Welcome to another episode of The Oath and the Office Podcast. I'm John Fiegel, sang Happy Christmas and Happy Hanakhod, happy everything to hold y'all. So great to have y'all with us. And it's so great as always to welcome the star of our show. Professor Corey Bretschneider is a constitutional law scholar, a political philosopher, the author of the Oath and the Office and the Presidents and the People, and he was kicked out of both Kiss and the Wu Tang Clan
for being too hardcore. The Professor focuses on what democracy requires of those in power and what happens when leaders actively violate those requirements. Corey, it's so good to see you. Happy holidays to you and your family.
Thank you, John.
Happy holidays to you and your family, and of course to all the listeners. And what an intro, you know, was an aspiring I loved old school rap as a kid and still do. And so if only all that was true, I mean, that's the best intro yet just the end part, you know, far from it.
Well, Like I always like to say, hyperbole is worse than Nazis. Okay, so we have a lot we have to cover on today's episode special Holiday Malfeesi's edition between Corporate Power and the sixty Minutes Crisis. Of course, the Epstein files an inherent contempt, which I thought was just
how my wife's family viewed me. And we have to talk a bit about dishonesty and how used we've all become to disinformation because this was the week where we found out who was the perpetrator of the Brown University shooting. Of course, we lost Ella Cook, nineteen years old, a sophomore from Mountain Brook, Alabama. She was the vice president of the Brown College Republicans and a musician. Muhammad Aziz Imerzakov was eighteen. He was a freshman from Virginia. He
was an Uzbek American, an aspiring neurosurgeon. Their deaths were completely senseless, and their deaths were manipulated, as seems to be the norm now by actors looking to place blame and stereotype large groups of people. Professor, let's start with what we actually know. AUTH already say that the Brown University shooter was Claudio Nevis Valente, Portuguese immigrant, acting alone, later found dead by suicide. No one else was involved. And as you know, while you and your fellow faculty
were grieving almost immediately. Right wing social media blamed a transgender student and framed the murder as ideological. And I'd like to begin, Professor by just first asking how you and your colleagues are and what does this reflex tell us about how disinformation is functioning as usual after mass violence in the Trump era, Because I don't think anyone was surprised that transgender students were blamed. I don't think anyone was surprised that that was a lie.
Yeah, I think in some ways it wasn't surprising, but the whole tragedy, you know, when it had happens to you and your community, it just.
Hits in a different way.
And we talked about this last week as the investigation was ongoing, and part of what was happening then was really an immense fear on campus from students, from faculty, And so there is some relief now that we know who did this and we know that it was just a hard to comprehend, clearly very disturbed individual who had very little contact with the university ever. In fact, two thousand and one was the last time that he was
involved with the university. He was a graduate student, in physics, and he's the same person, I should say too, who murdered the MIT professor, who he knew from Portugal where he was from Portuguese national And I suppose they were rivals, and one of the two thrived in physics, the MIT professor, and the other out of resentment, took his life. And then the Brown story is very hard to comprehend. He returned to the building and I guess the room that he was often in where he thought. I think he
was murdering physics students. Now that of course is completely senseless, but they weren't physics students. Even they were students in a review session in economics and in the hallway. So it is just an immense tragedy. There is some relief that we caught this person. The two students who were murdered, horrific violence, horrific senseless young death. As all my colleagues and as the entire Brown community, we grieve for them and for their families and their friends.
Many of my colleagues knew them.
And it's been an enormous tragedy. And then to go to your question in the midst of all of this, to watch the internet blame transgender student who had absolutely nothing to do with this because they claimed that they had the same body type as the person that was being looked for, but just jumping to conclusions as if there was some conclusive evidence about this, and then another right wing conspiracy that this was somehow an ideological attack
because the female student who was murdered was a member of the Young Republicans, And you know, neither of those are based in any fact, and yet the Internet went crazy with them. So we were seeing, you know, the connection between the horrible storm of misinformation of really anti democratic politics, not anti democratic party, but against democracy that
we're seeing online. You know, the misinformation with it and the kind of views that go with it, lack of reason just turned into a weapon against the brown community community I've been part of for twenty four years.
So it was just tragedy upon tragedy.
And now there is a new victim, who's this transgender student who was targeted for absolutely no reason and without any evidence.
I know that slowing down and establishing facts before assigning blame is woke, but Professor, this podcast, I guess if we have a theme, it's about something that's present in your work. Democratic norms under pressure. I mean, how dangerous do you find it when entire communities, say transgender people, say immigrants, say Muslims, become default suspects every time violence occurs.
Oh.
I mean, that's the unfortunate reality of the world in which we're in, that there is a narrative of, you know, who's to blame for all of our problems that's not based in facts.
We talked last week.
About the real problem, which I think is gun regulation and the lack of gun regulation in the United States. We compared New Zealand and Australia and the massive progress that they made when it came to mass shootings and mass killings compared to the United States.
That's a real issue.
But instead, because the conservatives of the Republican Party the President don't want to do anything about that real issue, they've got to manufacture fake issues. So blaming transgender people with again zero evidence, can't say that enough. Blaming non citizens, permanent residents, green card holders, students from ad that's the playbook that we're watching unfold. And you know, here's where the personal tragedy intersects with the tragedy of our politics.
Yeah, Corey, I mean, let me ask you, is this less about truth and more about permission, like just the permission structure to punish groups the right already hates that already likes to target.
Yeah, it's they clearly have an agenda, which is the shutdown of immigration into the United States. The belief in this phrase, horrible phrase that I keep hearing of heritage American referring essentially to white Americans who have been in this country for generations as the true Americans. Nothing could be further I should say, from the American idea, which is essentially that America is based on principles of freedom, of a commitment to equality. Those are the ideals of
American democracy. And you know, this is a nation based on ideas of freedom, not ideas of blood. And yet this of heritage Americans is trying to change that. And so any time that this can unleash itself with facts in the news, it doesn't matter how tangential, they'll do it. And this anti immigrant narrative that's being attached to this tragedy is probably inevitable, but horrific to see, especially when it's about your own community.
