“Blanche’s hollow commitments”

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Hi there, everyone. It's 4 o'clock in the East. After finding himself dangling off the edge of a cliff in his confirmation battle to become the Attorney General, Todd Blanche appeared on the surface to finally meet the demands of the two Republican holdouts when it came to Trump's controversial settlement over his IRS lawsuit. But there's mounting skepticism today that exposes just how hollow Todd Blanche's word really is these days. Following... Over a week of negotiations with the Republican senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, Todd Blanche late last night put in writing that the Justice Department will put an end for now to the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund that could have awarded payouts to January 6th insurrectionists. In a separate statement Sunday, Todd Blanche also tried to meet the needs of Thom Tillis and John Cornyn by narrowing the scope of that sweeping immunity from IRS scrutiny that was given to Donald Trump and his family. In that unsigned statement, Todd Blanche claims the immunity will not extend to future audits and only applies to the Trump family. Todd Blanche's commitments were enough, it would appear, enough cover for the two senators on the Judiciary Committee. They issued this statement today, quote, we are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund. Additionally, the department has acknowledged in a binding written order. that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs. We want to express our gratitude to Todd Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon. With that green light, the Judiciary Committee scheduled a vote to advance Todd Blanche's nomination tomorrow at 9 a.m. But there are still a lot of pretty big questions about whether Todd Blanche's deal can actually be enforced. Here's Donald Trump, when pressed by our colleague, Jake Trailer, this afternoon on whether he signed off on Todd Blanche's order. Trump also doubled down on his enthusiasm for the slush fund. Mr. President, did you sign off on Todd Blanche? I didn't look at it. All I know is that Todd Blanche is great. He's going to do a great job. Everybody knows it. And I understand there's been a sign-off. But I don't know what they agreed. I think Todd Blanche agreed to reconfirm things that he's already said. I thought it would be. Very fair for people that spent years in prison, people that were treated so badly, for in many cases people that did absolutely nothing wrong. So I view that fund as a positive, and a lot of Republicans do too, not so many Democrats.

No evidence that many Republicans other than Donald Trump think it's a good idea. But if there is one thing Todd Blanche has proven to be very good at, it is doing anything to appease Donald Trump. Here's what Senator Adam Schiff points out today on both aspects of Todd Blanche's deal with the Republican holdouts. This supposed deal doesn't prevent payouts to violent insurrectionists in the future. It does not prevent the administration from bringing the slush fund back from the dead next week or from using DOJ's judgment fund for the same illicit purpose. It leaves in place a tax immunity deal that could help Trump skip taxes. on the $2.3 billion he made last year and still leaves it vague who and what is covered. Under oath, Todd Blanche pledged to provide Congress with assistance on a bill to make the death of Donald Trump's slush fund enforceable by law. The Judiciary Committee and its members should not settle for anything less than the acting Attorney General following through on his promise of helping to write this into statute. Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination moving forward after a rather dubious deal is struck with those GOP holdouts is where we start today. New York Times Justice Department reporter Glenn Thrush is here. Also joining us, former Department of Justice Pardon attorney, Liz Oyer is here. She's now the host of the podcast. Is this really legal? And with me for the hour, former top DOJ official and general counsel for the FBI, our legal analyst, Andrew Weissman, is here. Glenn, take us through. what it was about this version of the same thing Todd Blanche has sort of been muttering up on Capitol Hill for weeks now that put Thom Tillis and John Cornyn over the edge. I think they, first, I should just say they've been wanting to get to yes desperately. They set the bar really, really low. And for the most part, for the better part of six weeks, really, the administration was not willing to even go that far. And I think the question today is whether or not. This really does get over that far. Todd Blanche, I mean, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis requested two things. First was kind of, believe it or not, the easiest thing, which was putting the $1.8 billion fund, anti-webonization fund, which Thom Tillis memorably, what's the expression that he used to call that, you know. He said it was basically a slush fund for January 6 folks. That was relatively easy to put on the shelf because there are all kinds of ways the department can funnel money to those folks in settlements anyway, and they have been doing that to allies. The more difficult part, and what we think from our reporting was the real sticking point, is this remarkable provision granting broad tax immunity worth probably $100 million or more to Mr. Trump and his family that the White House just didn't want to get rid of.

