, in defiance of regulations and rules and even constitutional provisions, they are, they are. the embodiment of irreparable harm. And so for Brett Kavanaugh to cavalierly, you know, suggest, oh, you know, we're trying to not prejudge the case. They're prejudging it by intervening the easiest thing in the world for this court to do would be to not accept those emergency appeals by Trump. To decline, decline, decline, decline, and let those lower court cases stand and let those cases work themselves up through the appellate process. after the merits are decided, and rule on it in the ordinary course of things. But that's not what the right-wing operatives like Brett Kavanaugh want to do. They want to basically mow down the restrictions on Donald Trump. And Brett Kavanaugh, you know, in his, you know, PR spin mode, even attacked the notion that this is the shadow docket. And he wants it renamed so that people don't. have any negative associations with what the court is doing. It's nonsense. Good luck with that. I mean, yeah, it seems like they are doing what they want to do. And at the very least, they could even if they accepted the cases, they could say, no, we're going to allow the status quo to remain as is to make sure that neither party sees irreparable harm. I mean, if they're going to deport someone to a third party country, they can do that as easily down the road in three to six months or whatever. whatever it is after they hear about it, rather than allow them to be deported. And then three to six months, oh, we decided against that idea. Now we got to go and bring those people back. That is obviously not going to happen. But that's what they're doing. The administration that has tried to not follow a previous order in a single case to bring someone back. And then when they brought that person back, have tried to basically redeport them anyway. Yeah. Yes, obviously not operating in good faith. And if the Supreme Court was operating in good faith, we would see that. And it's so frustrating because the lower courts, by and large, are holding even on, you know, a number of occasions. We just saw it in Portland, even when it's a lower court judge that has been appointed by Donald Trump. They seem to be doing the right thing. And then when it gets above. This court is acting just like a rogue court from a different world. Now, as noted, Lisa, I've got some specific thoughts and questions concerning John Roberts in a moment. But should we see the constitutional crises that are now underway, as you describe them, as a consequence of Donald Trump, of his second term? Or...

debt relief during emergencies, but that wasn't good enough for the John Roberts Court. And you had an Obama and Biden administration that had adopted a clean power plan that wasn't a radical attack on fossil fuels. It was an effort to mitigate the climate changes underway by requiring an increased percentage of a fuel for utility companies to come from renewable energy. How dare they? That was found to be something that was, quote, a major question. And if it was a major question, meaning a big policy change, this John Roberts court said that that could only happen if Congress initiated a resolution of that major question. And this year, in 2025, we've had what would be major question after major question, after major question, can the president be? gut the Department of Education, even though Congress allocated full funding to the Department of Education. And a president unilaterally removed people from the United States without any due process of law who've not been convicted of any crime and do so in the dark of night in defiance of an actual court order saying, do not remove this person from the country. Every single one of these major issues that is in part of a temporary restraining order would qualify without a doubt. as a major question. Yeah. And yet this court has gone out of its way to say Trump can proceed full speed ahead. And in fact, even on questions where Congress expressly in our constitutional language unambiguously has the power of the purse, has the power to set tariffs, this court has intervened with lower court rulings to allow Trump to act unilaterally. in defiance of the commitment of those powers, not to him, not to the president, but to Congress. And so this court is acting as a political, partisan player, as a rubber stamp for Donald Trump and his initiatives in a way that it acted as an obstructor intervener against a Democratic administration engaging in modest. policy initiatives under existing statutes. Yeah, I would try as I might in plowing through the Constitution over and over again, trying to find the presidential immunity clause. I couldn't find it in there. I also couldn't find that major questions doctrine. that seems to have been invented also out of whole cloth, this idea that, oh, if the court essentially determines something is so big and so important, it becomes a major question, then it cannot be enacted unless Congress itself very specifically says so. So the Clean Air Act says that, you know, the EPA may regulate against pollutants that are found harmful. Okay, the EPA finds... that CO2 is harmful. It should be regulated. And then the court says, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, not that, not CO2. That's a major question. You can't, you can't regulate that. Well, yes, we can, sir, because it says so in the Clean Air Act. But no, no, it's a major question, therefore it can't be dealt with. Meanwhile, Donald Trump comes in with things that actually overturned the Constitution itself, much less...