Again, it's strange how Yeah, our friends on the right always have to believe in what's that word again, supremacy to other roots right, Christian supremacists, American supremacists, and Jesus's whole mission was about humility. It's a good thing they don't read the Jesus parts. But you know, Donald Trump's response was not targeted law enforcement. And this is why I really wanted to open with this story today as opposed to sexier stuff like Bari Weiss burning down CBS News.
But Donald Trump is turning to collective punishment, suspending the diversity visa lottery, imposing more immigration restrictions that will affect and hurt millions. No, this is what I wanted to ask you about, because this is what the bad guys always do throughout history. Professor, From a constitutional standpoint, how does collective punishment of entire groups fit into authoritarian history?
Well, the American ideal is supposed to be that we don't blame individuals for the supposed characteristics of other individuals.
And the Biblical ideal too.
And what we're.
Seeing, I think increasingly, is not only the stereotyping and grouping of people, but the desire to punish certain individuals as responsible for the ls of society. It is the worst example of prejudice and stereotyping coming together to fail to deal with our real problems. And you know, I can't help but think about this documentary. There's an amazing thinker about the history of Nazi Germany named Professor Hett and I'm.
Going to have him.
We're going to have him on the podcast in the new year. And if you watch on Netflix, the documentary based largely on his work Hitler and the Nazis. Things don't start off with the Holocaust that comes later in
the war. What starts off is this idea of collective punishment, of the punishment of the Germans for the Reichstag fire, which by the way, might have been set by Hitler himself, but the idea that you'll blame collectively an entire group for an individual action that the group, of course can't be responsible for. Now, we're not seeing the Holocaust or any of the cars that we saw later in Germany.
But what we are seeing are the foundations for that way of thinking, blaming groups, for instance, for the actions of individuals. This Portuguese professor was in a unique situation.
He was clearly disturbed person.
He had been a graduate student for just a few months, evidently a promising one who it didn't work out for. That's not an example of somebody that you can then generalize into Green card holders or permanent residents generally. And the idea that they're trying to do that and really to blame people have absolutely nothing to do with this tragedy is horrible. And yet that's what they're trying to do with new immigration restrictions.
And historically collective punishment. I mean, you said they've used it against Jews, They've used it against indigenous folks, They've used it against political dissidence, against enslaved Africans. We've seen it in our lifetimes used against Muslims in many ugly ways in this country. I mean, Trump's logic seems to collapse under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Professor Lee Harvey
Oswald was American, Timothy McVeigh was American. No one said, hey, we should go after you know, white veterans, or go after the areas they come from. Selective punishment seems to be one of the clearest tells of radicalized authoritarianism. Is that fair to say?
I think that's exactly right, and if you think of the opposite of collective punishment, it's the entitlement in our Constitution, the Fifth Amendment and the fourteenth Amendment to do process. That's a right of individuals to be accused of crimes, to face legal proceedings, to know what the charges are against them, to face courts of law on an individual not a collective basis. There is no consistent and group punishment that's consistent with the due process clauses of our Constitution.
And yet increasingly, you know, you're seeing the eroding of those values in favor of values of collective punishment. You don't have to look very far. And I know we'll talk about sixty minutes later, which is directly on point, but to the handling of the supposed enem nation of Venezuela, the handling of individuals who are often fleeing by the
way the dictatorship in Venezuela. Those people were denied due process by this administration under the claim that the seventeen ninety eight Alien Enemies Act revokes due process, even though the Constitution says the opposite. That's what this administration is saying. That fits into the idea of group punishment. The punishment of an enemy nation, regardless of whether any individual, and many of those who were shipped in particular to the Gulag and Al Salvador that we're going to talk about,
were not guilty of any crime. And in fact, the more investigation, including the sixty minutes show shows that a huge u percentage of those who were removed committed no violent crime or no crime at all.
And let me point out study after a study after a study shows that immigrants, both legal and undocumented, are far less likely to commit violent crime than native born Americans. So I'm going to repeat that, Corey, so people can hear it in the back. Illegal immigrants and legal immigrants both commit crimes at lower rates than natural born American citizens.
The reason fear of deportation, which kind of makes me think we could, you know, put some fear into the hearts of homegrown criminals if we began shipping them off like Donald Trump does all over the place, But he doesn't want to do that to Americans. And we see authoritarian movements persist in pushing these narratives that directly contradict empirical reality because it serves them politically. It's not helping
the economy. I mean Trump's own family emigrated from Europe, Professor, So let me just put a button on this by asking you, I mean, how central is racial hierarchy rather than law, or to the way this administration is defining deserving immigrants versus dangerous immigrants.
They really are trying to rewrite the idea of America, based on an idea of freedom, into one that looks like it's based in blood and heritage. Now, when you look at the actual United States, including many of the members of this administration, including JD. Vance, you know, what are you talking about their families like my family don't fit some story that that you know, the eighteenth century is the origin of that of their families. Stephen Miller
certainly does not have anything like that story. His story of his family is much more like mine, as his uncle has reminded us in a kind of heroic way. And yet they keep having this fantasy that there's sort of this blood that goes back to the founding of America.
Steve Bannon also's family doesn't fit that profile. And you know, I guess they're doing it either out of some mix of fantasy or of course political expediency, because othering people making this tapping into the unfortunate narrative that there is in the United States. The United States has two realities. One is the aspirational one that I keep talking about. America is an idea of freedom. And the other is, of course, the deep history of racism and nativism that
runs throughout the United States. And that kind of awful counter narrative is one that they're tapping into. And that isn't what America is supposed to be, but it's what they're trying to turn it into.