And the document today was a very curious formulation. We're not exactly sure. No one is really sure necessarily. Maybe the two distinguished lawyers I'm on the panel with can talk about this more expansive. But there is just a general sense from the people that we've been talking to that there are all kinds of potential loopholes in this. And frankly, they could turn around and renegotiate it. as they could with any other settlement anytime they want. And now, but the main characteristic here is that Donald Trump has removed these two stalled cars from the interstate. He won't have to deal with John Cornyn and tell us anymore. The leverage that these guys had is now disappointed. Yeah, I mean, Liz, as someone who... went out there and testified, made the case against Todd Blanche. What do you make of this weak tea that these two Republicans accepted? This is pretty crushing, Nicole. I mean, they didn't get anything from Todd Blanche. Really were in exactly the same situation as we were a week ago when they said they were holding up for Todd Blanche to really give up on this fund. Todd Blanche does not unilaterally have the ability to kill the anti-weaponization fund. So that's the fundamental problem here. The only way that can have any legal effect is if Donald Trump, as the other party to the contract, actually signs off on withdrawing it. Trump has not done that. He has not signed off on anything. He's made it clear that he will not sign off on anything. So it is not dead. And there is absolutely nothing that as a legal matter prevents Todd Blanche. from seeking to revive the anti-weaponization fund as soon as he gets confirmed. I think one other detail that's really important is that on Friday, just three days ago, Donald Trump's lawyers appealed the judgment of the court in Florida, which found that the fund was illegally created. So he is actively seeking to keep this fund alive. Through legal proceedings at the same time that Todd Blanche is saying it's dead, his statements are absolutely meaningless. And the most important part of the whole deal to Donald Trump, which is the tax immunity and audit immunity provision, has not been touched at all. It remains intact. So these senators got absolutely no concessions from Todd Blanche. And in fact, I think they have made matters worse by essentially blessing the agreement as it now exists. Andrew Weissman, why? At a moment when it is now known that Trump made at least $2.3 billion, this is what the New York Times and others have reported because this is what Trump had to report. So if you look at the way he's dealt with sort of paperwork over the 10 years he's been on the public stage, you have to assume that there is more where that came from. What is it about signing off on the architecture? for corrupt treatment by the IRS while you're president in the same year you make $2.3 billion that has all the other Republicans signing on to Todd Lynch's confirmation. How is that where we are?

Well, just to double down on that, just if you pull back, this is where we are. If you just take the events this week, you have the president of the United States with Todd Blanche's blessing, you know, very much, you know, his handmaiden, saying not only, well, people who attacked the Capitol, attacked police officers defecated in the Capitol in sort of a literal and figurative way. Not only are they not going to face any criminal liability, but they actually deserve taxpayer money for committing crimes. But at the same time, it is okay to indict and make truly spurious and we now know false claims about an Olympian. who was charged wrongly in connection with the reflecting pool. So you really have two sides of the Justice Department on display. And remember, that indictment of Mr. Hearn and the reflecting pool happened under Todd Blanche's watch while he is awaiting confirmation. In any... normal world in world one, Earth one, to use the phrase of Nicole Wallace, this would never, ever happen. And what's remarkable to me is you have all of these senators who, when the slush fund came up, privately were outraged. Well, Todd Blanche, no matter what he does now, like having his hand cut, you know, caught in the cookie jar and saying, I'm going to sign, I agree with Liz, meaningless pieces of paper. He's still the same person who was okay signing off on tax liability and immunity for the president at his family and companies. He's the same person who thought that Sush Fund was a good idea. All of this is such an absurd sideshow because he is exactly the same person who wanted to do something that the senators privately were up in arms about. I mean, Glenn Thrush, the whole record of Todd Blanche's leadership of the department can be summed up as willing to go deeper into the gutter than Pam Bondi, right? He picks up like her outbox, the crap that was too gross, even for Pam Bondi to do after she refused to turn around and acknowledge Jeffrey Epstein's, some of them child victims of sexual trafficking. So he picks up the stuff that was beneath her moral compass. wherever that is, and literally orients the department, his true north is true south by anyone else's measure, and pursues the retribution list. He's also the one that's there for all the purges. Does any of this give any of the Republicans, like, does any of this come up in any of their private qualms about him?