congressional mandates. And they're like, well, yeah, go ahead. Emergency docket. We'll let you do it now and we'll think about it later in full or something. It's mind-blowing. Now, you note in your latest newsletter and, of course, in your book, that John Roberts was, quote, the first beneficiary. of the dark money apparatus to capture the nation's highest court in order to roll back legal precedents and laws disliked by regressive billionaires in the groups and political apparatus they fund. Now, It was an interesting argument because the first thing I thought was, well, doesn't Clarence Thomas, who was appointed to the court several years before John Roberts, doesn't he actually carry the mantle of being the first beneficiary of dark money? Or did his dark money come after he had already been seated to the court? Is that what the distinction you're making there? Well, he's had a lot of dark money and dark gifts since then. But it is the case that he was the beneficiary of a campaign by a group. known as Citizens United that became much more famous two decades later. Clarence Thomas was. You know, spent money to help him get confirmed. But that was, those were early days. There wasn't a lot of spending, you know, being marshaled to, you know, put him on the court. He, he, even though he was nominated after David Souter was nominated to the court, there wasn't a no more Souter's campaign. There wasn't the type of, you know, big organizational effort that came up in the 2000s around John Roberts and his nomination to get him installed on the court. It hadn't yet. It installed as part of this No More Souter's mantra. It hadn't yet been industrialized and weaponized, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there certainly was some money being spent in the 1980s around judicial fights. For example, the right wing claims that the fight against Bork was some sort of dark money effort. The reality is, and you could look at the contemporaneous reports from the news accounts at the time, people for the American Way sent a letter out to its members across the country saying, basically, Bork is really extreme. And people responded with, you know, hundreds. and hundreds of $20 donations saying, please stop Bork. That wasn't like a big dark money campaign. That was grassroots action that stopped Bork. And Bork, you know, Bork's extreme claims did him in. But the fact is that John Roberts was really in this modern era, like you said, of the sort of industrialization of these dark money machines. He was the beneficiary. And I detail in the book how what happened was, you know, there was an effort. that was created by C. Boyden Gray to attack Democrats who were blocking John Roberts from the D.C. Circuit and other nominees, and there were some of these other groups that were being deployed to attack the Judiciary Committee Democrats. But what happened was that there was a big, huge, huge, gigantic dark money group.

that the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, basically allowed by not regulating some of the soft money that was starting to emerge around the presidential campaign. And so this group that called itself progress for America, even though it was not progressive, it was a really retrograde group funded by some of the biggest billionaires in the country and proto billionaires at the time. to back Bush, that group, Progress for America and Progress for American Action, after they spent huge money, outpaced the Dems at the end of that 2004 presidential race, joined alongside them was the swift vote veterans against Kerry for truth, you know, so it was a truth. Those groups spent huge at the end of 2004. And then at the end, after Bush became the president, was, was, you know, got his second term at the end of 2004. That group, Progress for America, turned its money, its war chest, that dark money war chest. into a machine to help ensure that John Roberts and Samuel Alito were installed on the Supreme Court. That was 20 years ago last month, in fact, when John Roberts was tapped to become the Chief Justice by George W. Bush, and by the way, some of us fought like hell back then to prevent him from being seated at all at the time, back when people were like, oh, he seems like a nice guy. I'm sure he'll be fine. Back then, John Roberts famously said this. about his judicial philosophy during his Senate confirmation that he was just there to be an umpire just to call the balls and strikes which seems so quaint now but let me play it and get your thoughts Lisa Graves 20 years later judges are not politicians who can promise to do certain things in exchange for votes I have no agenda but I do have a commitment If I am confirmed, I will confront every case with an open mind. I will fully and fairly analyze the legal arguments that are presented. I will be open to the considered views of my colleagues on the bench. And I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability. And I will remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat. Boy, hearing that now 20 years later, after all that we know, I'm inclined to ask for your quick response to that Lisa Graves, although I suspect your new book without precedent may itself be your response to that. But 20 years later, all he's doing there is calling the balls and strikes, Lisa. Yeah, that to me was PR spin back then, and it's even more stale now, as we've seen the, or, you know, rancid in a way, because he constructed that image of calling balls and strikes of just being an umpire in the first instance to win over.