Well, let's take a very quick break, because when we come back, I want to bring us to another moment where law and power and selective transparency collide, and that would be the Epstein Files and everybody's favorite new words to learn for the Christmas season, inherent contempt. We'll get to CBS as well. In just a bit. We'll be right back. This is the Oath in the Office.
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Welcome back to the oath in the office. I'm John Fiegel, saying, well, professor, you know what I can say about Jeffrey Epstein is I like it when dead rapists destroy the careers of living rapists. So I plan on enjoying every step of this once the files are finally released, as was required by law. Last Friday, Congress voted to release the Epstein files, and every single page of grand jury testimony one hundred and nineteen pages was redacted. I mean, just stunning, page
after page. I haven't seen that many blackouts since my three way with Courtney Love and Liza Minelli. So in constitutional terms, Corey, we expected this, and there's going to be a lot going back and forth, a lot of protest about it. I think that by continuing what could be the greatest cover up in our lifetimes in presidential history, it's just creating a festering wound in this White House that will continue to make it bleed all over the midterms.
But in constitutional terms, I've wanted to ask you this since I tried to read the report, Corey, when does redaction stop being legitimate privacy protection and turn into obstruction? Where is the line?
A great series of questions, the stuff about lives in and Elli, I'm pretty sure we're the only constitutional law podcast that has a lead in like that.
I'm going to keep on pushing the limits of your tenures, sir. I'm just going to keep on seeing how far I can take you into dangerous So thank you for that.
So going to the reaction part of the question, you know, look, there is a purpose, of course of redaction, and they're not doing it. It's to protect the privacy of victims. And there was one victim that cnnas reported today who hasn't been identified until now, and the files are releasing her name even though she's requested and had been given anonymity. So that's what reaction is supposed to be about now is reaction is supposed to protect the person who by.
The way the law not by the way.
That's the main point, that there's a law that was past demanding the release. The administration is and doing this out of the kindness of their own heart.
The whole purpose of it.
The point of the legislation was to find out more about Epstein and his crimes. But equally important, maybe more important, is whether or not the President was complicit or involved in those crimes.
That's the reason this legislation was passed. So the fact that.
They're redacting so much of the material that would implicate Trump, and they release some more today and there is information including a letter from Epstein talking about the president and his similar attraction to underage girls and potentially implicating him in the crimes that are associated with Epstein.
That's the latest. But the idea that we'd be redacting.
The Department of Justice is trying to walk the line here, which is to release as little as possible but not find themselves in violation of the law.
And that's where we are now.
The good news, just to get to the headline here, is that there is legislation here that demanded this release, and so they can go to court, and in fact, Charles Schumer, leading the Senate Minority bringing case, and Thomas Massey and others in the House are suing in court to get the full files released in a way that is not hiding what actually happened.
That's right. Then again, like Kilmar Abrigo Garcia, Pam Bondi's doj in the White House had to be forced into doing this. It took a nine to nothing Supreme Court last summer to force Pam Bondi to comply with the law, and now it took an Act of Congress passing a law, and Trump is still not complying. Pam Bondi is still
not complying. And as the non academic on the show who has no credibility to project, let me remind you at the very best case scenario, friends and neighbors, Donald Trump knew about the abuse of children for years and didn't pick up the phone to call the cops. Okay, that's best case. Best case, magafins who are listening to this to get angry and get your heart rate up, because that counts cardio. Best case, donald Trump knew and did nothing, but Corey the files that mentioned the president
were briefly posted then quietly removed the same night. From a rule of law perspective, how alarming is that sequence, or should I say, how comical? I can't decide whether it's bitterly hilarious or deeply scary.
Well, you know, I think the million dollar question is what does the law say? And the law's purpose, as they said, was to demand release of the documents that potentially implicate the president. And what they are doing clearly is editing these files, redacting not with an interest of protecting victims, but with the interest of doing the opposite of what the law requires of protecting the president. You
mentioned the idea of inherent contempt. One real question now is what are we going to do, we the people to try to demand that the law is followed and that the files are released. And Thomas Massey and others have talked about this inherent contempt power. I think that really is a red herring that the inherent contempt power, which goes back hasn't been used by Congress since the
nineteen thirties. Talks about the idea that violating the will of Congress can be a crime, and there actually was at one point a jail in Congress that could be used for this purpose.
I think they still have the jail, but it has all of this.
Sergeant of Arms can lock them up if he was too. We've learned that many times.
Yeah, but it hasn't happened since the nineteen thirties and I don't think it will. But the good news is there is this legislation and so going to court and getting court orders that demand the release. Now, of course the administration could refuse to follow a court order, as it did in the Obrego Garcia case, but that would trigger not inherent contempt, but the kind of normal process of criminal and civil contempt that would happen in the courts.
And that there is no kind of hard question about. It's used all the time. So yes, Pam Bondi and refusing to release these documents, if she really goes to the point of refusing the a court order to release them, might find herself in contempt.
So now we're hearing really interesting bipartisan support, including you mentioned Thomas Massey for inherent contempt charges against future disbarn Attorney General Van Bondi. Corey, can you please explain what inherent contempt is I think we're going to need to learn a lot about this in the next few weeks. Yeah, and why does this exist as sort of a constitutional backstop?