Oh, of course it comes up in their private qualms about him. Really? Yeah, but let me point you. You know, I started covering, oh, God, I don't want to go back through time, but it's been a very long time ago that I started. My first gig in Washington was covering Congress. And, you know, one is never, any time you ever expect senators to act in a way that they will stand up to power greater than their own. were always, you know, disappointed. That's a bad bet. But if you kind of look at John Cornyn's statements during Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing, he made one very broad statement about Todd Blanche, how difficult it would be for Todd Blanche as the president's personal lawyer. And remember, Todd Blanche had that slip up right around that time where he said, I am the president's lawyer. And then he corrected himself, I'm the former president's lawyer. John Cornyn widened out the lens quite a bit and said, I have concerns essentially about Todd Blanche's independence. Well, none of those concerns were articulated after the hearing. That's what's really important to know here. And that's why the outcome of this was baked in from day one. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis never made a larger demand. They never said they wanted proof of independence. They never linked Todd Blanche's accruval of this deal to his lack of independence. They created a very, very narrow wish list. And eventually, as reluctant as the president was to check off on that narrow checklist, he did so. So this game was decided by the fact that John Cornyn did not follow up. on his assertion during the hearing that he wanted Lange to be an independent criminal. Liz, I know you have put yourself on the line testifying against him. I thought of you. I interviewed Brian Driscoll this week for my podcast, and he detailed, at least for me, one of the first times I'd heard what the purge was like inside the FBI and the Bureau. And Todd Blanche has been there through all of this. Let me play some of this for you. They wanted all those people fired. He never said that it was with the intent to fire them. However, to hand over a list while also having digested all the rhetoric coming from outside of our building elsewhere in the executive branch and elsewhere in the government, I again made a personal assessment and decided that I was unwilling unless it was told to me that it was a legal order. to submit the true names of almost, if not more than 6,000 FBI employees who worked those sensitive investigations against the people that were held responsible. Agents, analysts, and professional staff, some of them were threatened by those people who we held accountable that were responsible for those events.

without full confidence that I wasn't walking them to the edge of a cliff of their employment to watch somebody else kick them off. Also, to potentially risk having their true name compromised, released, and then the threats to them and their families, I was not willing to tolerate that. So, Liz, I thought about the threats that you've been very public about that you've received since you testified against Todd Blanche. Federal Judge Esther Salas has been talking about the threats that she and other judges are facing because of the language coming from. the White House, the president himself. Todd Blanche is part of that rhetoric against people involved prosecutors and investigators in the January 6th and Mar-a-Lago cases and against judges. And I wonder your thoughts about the topic of political violence not coming up in his confirmation hearings. It's incredibly disappointing, Nicole. I mean, one thing that really struck me is how narrow the grounds for potential rejection of his nomination have been. The only issue that has gotten any bipartisan traction is the issue of the anti-weaponization fund and the settlement agreement more generally.

of the Republicans seem to care about, care about the Epstein victims and his betrayal of those people. They don't really care about anything except for this one discrete issue. And now they've folded even on that, which is just terribly disappointing. And it is, to quote Andrew Bari Weiss in where we are. I was so honored to get to talk to Brian Driscoll. He's someone, Glenn, you've covered, and we've always been really interested in your reporting about what's happened at the FBI. If you want to listen to the entire conversation, it's up now. It's this week's episode of The Best People. You scan the QR code on your screen, or you can download it wherever you download all your podcasts, Glenn and Liz. Stick around. Andrew, you stick around for the whole hour. We're going to be back in a moment ahead for us, another humiliating move from Trump's Justice Department. Another flimsy indictment propped up by lies that couldn't stand up in court as Donald Trump digs in and continues to push the lie that even his U.S. attorney, his Fox-friendly U.S. attorney, had to push. away from. Plus, new, never before heard behind the scenes reporting on how one law firm went from resisting Donald Trump and being the legal architecture behind the resistance to surrendering to Donald Trump dramatically inside the Oval Office. And later in the broadcast, it's all just out in the open now, Trump and his White House making money publicly out loud and on the record off his public posts, those weird things that he posts all through the night on his social media platform, truth, social. Now people are paying to access those. All those stories and much more. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. Who answers America's call for more energy? Our people do. They've helped boost Chevron's U.S. energy production by nearly 60% in the past three years. helping fuel national energy security, and drives down the open roads that make America. Learn more about what our people do at chevron.com slash America.