George W. Bush, who had been had a stake in the Texas Rangers, was a big baseball fan. And John Roberts was a finalist for that slot on the Supreme Court competing with Michael Ludding, who was a judge on the Fourth Circuit, who's become, you know, very outspoken in his retirement about what's happened to the rule of law. John Roberts won over George W. Bush with that manufactured analogy. And then he deployed it to the American people to try to assure them that he didn't have an agenda that he was just going to. call balls and strikes. The fact is that he was chosen to be a player. He was chosen to be a quarterback on that court to impose that right-wing agenda to not be like suitor, to not just follow the law and follow legal precedents, but to basically impose these... sort of this revolutionary right-wing agenda through the courts. And you can see that in his rulings. You can see that in his attack on the landmark Voting Rights Act that was adopted in 1965 after the sacrifice of so many people who lost their lives, who were beaten and battered, who struggled for decades to secure those voting rights. And then with the stroke of a pin, John Roberts disregarded the detailed... Factual findings of Congress, both the House and the Senate, thousands of pages of records of why that voting rights reauthorization of Section 4 and Section 5, the preclearance provisions, were necessary. A law that was overwhelmingly passed by Congress with only a few people voting against it, namely a handful of white southerners who opposed that law. Signed in the law by George W. Bush, but with the stroke of a pen... John Roberts set it aside and crushed those enforcement provisions. And as you point out, that helped lay the foundation for some of the voter suppression that helped Donald Trump eke out a win in 2016. And John Roberts is poised to do more damage this year on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. which he personally spent hundreds of hours in the Regan administration trying to prevent it from taking into account the effects of changes in voting in cities across the country, particularly in Mobile, Alabama, a case that he was trying to prevent from being overturned, a case that his mentor, Bill Rehnquist, had helped bring into the force of law. just 15 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed, where the Republicans on that Supreme Court were trying to decimate that Section 2. And now John Roberts is going to take another bite of the apple on Section 2 in this Supreme Court term. So John Roberts is someone who has really been acting not as an umpire at all. And in fact, you know, as I detail in the book, I looked at the records. of the Indiana High School Sporting Association and his prep school in Indiana. And it turned out that John Roberts never even played baseball in high school. So if that analogy was manufactured, it turns out that he was actually a football player and a wrestler. And his coach told that dark money group, Progress for America, that created a website, Judge...

you know, Judge John Roberts in order to advance its campaign to get him on the court. His coach told Progress for America that John Roberts was a small linebacker, but he was especially devoted to strategies to defeat his opponent. And that's... who we really have on the court, not an umpire, and certainly not a fair umpire. I have got so much I could, I would love to talk to you about regarding John Roberts, this idea that people still, at this point, see him as an institutionalist, that he's just looking out for the interests of the court. That all seems to be gone entirely at this point, where he had people talking about him as an institutionalist in the first term. You don't seem to hear that a lot now, and I would argue for good reason, and more about what you describe as the wreckage piling up at Robert's feet right now. But I've got to get out. So let's see if we can find our way towards something hopeful here after all of this, or despite all of this. You write, still, we cannot give up. We have to choose hope and work together to reform the court and restore our freedoms and help make America a land of liberty and infused with... the equal protection of the law for real. Of course, I wholeheartedly agree, but the road to that reform right now is very difficult to see, Lisa. Are you able to see a pathway? Can you outline a potential path that would allow us to finally get out of this mess by finally getting to that reform that is obviously so needed at this point for the high court? Well, every one of these rulings that are destructive of the rule of law, destructive of legal precedents to protect our freedoms, the freedom of all people to do process, for example, to not just be seized off the streets without any cause, any legitimate cause or process. All of those rulings need to be seen as fuel for the reforms that we must come together to pass, to get Congress to pass. And obviously, this Congress won't do anything. It is basically just a handmaiden or office boy for Trump. And Trump won't sign into law any reforms. But that's why we have to build a multi-year movement to reform the Supreme Court and restore our rights. And if we don't do so, we do so at our peril because the John Roberts Court and John Roberts is acting with such supreme arrogance. in enabling Trump and in decimating our rights, that it's not over. It will continue to take blow after blow against our freedoms, against statutes that were passed to protect our rights, including efforts to mitigate climate change and so much more, until we reform this court. past laws to restore the rights that have been lost and even expand upon them. So it's really a moral duty. It's a moral imperative that we not give in to the moment and give in to hopelessness when, in fact, for every major struggle for social progress, that's been a multi-year struggle. And it's been one in which people don't give up just because they don't win that year.