Well, the origin story is, you know that Congress really needs a way of protecting itself, and so if the branch is being attacked, and I think the idea too, was that rather than relying on another branch, the legal process, that should have its own powers to enforce say, subpoenas to testify or you know, defiance perjury for instance, at congressional hearing. Anyway, the theory is, and again it hasn't been used since the nineteen thirties, that Congress has its
own power. Inherent in Congress's power, that's the inherent part to defend itself. But I just think, you know, as much as the media is covering this, Thomas Massey likes this idea. It does stand for a nice symbol of Congress trying to reassert itself. We're not going to return to the nineteen thirties. We're not going to return to this kind of anachronistic power. But there are other ways to do it and Congress's normal legislation, and just to
lay this out, even more. You know, Congress passed the law, passed both houses, and the President signed it. The President signed the law demanding the release of the Epstein files with the thought that, of course, will tell you his attorney general to not really do it. But that's not how legislation works. If there's a law in the books, no one is above it. Everyone has to follow it. And that's why these court cases are the place to watch.
I wouldn't watch this sideshow of inherent contempt. I think that's not what's a red herring. It's not really going to work. But this legislation could work, These lawsuits could work, and I think actually will work. And that's why I'm optimistic we'll eventually see these files unredacted.
Well, Rokana says fines could reach up to twenty five thousand dollars per day until there's compliance. What do you make of that. Is that Congress in a last ditch effort to prove they still have teeth or is that Congress actually reclaiming authority.
I'm not seeing that again, the fines, I think all of this are interesting way of thinking about it, But what's really going to do the work is when there's a court order from one of these two lawsuits that says release the files. And now the Department of Justice is going to hear from its lawyers Bam Bondi despite what she heard the last time. You can't defy a court even if you don't like the order. That's the way American law works. You're not above the district court.
Now they are going to use a lot of rhetoric and have that says, well, courts can't tell the president what to do, but they see what they're facing in the case of Judge Boseburg and the a Brego Garcia case, which is potentially that some of.
Them might go to prison.
Now, are they going to be charged right now that we had a listener question about this.
No, but it might be that.
They're charged after this administration, or if you get a very aggressive judge like Judge Boseburg, that he will insist on moving forward with an investigation. And so you know there's a danger in defying a court order. I don't think they're going to be willing to do it again, although they did do it in the case of Abrego Garcia, just to protect this president.
I mean, the president is not in fact being investigated for child molestation. There is no ongoing investigation. This is just evidence in the trial of the dead guy that the President promised to release, campaigned on releasing, and once achieving power, has tried rather publicly to distance himself from and in the most clumsy and stupid of ways, try to cover it up. I mean, the second batch had
more information on Trump. It's all damning, and it just seems Corey like, the longer they go on with this, the more it's going to hurt them. Even Bill Clinton's former press secretary is now demanding full disclosure and the Clinton statement Warren Selective releases create insinuation without accountability. I got to say, it feels like the nineties watching Bill Clinton finally get in front of a scandal with his
name on it again. But I mean, can you explain why selective transparency is almost always more corrosive than just outright secrecy.
Well, I think in this case especially, there was transparency of a specific kind that was demanded, and that's the demand that we release information about the President's lack thereof or involvement with Epstein. That's the whole purpose of the law. So it's not just that they're being inconsistent in targeting Bill Clinton, which they are doing. Noticed that a lot of the photos of him have been released, but not the photos of Trump. It's not just a question of inconsistency.
It's that the target of the law was not Bill Clinton, who, after all, hasn't been involved in politics, hasn't been president in quite some time. The purpose of the law was the release to find out, you know, what was the president's involvement or lack thereof. So it's not just inconsistency, it's that they really are defying the purpose of the law.
That's how I'd put it.
Right on.
Well, let's move it then to the story on everyone's lips as well. This fully vetted, legally cleared sixty minutes investigation into the brutal El salvn Or prison where people have been renditioned to was spiked, not allegedly for political reasons, deeply transparently obviously for political reasons. I mean, this is the legacy of Barie Weiss. This is what she promised.
I mean, we used to watch sixty minutes to see the powerful held accountable, and now it seems like that tick, tick, tick is the sound of CBS counting down to its own funeral with these fascists and shills and billionaires who confused journalism with obedience to Donald Trump. I mean, they didn't just spike the story, Cory. They spiked the credibility of CBS News, the legacy. They spiked Edward R. Murrow's grave. This again was approved by standards and practices promoted on
social media. The story was screened five times, but Bari Weiss, whose newsroom experience is right wing op eds, decided the story needed more context, like maybe a cameo from Stephen Miller. So, I mean, there's a lot to unpack here, and it's very depressing from a democratic theory standpoint. What happens when journalism begins deferring to government silence Because the structure of
this was really quite diabolical. The White House gave no comment, and so Barry Weiss's decree was, well, we can't do this without commentary from the White House. So essentially the government is now allowed to censor and stop investigations.
Yeah, I think, you know what a horrible moment. I should say too that I had an opportunity to watch the bootleg version, as many of our listeners have.
It's available online.
Canadian television did post it at some point or allow it to be viewed.
It was on Canada, Canadian television on and turns out those people are able to record it and share it with.
Us, right and somebody clearly linked it from CBS, So I can say the story is great and important. It shows what was happening in this prison in Al Salvador, that you have prison guards bragging about the fact that they leave the lights on for twenty four hours, that there were stress positions used to essentially torture individuals, that
the isolation rooms are beyond cruel. They were able to get all this information partly by looking at footage filmed by independent podcasters and media figures and content makers, partly through investigations that were conducted by a team out of Berkeley, California. And it verifies our worst fears and shows the details of what was going on there. Now, why did they spike it Because they don't want us to know the truth because Barry Wise is clearly complicit in Trump's agenda,
and they're unwilling to let us know the truth. Now, she's not going to say that, She's going to say something else, and what she's been saying is Oh, she wants some more balanced version.
We'll see it eventually.
I guess she wants Stephen Miller to be able to edit it so that it makes him look good.
And you know, that's not journalism. That's something else.
And it is of course not censorship in the sense of putting people in prison in the way of the Sedition Act. But it is a form of corporate censorship that in some ways is more pernicious.