You know, recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are different. If a podcast isn't your thing, you lose a few minutes. If you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. Maybe I know a guy just isn't enough for your home. That's why Thumbtack works. It matches you with top-rated local pros with photos, reviews, and credentials all in one place. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. She loves it freezing. She loves it hot. The pot by eight sleep ends the argument for good, with the independent temperature zones that keep both of you sleeping deeper. Try it at atesleep.com. We weren't necessarily thrilled with the contractor, but they did a job and they were fixing any problems. But then it got carried away because the judge was extremely unfriendly to Janine. And frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department. And I guess she choked. I don't know what the hell happened. Are you reconsidering her role? I don't know what. You're fake news. Don't ever talk again. You're fake news.

I think we touched a nerve there. Donald Trump lashing out at our colleague, MS now is Jake Traylor in the Oval Office today. Trailer pressing about the simple fact pattern from Donald Trump, the District of Columbia, Trump's buddy, Janine Piro, dropping the charges of vandalism. Her office had filed against former Olympian David Hearn less than one month ago. While Piro promised that her office would prove the charges of vandalizing the reflecting pool beyond a reasonable doubt, her office found that despite Trump's claims that, quote, I'm a really good builder, it was his shoddy contractors, not vandalism at all, responsible for the lining coming apart in pieces. We're back with Glenn, Liz, and Andrew. Andrew, let me read you what Heather Cox Richardson wrote just to sort of elevate this story to a... the real danger that it represents and the real window into what's rotten at the Department of Justice. She writes, Friday's dismissal of the Department of Justice case against David Hearn for vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool came days after Hearn's lawyers asked for transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment. The lawyers noted that the government's only witness testified that the pool was already damaged before Hearn went near it, and that the witness could not quantify the cost of any damage, over and above the cost of repairing the existing damage. The lawyers told the court that there were irregularities in the government's presentation of the evidence to the grand jury, the call into question whether the grand jury was misled. The Department of Justice has been caught repeatedly misleading grand juries or committing misconduct and getting indictments. Hearn's lawyers were suggesting that the Department of Justice engaged in the same misconduct in the indictment of David Hearn. for damaging the bottom of the reflecting full. So we talk a lot. I have endeavored since the show began with your help, with all of your help, to cover the rule of law in America. It is clear. that the Justice Department is now committed to a project of destroying it. And I asked, I asked your former colleague, I asked Jack Smith if it's broken, and he said no, because the judiciary and the judges. But it would appear that the Justice Department is actively working at breaking it if they are actively misleading grand juries. Just talk about what a tripwire has been passed. Well, the filing that was made by Janine Pura's office is so devastating because in black and white, you can see so many things. And as I have said about the reflecting pool case, it is truly a reflection. of the Justice Department and the Trump administration in sort of every way. It points out that what Donald Trump has been saying repeatedly about these being vandals is false. It lays it out in black and white. It also makes clear that they wrongly charged an individual and they did so at the speed of light without waiting to see the evidence and getting the evidence.