Just because we can't do it this year doesn't mean we can't be building it. And in fact, we must be building forward to demanding that we have representatives who are going to support reforming the Supreme Court to protect our rights to undo the damage that's been done. by this packed and stacked and captured court, the damage that's been done is done to us. We, the people. And so we have an obligation to work together to move those reforms into law in the years to come. And it's not going to be this year. It's not going to be next year. But each year that we go forward, we hopefully will have an opportunity to have elections that will allow us to hold the people accountable who are advancing this extreme agenda and repel it. and in repelling it, have the opportunity. to pass meaningful, real reform, the reform that's needed as well as the substantive restoration of rights and expansion of rights that is every American's, you know, heritage and rightful inheritance. And to underscore that point, that happens, that reform process happens via elections. Electing a Congress that is willing to reform, electing a president that is willing to sign that reform into law. It all, to me, it seems to start. And stop with elections, which of course is why John Roberts and his clan are working so hard to make it harder to hold those elections, to make it harder for people to vote. In the conclusion of your latest newsletter, Lisa, you cite Abraham Lincoln, who said, quote, if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the people. will have ceased to be their own rulers before you add that the future is still hours to make in our Democratic Republic if we do not give up and give in. Lisa Graves is the author of the brand new book, Without Precedent, how Chief John Roberts and his accomplices rewrote the Constitution and dismantled our rights. She is the founder and executive director of TrueNorthresearch.org. Prior to that, she worked, well, pretty much everywhere in government. At the Justice Department, at the U.S. court system, in Senate and everywhere else, you can and should sign up for her newsletter atgraveinjustice. News. And you can find her on the blue skies at the Lisa Graves. Lisa, always a delight speaking with you. I look forward to doing it again soon. Excellent. Thank you, Brad, for having me on. And hey, yes, please do get my book and review it on Amazon and other outlets, Goodreads. Would so love people to share this book and learn from it. It was an act of love to write it. And it's an act of love for our country and what our country can and should be.

Well done, Lisa. Thank you so much. Thanks, Brad. Okay, let's take a quick break and go from the delightful Lisa Graves to the, well, less than delightful Pam Bondi. That is straight ahead on your broadcast. I'm Brad Friedman. Don't touch that dial. What the public hears on the public airwaves matters. At the broadcast, we do our best to bring you accurate news and analysis on the issues that actually matter, and we do it all independently without corporate or political influence. But we can't do it without you, now more than ever. Please help us stay on your public airwaves by going to bradblog.com slash donate to help keep us going. That's bradblog.com slash donate. And thanks. Hey, this is Brad. You're listening to an encore presentation of the Bradcast. True. Back check, true. Pam Bondi. It is no good. Welcome back to the broadcast, Bradfriedman from bradblog.com. My thanks again to the great Lisa Graves, who is, in fact, very good. Yes, she is. So I mentioned at the top of the last segment while introducing Lisa before we got to the corruption of the Supreme Court, how the Department of Justice has similarly become completely captured and corrupted as well. Well, in her first testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, since taking office, Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi made clear on issue after issue, after issue, not just how corrupt... The DOJ has now become, but frankly, how horrible a person Pam Bondi actually is. Is that fair to say from your review, Desi Doyen? Sadly, yes. That is fair. By way, I have just one example. Here she is with ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, whose home state Trump has essentially announced is being about to be invaded by the U.S. military at Donald Trump's orders supposedly to fight crime. Despite the wishes of both the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago, who both say U.S. troops are neither welcome nor needed in the windy city at all. Here's Dick Durbin at the oversight hearing, trying to get even the barest amount of information from Pam Bondi as to the legal predicate for this unprecedented deployment of U.S. troops against U.S. citizens.