Yeah. And by the way, I think I'd rather be married to Stephen Miller than be the person in charge of making him look good. I mean, I mean, you know, he's okay after he goes out at night to feed. But generally, so this is the rule now, right. If the White House refuses to comment, the story dies, which means the White House gets a kill switch over journalism.
I don't know if you read the memo that Sharon el Fonsi, the producer, wrote to the staff, but she warned, and it's really well written that if government refusal becomes a veto, then journalism is just stenography for the state. Would you say, professor, that's an accurate description of the battle that's happening. More broadly, in American media right now, stepping over the grave of the Stephen Colbert Show to ask this question.
Yeah, I think that it's a brilliant way to put it. And I will say it's a form of censorship that I find particularly difficult to deal with because, you know, if there was a law passed, the Sedition Act, or even in the case of Trump prosecuting his opponents, there's a legal process that we could clearly use to stop it. And the First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law bridging the freedom of speech, and so if Congress were to do that, or the President were to do that,
Congress there is a stand in for government. That's what the First Amendment was meant to stop the sedition of the British king or British monarchs who put their opponents in prison. And although we went through a period of time the Sedition Act in which that was done by John Adams, as you know from the presidents and the people, that was stopped not in court but by citizens over time refusing to accept that.
Now here's the problem.
What if the censorship is coming through influence on corporate media, on CBS in this case, what's the legislation. What's the court process for stopping that? There isn't one. It isn't clear that we can use the legal process. In fact, I think it would be very difficult to do that. In fact, CBS, with its on First Amendment lawyers will say, well, we have the right to spike a story that we don't like, we have the right to endorse the president.
We have the right to do what we like.
And so it still is censorship. It still is dangerous for democracy. Without this information about the cruelty that's being done in this gulag, this prison and al salvad or this deprivle, intentional deprivation of due process, we can't know what's being done in our name. And yet because it's being done in this way through pressuring and putting somebody in charge of CBS who is sympathetic to the President's agenda, it's very hard to know how to stop them.
I mean this is as his parent company settled the lawsuit with Trump that was complete rubbish over sixty minutes, having their own editing of a Kamala Harris interview, they eliminated DEI policies, got Colbert fired appointed the right wing of Budsmen installed Barry Weiss as editor in chief despite no newsroom experience. To me, this is what establishment controlled of media looks like. Not jack boots, not book burnings,
just polite emails, spike stories. And let's get to what is really going on here, because it's what was at play with Colbert just sours. After the story was killed, Paramount magically sweetened their bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. Larry Ellison is personally guaranteeing forty billion, So that's it, right, It's this journalism committing ritual suicide at the exact moment the company really needs Donald Trump's blessing for a merger
so billionaires can get more billions. This is a tribute offering. Ellison is courting Trump support for a major corporate acquisition. Professor, when we had decisions align with political interests of owners. How close are we to a soft authoritarian press system. I'm not going to say it's state run media, but it seems to be state run media via bribe.
Well, in some ways I think it's worse than state run media because if you were getting you know, punishment of media organizations who failed to comply with the administration, as I said, I know how to handle that. There's a First Amendment right to freedom of speech. There's a related right to the freedom of press. And when government is forcing the hand of media, you know that's not allowed.
I can't do that.
But now, what do you do when media is complicit? When there's an incentive system, and in particular are the mergers of and acquisitions incentive to go along with what the administration is done, not because you're afraid of the stick, but because you want the carot of the approval of deals.
That's much harder.
I mean, it's not censorship any the less, it's not any less authoritarian, although you know, we might call it soft authoritarianism to just symbolize the idea that is not doing in this most straightforward way. But in some ways the less straightforward way is more dangerous. Let me say just an analogy so you see that it's not just in the media landscape. One of the real puzzles was why are so many of these law firms going along
with Trump when it comes to his authoritarian agenda. Remember that moment where some of the firms essentially agreed not to take a stand against Trump or even to provide pro bono services for his hours. Some of the most noted firms, and we covered this when it happened. Well, it turns out a lot of those same firms a lot of their businesses through the administrative approval process of mergers and acquisitions. That's where the bottom line comes from.
So you know this puzzle of why so many people sixty minutes, many of these huge law firms, storied firms are going along with the authoritarian agenda. It's because they want the reward system that comes from from this administration. Northwestern I'm hearing too University has made a deal with the Trump administration is going on, and so they're able to use incentives. Don't forget a few weeks ago Brown rejected the so called compact that would have given us advantages in grants.
These are all their way.
Of doing things that they've realized that using the power the incentives of the federal government might be the quickest road to authoritarianism. And that word that I keep using self coup. It can happen in a variety of ways. It can happen through the stealing of the power of the purse, through the shutdown of civil servants and firing of them, and it also can happen.
You're seeing this year through the use of.
Incentives and approval of mergers, and what a frightening moment it is.
I mean, in her memo, Sharon Alfonsi referenced the Jeffrey Wygan scandal, which some may remember the whistleblower for the tobacco industry played by Russell Crowe in the Michael Mann film The Insider, which I'm talking about, yeah, because I love al Pacino.
Hello, I'm lowel bergman of CBS News.
But it's a great film and it brought back for me why sixty Minutes mattered and how sixty Minutes earned their credibility. I mean, I'm convinced this is why John Dickerson has just quit being the anchor over there.
Edward R.
Murrow confronted McCarthy and Mike Wallace confronted Nixon, and today CBS is confronting its own reporters.
Corey.
I'm curious. You know, we think about the great figures in journalism who stood up to power in the name of democracy. For you, who's doing that now? Who's doing I think that CBS is that sixty Minutes is trying to.
Do I think, you know, the unfortunately Walter Cronkite, or that moment in which Murrow stood up to the red scare to Joseph McCarthy, that might not be where we see the resistance coming from. And there's pressure certainly now on all the networks on CNN, which I appear on regularly, but the reality is they are also facing huge pressure. MS now of course has been spun off from NBC.