The filing seems to think it's an excuse that they did not have all the evidence from the agency involved. But that's the Department of Justice's job, as Liz will tell you. That is what you do before you indict, not. after. It is not an excuse if you would hear from anybody, like a beginning AUSA, you know, federal prosecutor to a season one to say, well, I didn't get all the proof before I charge. But that's what it makes clear they did here. And there's only one reason to call that they would do that, which was to indict. because that's what Donald Trump wanted. Because he wanted to say they were vandals. And so they picked a scapegoat and they charged him. And it is now in black and white that that is what happened. And just to tie it back to this is happening while Todd Blanche, the head of the Justice Department, is awaiting confirmation. In any normal world, heads would roll for this. But that's not the world we're in because the real issue now is Donald Trump's saying, why did you stop prosecuting? I'm angry that you told the truth about what's going on. Yeah, I mean, Glenn, this is sort of back to the last conversation, threats to judges. The judge didn't do anything. Irregular. The irregularities are from the Justice Department. And then here's, you know, do our last conversation, Republican senators in on the joke. Here's Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying that, of course, none of this was based in reality or truth. The whole thing is a multiple vehicle pile up. Let me start with the president. The president says it was caused by vandals. I don't know whether he really believes that or it's part of his political messaging or he's just thinking out loud. You and I both know the president well. He exists loudly and he grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought. I'm not saying he doesn't really believe it. I just don't know. Again, if you're talking about a kid in trouble again for saying things that turn out not to be true, that's a perfectly acceptable description. We're talking about the President of the United States, and he is one of the president's cheerleaders in... sort of shrugging his shoulders and Trump says crazy shit that doesn't hold up in a grand jury. What is the temperature of all this sort of sleepwalking as the Justice Department's credibility is called out by judge after judge after judge after judge?

Well, I want to step out of the frame for two seconds. The thing that's interesting about this is how silly it is. Can I just like, we are talking about the lining of a reflecting fool. We are a nation at war. But Mr. Hearn, they tried to criminally prosecute Mr. Hearn. No, no, no. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, we are in a situation where the president of the United States over the weekend denied a credible report that Iranians were hacking water systems. That appears to be on its face a significant threat to national security. He is not talking about that. He is talking about the reflecting pool. So I think the threshold onto this is why are we talking about reflecting pools? Because Donald Trump wants to talk about reflecting pools. And I think inside the Justice Department, it is entropic. You have a situation in which people are essentially pursuing the president's interests, but also within that frame, pursuing their own interests. Todd Blanche is a perfect example. Todd Blanche wants to be an officially confirmed attorney general. There's a lot of people, a lot of people inside the department who want to know why the hell he would want that job, right? But he really wants that. That's the crown of his career. Piero similarly, as I think Andrew alluded to, I think Piro is acutely conscious that she could be facing professional discipline or prosecutors under her could be facing professional discipline if we start surfacing these grand jury transcripts. So she, it is in her self-interest to have documented her withdrawal from this case in minute detail. And that, of course, has now put her on a collision course with Trump. So it's like you have Trump acting in his interest, other people abiding by that. And then everyone else is iterative of him acting to a certain extent like many trumps in their own self-interest. I guess the problem, though, Liz, is that Trump's interests have been the same since 2017 when the New York Times first wrote that he wanted to use the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton, James Comey, and a bunch of other people. And the problem is we, until the second Trump term, live in a country where you don't manufacture crimes. You don't get to go to grand juries with made-up garbage. And the reason we're covering this story ahead of the Iran story today is because an innocent American was almost... criminally prosecuted. Yeah, that's exactly what happened here. I mean, they needed to solve an embarrassing problem for Donald Trump, a problem of his own making, which was that the reflecting pool was rushed and it turned out to be a disaster. And so they picked out a random guy passing through the mall who was showing interest in the decaying reflecting pool and decided to.

pretend that he was responsible for this disaster of the president's own making without doing any investigation. They rushed to judgment. They charged him with the most serious possible offense with a felony without doing any type of investigation to determine whether the legal elements of that crime were met. And they did this all at the expense of a person's constitutional rights and their liberty, which is absolutely terrifying. Janine Perel walked away from this prosecution. only when it was clear that she could not take it any further without facing serious consequences herself. I mean, this is the type of cond. I think we lost Liz. I want to thank. Liz, we lost you. Glenn and Liz, I want to thank you both for starting us off. Andrew sticks around with us a little bit longer. When we come back, the New York Times has taken a deep dive into one of the most prominent law firms in the country who saw its only option to make a deal with Donald Trump or become a forgotten firm that no one wanted to work with. Is that real? We'll look at how that institution came to bend their knee and why it mattered because so many follow behind it. That's next.