in his own home state and if there even is a predicate at all in the first place. Madam Attorney General, let me ask you this question. Were you consulted by the White House before they deployed National Guard troops to cities in the United States? I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House. You won't even say whether you talk to the White House about this? I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House with you, Chair, ranking member. I notice that. What's the secret? Why do you want to keep this secret to the American people don't know the rationale behind the deployment of National Guard troops in my state? The word is, and I think it's been confirmed by the White House, they are going to transfer Texas National Guard units to the state of Illinois. What's the rationale for that? Yeah, Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government, and you're sitting here, our law enforcement officers aren't being paid. They're out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. And currently, the National Guard are on the way to Chicago. If you're not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will. I've been on this committee for more than 20 years. That's the kind of testimony you expect from this administration. A simple question as to whether or not they had a legal rationale for deploying National Guard troops becomes grounds for a personal attack. I think it's a legitimate question. It's my responsibility. She refuses to answer as to whether she had any conversation with the White House about deploying national troops to my state. That's an indication. I'm afraid where we are politically in this place. Yeah, just a little bit of an indication. She won't even say if she met with Trump to discuss the deployment, never mind what it is. She actually. said. Yeah, and I believe it is the Department of Justice's responsibility to provide the legal rationale for these actions. And she's just simply being openly contemptuous of the Democratic senators throughout the entire hearing. Of course, she refused to answer any questions about her cover up of the Epstein files. That, I guess, should be expected. Her cover up on behalf of Donald Trump, but she was... Really sweet in her response to questions, as heard in this exchange between Pam Bondi and Senator Sheldon White House of Rhode Island. Let me ask you something else. There's been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half-naked young women. Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of... Jeffrey Epstein's safe or premises or otherwise. Have you seen any such thing? You know, Senator White House, you sit here and make salacious remarks once again trying to slander President Trump left and right. When you're the one who was taking money from one of Epstein's closest confidence, I believe, I could be wrong, correct me, Reid Hoffman, who is...

with Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions. And the senator sitting right next to you tried to block the flight logs from being released. Yet you're grilling me on President Trump and some photograph with Epstein? Come on. The question is, did the FBI find those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him? You don't know anything about that. Okay. She just won't say anything. No, she just shut up at that point. She doesn't say no. Right. Yeah. And of course, I love that she says she accuses him of trying to slander Donald Trump and then turns around and says, well, you're the one taking money from this guy. Now, she refused to answer any questions about. that cover up of the Epstein files on behalf of Trump. But Sheldon White House did correct Pam Bondi on that point on her apparent slander of him on regarding her assertion that White House took money from a, from she calls him a confident, but from a confidant of Jeffrey Epstein when he. posted later on to social media, he added his response to that. You sit here and make salacious remarks once again trying to slander President Trump. When you're the one who was taking money from one of Epstein's closest confidence, I believe, I could be wrong, correct me, Reid Hoffman. Okay, I will correct you. This guy you talk about has never given me a dime. You are making that up. And just by the way, how weird it is that an attorney general coming to the Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing prepares oppo research on the senators, plus false appo research? Plus is so sloppy that she says it, even though it's false. I mean, really, this MagadioJ stuff is getting out of hand. Getting out of hand, Senator. There are, of course, many, many more examples of Pam Bondi displaying what a horrible human being she has from Tuesday's hearings, refusing to answer everything from questions about her refusal to release the Epstein files to the fact that her DOJ dropped the investigation of Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, who was caught on tape, reportedly taking $50,000 in cash in a takeout food bag from supposed businessmen during a law enforcement sting in exchange for getting contracts. via Tom Homan for if Trump became president again. And by the way, she refuses to explain what came of that $50,000 in cash. what Holman did with it, whether or not he even reported it on his taxes as required by law. But as we ran a bit longer with Lisa Graves, I will just let Senator Schiff here of California sort of sum up everything that Pam Bondi refused to answer in the oversight hearing at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Excuse me. Let me do this because I think it's valuable.