So far, so good.
But you know, there's a sense in which these very few outlets that are speaking out against Trump are vulnerable, especially the more powerful and wealthy they are. But I think one of the going back to the issue of disinformation and diffusion of information, that as much as that's a danger of what podcasts of independent shows and independent
media popping up, it also is a resource. And so one of the reasons why I wanted to start this show with you and have been so glad to do it every week is because nobody owns this except for us, and we can say what we.
Want, and that is a great privilege.
We're not reporting to any corporate masters, and so we can tell the truth.
And there are others out there like this podcast.
We're not as big, of course as MS now or Fox News. But we can tell the truth and that's what I want to keep doing. And that's the entire reason for doing that. And if you look throughout history, there have been small media organizations, small newspapers that spoke out at different moments in time that made a difference. Frederick Douglas's Paper or The North Star, his two publications influenced, to my mind, abolition more and especially the pro constitution
wing of abolition, more than anyone else. And yet when I looked at his numbers in the nineteenth century, we're talking in the thousands. So you know, it is possible that independent media might play a role in holding this president to account.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean that's what we're doing, and that's what we do a serious XM progress, you know, And I think that my hope is that more Democrats in the party will realize that the future is with independent media and they'll be reaching a lot of people. That's no slam on corporate media. I just think a healthy diet. I mean, I watch Fox too. You try to consume as much as you can. I do take a lot of comfort, Professor from a theme that I
discussed with you quite frequently. That America is saving grace in the twenty first century has been that our fascists have been so damn dumb. The stupid is always worse than the sinister. I call them dim, shady Bush and Shadey and this guy as well, because think about how stupid they are by by actually getting together and trying
to cover up this story. And by the way, it's a terrific segment about the atrocious abuses committed in our name at the Sel Salvador in prison, the lawlessness and cruelty and evil of this administration and Corey, so many more people are going to see it now because they tried to cover it up. This is the Striisan effect. And now millions of people who wouldn't have even watched sixty minutes on Sunday night are looking this clip up and seeing it and getting an even greater education as
to the unholy things this government has done. And I just can't praise the producers of the actual segment enough.
I think that's such a great point that you know, sixty minutes, of course has a large audience, but it's habitual and it's limited, and so much of the modern audience YouTube more than. My understanding is that if you combine all the television stations out there on.
Cable, basically YouTube is still bigger.
And so it's a massive thing that's happening online. And this is starting to spread like wildfire on line. And so maybe that's a good thing that they tried to spike it because it's getting Americans to say, hey, what are they trying to hide? And that's a theme that also fits with our other story. I mean, what is in these Epstein files that they are so intent to defy the law to keep us from seeing it? Well, it likely implicates the president. That's what we're going to
find out about. So, you know, the more they use their authoritarian repression, the history, as you well pointed out, shows that Americans start to get suspicious of suppression of information they want it. And as much as we might have an authoritarian moment in the success of the suppression of corporate media, the Colbert situation, the attempt to spike this story, the result in the long run might be a demand for information and a rebellion against this attempted coup.
Correct. And I have to just close this out by saying I don't blame Barry Weiss. She was not hired to commit journalism. She was hired to censor journalism at the pleasure of men in power. She's just doing the job she was to do. Okay, let's take a very quick break back in just a moment with some more I have some end of the year questions for you, Professor. This is the Oath in the Office.
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Welcome back one more time to the Oath and the Office podcast. I am John Fiegel sang along with Professor Corey Bretschneider and by the way, in the words of FBI director Cash parttel Smash that like button bra.
You know that we're in the same profession as Don Bongino and Cash.
Well we are again. Dan Bongino's back on our side of the Red Rover Dubai. Corey. Somewhere in Hell, Jay Edgar Hoover is wearing a dress and he's furious what Cash Mattel has done to his beloved bureau. But I do want to thank everyone for making our first year on the podcast so wonderful and special and so surprisingly popular. Corey, what are we looking at the top five again this week in political podcasts More?
We are in the Apple Government section number three, and I'll say too, you know, if you haven't subscribed, certainly do it. And it's been our subscribers that are driving this amazing success and amazing growth. Really every month we're seeing massive growth, people telling friends, sending it to one or two people.
That makes a huge difference.
But just to clarify what we're doing, you know, when we have guests, like amazing guests like Senator white House, that's terrific, But the people still tune in John, when it's just the two of us going in depth on these stories, takeing them seriously doing commentary that goes beyond service analysis. And so last week we didn't have a guest. We don't have a guest this week, and last week we were number three.
Yeah, I actually I actually told everyone on Sirious XM that Taylor Swift was going to join us. So that's on me. Thankful for the numbers.
By the way, guys, thank you so much.
Thanks, thank you. But please everyone do subscribe and give us reviews and tell your friends and share our humble musings on your social media walls. Corey, I mean, it's been quite a ride. We're now still in the first year of come over Caligula's second term. From your perspective, what constitutional guardrails have definitely been breached and are in the rear view mirror.
Well, I do think there's a huge difference, unfortunately, between Trump one point zero and this current Trump two point zero. And the difference is that, you know, I had this piece when the two of us met when Trump was running called Trump versus the Constitution, and what I thought would happen in the first term is as he would propose a shutdown of Muslim immigration into the country, his proposed Muslim ban and the Supreme Court would teach him lesson each time and say, no, you can't do that,
you can't do that now. In the first term, a lot of that did come to pass. The Court stopped a lot of what he was trying to do. Lower courts certainly did even if the Supreme Court eventually approved it.