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Even though Trump was shocked by how easily and quickly and enthusiastically, the top law firms in the country capitulated one after the other after he targeted them with the threat of crippling sanctions, even after they were viewed as likely illegal. But today, a month-long investigation by the New York Times exposes the fear and turmoil inside Paul Bari Weiss as it became the first of nine law firms to agree to do free legal work, tens of millions of dollars' worth for Trump-backed causes. The New York Times reveals that Paul Bari Weiss wants the leader of the legal resistance against Donald Trump during his first term, even paid associates to work for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, helping to build a criminal prosecution against Trump. But according to this new reporting, quote, once Trump won re-election, the firm scrambled to avoid his ire. It stopped representing a drone manufacturer that was suing the Pentagon. It also started scrubbing its websites of content that might draw the attention of Trump and his AIDS. When Trump issued his executive order against Paul Bari Weiss, leaders at the firm were convinced they could beat it in court. But they feared opposing the president would hurt the firm's finances and its clients. And when the firm's then chairman, Brad Carr, presented the framework of the deal at a meeting of the firm's partners on March 20th, no one objected. I want to bring in New York Times investigative reporter Mike Schmidt, whose byline is on that story. Andrew Weissman is still here. Mike, take us through the investigation and the reporting. Look, we... We're very interested in trying to understand what happened inside of Paul Bari Weiss. How was it that Paul Bari Weiss, a law firm that prided itself on standing up to the government, a law firm that had been part of the civil rights movement, a law firm that had worked with Thurgood Marshall on the NAACP's case in Brown v. the Board of Education, how is it that that firm, which raised more money for Democrats in 2024 than any other law firm in the country? The same firm that did debate prep for Harris. How was it that that firm was the first one to capitulate to Trump? And why did that happen? And what we found when we went back is that the firm essentially made a decision almost two decades ago under Brad Karp to essentially chase corporate business. And in the attempt to do that, they hired a big-time rainmaker named Scott Barshay, who came in in 2016, and slowly, over several years, was able to change the door. of the firm and sort of oriented away from its historic roots and towards, you know, these, this modern Kirklandification, as it's called in the legal world, which basically means turning law firms into businesses that can be the biggest profit generators as possible.

The thing that struck us the most about Paul Bari Weiss and the deal that it made was that it came in March of 2023. And that is an incredibly important time in the Trump presidency because Trump has come out of the gate. He clearly is operating in a more sophisticated way than he did in his first term. There is a head of steam. His retribution campaign is ramping up. And one of the first firms he goes for is this firm that had done all this stuff to stand up to the government and had been the leaders of the legal resistance against Trump in his first term. And what happens? that firm goes and makes a deal at a moment where Trump is becoming increasingly emboldened in his retribution. And after Paul Bari Weiss makes that deal, eight other law firms follow suit. And they make similar deals with the administration. Four other law firms fought it in court and actually won injunctions. But in all, nine firms. Pledging a billion dollars in free legal fees made these deals with the administration. This person that runs this firm or ran this firm. The story ends with the tale about how his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein actually costs him the job to this more corporate person. But this person, Brad Karp, who turns the firm away from its history, I think the three liberal Supreme Court justices, or their pictures are in the story. They clerked at this firm. Does he have any? Remorse about doing something that Judge Beryl Howell, you write in the story said was so illegal, it chilled her to the bone, these executive orders capitulating in service of an executive order that is illegal. I think that CARP has rationalized it to other people that they basically had a fiduciary duty to themselves and their clients to make this deal because it was economically, you know, the firm would have fallen apart. It would have gone out of business if they hadn't done that. That's what they have claimed. They have claimed that they were going to lose their clients. They were going to lose lawyers at their firm that they were going to go and work somewhere else. For the firms who fought, that really hasn't been the case. They have largely, the firms that have fought, have not only one in court, but are still standing on their feet. Now, are they making as much money as they were before? I don't know. Law firms are not the most transparent places on the face of the earth. But I think that the four firms fighting and winning the injunctions in court showed that there was a path to fighting. And the reason that Karp rationalized making the deal is that he said that