that the American people get a sense of what you've refused to answer today. So these are just some of the questions you refuse to answer, but or have answered with personal attacks on members of this committee. You were asked whether you consulted with career ethics lawyers, as you promised you would do, during your nomination hearing, when you approve the president receiving a $400 million gift from the Qataris. You refused to answer that question. You are asked who or what role you may have played or who played the role in asking that Trump's name be flagged. in any of the Epstein documents gathered by the FBI. You refused to answer that question. You were asked whether Holman kept the $50,000 bribe money. You refused to answer that question. You were asked whether Holman paid taxes on the $50,000 bribe money. You refused to answer that question. You were asked, did career prosecutors find insufficient evidence to charge James Comey? You refused to answer that question. You were asked, How are military strikes on these boats in the Caribbean legal? And you refused to even answer that question. Do you have a law degree, excuse me, excuse me, you are asked, did you discuss indicting James Comey with the president? You refused to answer that question. You were asked, did you approve the firing of any trust lawyers who disagreed with the Hewlett-Packard merger? You refused to answer that question. You were asked. Whether you support a restoration fund for violent insurrections to attack the Capitol on January 6th, refused to answer that question. You were asked whether you were firing career professionals, career prosecutors, just because they worked on January 6th question, January 6 investigations. You refused to answer that question. You were asked by my California colleague whether you believe government officials, like immigration officials, have to abide by court orders. You wouldn't even answer that question. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing. Oversight. Excuse me. You can attack me after my time is over. Oh, he's attacked all of us, including President Trump for your entire career. You can't attack me later, and I know you've got plenty of canned attacks. We've heard them all day to day. Can't attacks on you? This is supposed to be. No one needs a canned attack on you. Regular order, Madam Chair. I'm trying to speak. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing of the Justice Department. and it comes in the wake of an indictment called for by the president of one of his enemies. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing, and it comes in the wake of revelations that a top administration official took $50,000 in a bag. And this department made that investigation go away. So you get the idea. Yeah, she would answer nothing. And she would interrupt and just be unprofessional, really rude and contemptuous. And by the way, she said, excuse me, Senator, did you have a law degree? In fact, Adam Schiff does have a law degree from a little school named Harvard Law School.

Just FYI, Pam Bondi. Other than that, she is delightful. Gotta get out, my thanks to Lisa Graves of TrueNorthresearch.org. My thanks, of course, to our producer, Everyday Desi Doyen. And my thanks to all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. If you missed any portion of today's show, want to give it another listen, want to share it with someone you know, love, or hate. You can do so anytime for free at bradblog.com. All we ask is that you consider while you're there hitting a donate button to help us stay on your public airwaves. It's greatly appreciated, especially now. Now, you can also go straight to bradblog.com slash donate. Drop me email if you like. I'm Bradcast at Bradblog.com. And on the social media, especially Blue Sky, you will find me at the Bradblog. We will see you at all of the above. Until we see you here next time, I'm Brad Friedman. Good luck, world. You're no good, you're no good, you're no good. Baby, you're no good. You're listening to the Bradcast. We are 100% listener supported thanks to listeners like you, who stopped by bradblog.com slash donate.