We had two impeachments that were really a moment where although he wasn't removed, he was impeached, voted majority impeachment charges in the House of Representatives twice in January sixth, and the tempted quid pro quo to get information on his opponent, Joe Biden, in return for giving benefits to the Ukrainian president Zelenski, who people hadn't heard about. But you know, so that was working in many ways the constitutional system and Trump one point zero. This is very different.
It's much more scary. He's figured out how to hire and fire, put loyalists over people who care about the law, and that.
Creates a precarious situation.
And when you compound that with the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly handed over power to this person, including most dangerously in the immunity case, saying that he can't be prosecuted while president or even as a former president for his official duties, with possibly
some exceptions. That's a scary moment for democracy. So a lot of what I'm hearing from listeners, from friends, for instances, you know, this is a scary time, but it's you know, there's a solidarity in going through it with the two of us and hearing the truth and also hearing about the hopefulness. But that's my bottom line. This has been a scary nine months, this attempted self coup. It feels and is very different than what we saw in the first term, and the court is partly to blame.
I hate to tell you, Professor, ITRI's eleven months. Maybe you're having more fun than me, but it's just eleven months. We never forget. We inaugurate the racist on MLK Day. I live for irony in this world, Corey. We've talked about this on this pod. Authoritarianism doesn't succeed by itself. It requires enablers, Professor, to your view, who have been the most consequential enablers this year? Is it the courts, the corporations, the media, the Congress.
Well, I'll certainly start with the Supreme Court of the United States. And while it's not the worst Supreme Court in history, not the worst Chief Justice.
I'd say that's Justice Tawani of Guys.
I set you an article.
Saying the opposite.
And you know, know that the dread Scott decision denying all rights to all black Americans. I'm going to put that to the thing that helped to ignite the Civil War. I'll put that worse. But this is frightening, you know. And they I'll put them still as number one in the complicity question that handing over that power. And a close second is Congress. You know, the Congress should be
fighting back. We should see the framers. Imagine that when it came to assaults on the Constitution, we wouldn't see the kind of partisanship that we're seeing. And yet we are far from there even being a possibility of impeachment. We won't even though they's so deserved. We won't see that until Congress switches parties, and at least the House
of Representatives that might happen. So Congress, and then you know, the civil servants, the people who are supposed to be civil servants, who had been replaced with the worst loyalists. The Pam bondis the cash betels who care not about the obligation to law, but the.
Loyalty to the president. Put them right in there too.
You know, in some ways it's more expected that they'd behave that way than the supposed independent to other branches.
But they have really enabled.
They're too dumb. I think they're too dumb to know they don't have immunity, professor. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't have to worry about getting disbarred after he leaves this administration. But there's some other folks that I really can't wait to see them get their moment. I mean absolutely, we've seen that. This is for the first time in our history, a president who is in no way constrained by law. I mean, he literally gets felony convictions and he still
walks away. This is someone testing how much law can be ignored before it breaks and then stepping over the pieces. I do want to ask you, where have you seen the most meaningful resistance. We've talked about a few people in media and politics, but I mean in the legal world, in the institutional world, in the civic world. Who are you looking to in twenty twenty six, who are you expecting to give us all hope?
Well, I think you know, it's not clear who the leaders in the resistance will be, but there have been moments, certainly in which I've felt heartened at the resistance. And so when you think about the No King's Rally, with that simple slogan no Kings, the resistance to authoritarianism, this want to be dictatorship, it sums up what we're facing. And we had millions of people in the streets throughout the United States. I went out It's on our YouTube
channel and speaking to people. I was inspired by that those who are fighting back in court really are making a difference. We've profiled some of our best episodes. I think I'm hearing from listeners. A lot of people know what the ACL does their work, but now a lot more people know because they listened to Mike Zaymore. They heard about the details that they're going out and finding these cases. Somebody had to find Abrego Garcia and defend him in court to see that this was something that
needed a national spotlight to see. In the Khalil case, Columbia University student who was facing deportation and still is for nothing more than his beliefs, the idea that you don't have a First Amendment right to free speech if you're not a citizen, even though it doesn't say that.
There were litigant groups that fought back, and of course in the tariff case which I got involved with recently, Neil Katial, Paul Wilson and his team at Democracy Forward, you know, working hand in hand with these groups was really you know, their solidarity in that too, in doing the podcast, but and also in seeing those who are doing the really difficult work of litigation trying to save
our constitution. Now, what's going to happen in that case, I'm not sure, as you know, I'm skeptical of the Supreme Court. But we've got to fight on all fronts, the citizen front, the legal front, of course, the political front as the elections come up. And I was inspired by Sheldon Whitehouse, who spoke with us at length and
might be the chair of the Judiciary Committe. If you haven't heard that, listeners, go back and listen to Sheldon white House, and you know hear his power and his strength in recognizing that this president doesn't get to determine what this constitution is. And we'll have more guests like that, legal journalists like Dalia Lithwick, who every week are writing about this assault on democracy, on covering what's happening. They
all inspire me. And I'll add not to mention this amazing segment by sixty Minutes, which we did get to see despite the fact that their corporate masters were trying to destroy it.
Not only was Senator Sheldon white House brilliant on our show, that was, of course, Professor, the first time I've ever in my career done in a zoom interview from the front seat of a rental car parked in La somewhere they're any newit and trying to convince the United States Senator I was really in a real room with my green screen background. So yeah, I apologize for all the honking and gang sounds and did it perfectly confused National guardsmen telling me to move my vehicle.
I'd be remissed to John if I didn't throw the question back to you, because we are at the end of the year, we're celebrating amazing first year together doing this podcast.
I mean, who's inspired you this year?