even though they knew the executive order was illegal, and even though they knew a judge would rule in their favor, they could not survive as persona non grata in this administration, in which the administration wouldn't deal with them. How could they represent their clients? And to me, that's always been one of the most remarkable parts about this story, which is that Paul Bari Weiss knew the executive order was illegal. They knew a judge would come to their aid. But the power of Trump over them and the fear of the economic damage he could do to them was so great that they still went ahead and made the deal anyway. And that's a law firm. I have to see you get a break, but Andrew, I want to pull you in on the other side. I mean, in our business, it lights out. You're over. It's criminal to do something that you know is false. I want to understand how a law firm does something it knows to be illegal ahead of time. We'll have that conversation on the other side. Don't go anywhere. We're back with Mike and Andrew. Andrew, just weigh in on Mike's reporting about how Paul Bari Weiss knew the executive orders were likely illegal, something that would bear out in court. The firms that have fought the Trump EOs have batted a thousand. As I said, with Judge Beryl Howell describing the executive order as bone chilling. What does it say about a law firm and why do you hire lawyers who do something that they know in advance is illegal? One thing to just to add to that excellent, excellent reporting is that in addition to the firms that caved, it's useful to remember that a lot of other firms are not suing the government, are not helping NGOs and other organizations, as they traditionally have done. And so there's been an enormous ripple effect. And the fact that it was Paul Bari Weiss that caved and caved first. made it that much more insidious because of its history that Mike and his colleagues reported. Why a client would still go to them knowing that they could fight, but they didn't, and that these were so blatantly illegal? Remember, this is the case where the government almost did not appeal. the four judges who found this violated the Constitution. The government almost didn't appeal because it thought it didn't have an argument. And then Trump basically forced them to. It's now pending appeal. And so I was thinking back to my parents used to tell me about the Joseph McCarthy era and how he went after universities. He went after Hollywood. He went after government agencies. And it all felt a little underglass to me. I thought, well, that wouldn't happen anymore. That was a different time and era. And if anyone wants to understand what we are going through and thinking that that is something that wouldn't happen, you just have to read Mike's reporting to see that the dollar. is something that has overcome principle. And unfortunately, I think Mike also correctly points out that it correlates to the shift at Paul Bari Weiss of the corporate department being in control of the firm and not litigators. The idea that it's no longer a profession, that you're sort of a hired gun, that it's all about the bottom line. That is not how, you know, I was raised.

as a young lawyer, that that's the way you're supposed to behave. And here, you really get the sense that it is all about the reason they capitulated has to do with, you know what, we want to make eight or $10 million per partner a year as opposed to if we fight, it might, it might be horrible because we might only make $6 million. In other words, we're talking about. astronomical amounts and people cherishing that more than the principle of the history of that firm, which was so vaunted. And people in the profession knew that Paul Bari Weiss stood for something. Yeah, and it's not like it was the last group of people. I mean, this person that you've mentioned a couple of times, Mike Brad Karp, first paragraph of the story is about how he has a picture of a reunified family. He worked on reunifying, family separated by child separation. So it's not even like the next generation of leaders. It's like literally the last term. Mike, thank you for the reporting. Andrew Weissman, thank you for joining us to talk about it. We are going to sneak in one more break. On the other side, Bill Pulte has finished firing almost a third of the staff at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He's now passing the keys over to his Senate-confirmed successor who couldn't say who won the 2020 election. What could go wrong?

It's official. Jay Clayton has been sworn in to lead the nation's intelligence community. It comes after he refused in front of the Senate and national cameras and the world to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and Joe Biden W-O-N-1. He takes the reins as the director of national intelligence from another Trump loyalist, Bill Pulte, who for some reason stayed on the job for an extra week after the Senate confirmed Jay Clayton. That overlap caused alarm among current former U.S. officials, in part because Bill Pulte has played a central role in helping Donald Trump spread false claims about election security. Plus, in an apparent effort to impress dear leader last week, Bill Pulte posted on social media that he's laid off 30% of the workforce at the office of the DNI. But if Trump is looking for someone to co-sign his election conspiracies, Jay Clayton has already made clear that he just might be... almost as ready and willing. We'll stay on top of that. Quick little news flash. I am off to attend my son's playoff baseball game. Alicia Menendez, my dear friend and colleague, who also parents while anchoring, will pick up the 5 o'clock hour for us. On the other side, a look at another possible cash windfall for the sitting president of the United States. We're, of course, talking about Donald J. Trump. The next hour of Deadline White House starts after a quick break. I will see you tomorrow.

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