I mean, that's a great question, because there's there. I don't even know where to begin you know, it's it's not so much in famous names. There are there are real heroes out there. I mean, there are true resistors, and most of them are people who who aren't well known. And I mean, I've got my favorite people. I've got my you know, activists and artists and comedians and political
people that I like. And I'll be cheering on Jasmine Crockett and James tallerco and all these good people in Texas and the No King's protesters, and you know, I think it's going to be in all of the above movement. Right Corey Booker doing a twenty five hour speech in the US Senate. Okay, maybe that didn't do anything, but that has to happen. We got to throw that up there. Gavin Newsom learning how to read the room and stop sucking up to fascists and start calling them out in clever,
original ways, like that's going to do it. But I think I got to be honest, My biggest heroes right now are people who walk away from this, Christians who actually read the Jesus parts and say, my God, what have I been doing. It's going to be very hard for a lot of us to handle this. And I say, this in my books, too. Right wing people growing beyond their programming is not to be met with smug liberal
I told you sos So. I think as more people decolonize their own minds, as more maga folks think, okay, well, covering up child rape, that's my line. Or slaughtering innocent people in the water with no evidence, no due process, that's my line. It's hard to imagine, but I think every day more and more folks, especially military and law enforcement,
are reaching their limit with this. I don't know how this thing sustains for a few years, but of all the many people and artists I admire, I just want to give some special gratitude towards the conservatives who walk away from this with all the negative energy and peer pressure that they're going to face, because this is an authority Harran cult of personality movement, and boy oh boy,
obedience is rewarded, an independent thought is punished. So God bless everyone who, especially the young people who still love their parents but can't pretend to go along with this nonsense anymore. I want to ask you, Corey, if future historians look back on this year, what do you think will determine whether they call this a turning point or the year we failed to stop the slide? Is it too soon to tell. I'm not an optimist. I'm a recovering cynic, but I don't see this ending well for
the Trump movement. I think if Marjorie Taylor Green is committing political Harry Carey out of pure self interest, it's a pretty good bell weather. But I mean, what do you think? Is this the year that this thing began to end or is this the year that this thing really took root.
I'm loving this conversation, John, and I want to just emphasize your great point too about finding those MAGA individuals who, whether it be through the Epstein five or some other story, ors starting to realize that they were complicit in something extremely dangerous for the country, beginning to turn and not chastising them but welcoming them into the movement for democracy.
That's such a profound point on the other question of you know where we are and hoping that there are more of these people, you know, I take solace in history, as you know, and I am glad that I wrote this book and did this deep dive into history, because I really do get a lot of reassurance from the pattern that I see in American history that we've seen these dangerous moments before, knowing that during Adam shutdown of the Opposition Party, it felt like America wasn't going to recover.
We talked about dred Scott. President Buchanan, of course, urged the court to deny.
Rights to all black Americans.
It couldn't have very hard to be optimistic in a moment like that. And the same is true with Woodrow Wilson and his resegregation of the federal government, his nationalism mixed with white supremacy. Nixon as he was reelected in nineteen seventy two, were living.
In those moments.
It looked frightening, and yet we recovered in each of them because citizens fought back Bush.
And that's what that's what I think is going to happen now.
I think that is where we are, that we're starting to see the tide turn because there's an awareness and that's the first step in recovery.
Yeah.
Bush, Cheney and the Iraq War and their reelection and O four, I mean it was exactly like this one. We knew that this president had lied to the people and that Americans had died in Bush's case, it was a war. In Trump's case, it was a plague. And yet folks went for the authoritarian they knew were lying to them, and it seemed like the end of the world. At the time, it seemed like the end of America.
And yet we persisted and things got better. And I'll point out that since we drove Bush and Cheney from office, we've gotten marriage equality, we got the first black president, we're not throwing people in jail for cannabis anymore. In so many ways we are getting better. But Corey, I want to close it with this, I mean, your work and this show. We talk all the time about what
democracy demands of office hall. With a new year on the horizon, let me ask you, what is democracy now demand of citizens?
Well, I think we've got to do more of what you and I were celebrating, more talking to your family, more insisting on facts. So much of the problem and the assault on democracy is misinformation, calling people out when they lie about what's.
Happening without any evidence.
And then most of all, you know, there is a practical thing that needs to be done, which is as we start to look to the midterms, and this show will be a force I think in the midterms.
We're hosting people running for.
Office, people who will already hold office. We're going to have some amazing announcements about people from the judiciary at a very high level who are going to be speaking to us.
And that's all for a purpose.
You know, this isn't just a show that's meant to provide information.
We want to do that.
We're very careful with our fact checking, but we also are trying to see the self coup, this attempted destruction of democracy for what it is and the root to recovery, and part of that's going to be the midterm. So that's a lot of what I'm looking to people to do to get involved as this election approaches.
I want to express so much gratitude to you, Professor, and to all of the deeply sexually attractive listeners of this podcast. While the brilliance of the people who subscribe to this show, who like us, who give us good reviews, who shared on their social media is matched only by the deep sexiness and benevolent brilliance of Beowulf and Wendy and everyone who helps put this show together. It really has been a great pleasure for me. I feel like every week, I get to be the kid cheating off
the smart Kets paper. Thanks to you, and I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season, Professor.
And a great holiday to you, John, and just to all our listeners, thank you so much for making this first year such a pleasure to do. We're facing a real crisis and real danger, and yet the solidarity that comes from doing this show every week is giving me a lot of optimism and hope.
And I just want to say, I'm not going to miss Nicki Minaj enjoy Maga Nick Nikki. They'll love you over there. Oh it's going to work out so well for you. You have so much in common with those folks, and like kid rock, they really love your music. So good on you. And thanks to everybody who listened to this show who bought my book this year, Separation of Church and Hate, and helped drive it to the New
York Times bestseller list. I'm so grateful to everyone who would take a chance on that book, and it's just very humbling to have had it be so successful. And I look forward to getting to work on the follow up in the new year. So thank you once again, and I wish a very happy holidays to everyone on behalf of Professor Gorey Bretschneier. This is the open the Office peace,