Democracy is a Farce

investigation and search in Mara Lago to Weislberg sentencing. And the fact is this, Alvin Bragg had two top prosecutors quit publicly a couple of months ago. I know that it probably seems like years ago at this point given

all the things that have transpired. And the reality is because they said that they had more than enough information to be able to bring charges and indict Donald Trump, and Alvin Bragg said no. Now in this bullshit deal that the Manhattan District Attorney gave to Weisselberg, is that, oh guess what, you get a hundred day slap on the wrist and you don't have to testify against Donald Trump in this ongoing investigation, Can somebody explain to me what the fuck is going on and why Alvin Bragg

has yet to be investigated. Because when something smells rotten, when something don't smell right, it usually isn't right. And I'm so sick and fucking tired of watching these wealthy white men do whatever the fuck they want and face no accountability for it. People say, oh, well, at least it's something I don't want, just something I actually want, justice, which I'm beginning to think is impossible to come by

in this country. And I should pretty much just give up the hope and the idea that anyone is going to be held accountable because, as Glenn tweeted, thank god Alan Weisselberg didn't sell loose cigarettes, Thank god he didn't have suspicion of stealing a backpack. Thank god right that he didn't sell a rock of crack, because otherwise he would I've either have been executed and brought fucking daylight in the streets or right be thrown in jail and

locked up without a key. When people continue to tell me to have faith and have hope and then we see bullshit like this, This is what has me outdone right and has me continue to just be like, you know what, at the end of the day, I'm starting not to give a fuck and pretty much want people to just take care of themselves elves right in the best possible ways that they can, because authoritarianism, fascism, kleptocracy,

it's all here. The democracy is a farce. Right. What America has always had is really good fucking pr right, the ability to go around to other nations and decry that we are the beacons of hope and freedom and look at our country and this melting pot, and it's all a lie. It is all a lie, just like white supremacy is the lie of white exceptionalism right, which has also had the pr to go around the world stoke anti blackness right and uphold whiteness as something right

as the ultimate currency. Also a fucking lie. And I just want everyone to wake up to the fact that we have all been bamboosled, let astray right by the lies of this country, and we're seeing it play out every single day. And there's no starker way to look at inequity in America and not look at the mountain of evidence against Donald Trump and know that ain't not a fucking thing going to happen to him or anyone

around him. Coming up next my conversation with our friend Glenn Kirshner to walk us through the fuckery that is Donald Trump. Hey, I'm David. Plots of Slates Political Gabfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all the noise and the news. Each week on the Gapfest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathlon and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what

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your podcast, new episodes every Tuesday, folks. You know that whenever I have the opportunity to speak with our friend host of Justice Matters and MSNBC legal analyst, Glenn Kirshner, I'm always thrilled to dive into the latest legal news. And there is a lot. Glenn, we had not spoken since the search, the FBI search of mar Lago, since now Trump's former CFO has now been sentenced to a whopping one hundred days after more than a decade of fraud, tax evasion, lies, schemes, and I want to get a

sense from you. Let's start with the now Republican party, who wants to defund law enforcement, who wants to defund the FBI. They're totally okay when police are killing unarmed black people and cheering them on and wanting to back the blue at that point. But if you have law enforcement that has the audacity to get a warrant to legally search a known criminal, right that all of a sudden, it's everything. Everything is a mess, and every agency is

a fraud and everything needs to be destroyed. And not only that, but we also need to use political violence, which that rhetoric is escalating as well. I want to get your thoughts on where we are right now two weeks post the search of Mara Lago. We're not in a great place. But I'm going to look for the silver lining on a couple of these issues, and I will warn you I won't be able to find it

on one of these issues. But first of all, with respect to the Republican calls for to defund the FBI, I have seen my friends in the FBI and the law enforcement communities outraged in a way that I haven't seen them outraged before. And here is the silver lining.

The Republicans are losing votes and support every day because the FBI community and all of the people that surround the FBI community, friends, families, any number of organizations, and I think the American people who say, you know, the FBI, among other things, goes after child predators, child pornographers, people who kidnap across state lines, etc. Every single day. With every stupid thing that comes out of the mouths of the Grass and the Grahams and the Jordans, I believe

the Republican Party continues to die a slow death. That's the good news, that's the silver lining. Now, the fact that the Republicans are inspiring violence against law enforcement agencies that have the temerity of trying to hold a criminal

former president accountable is absurd and obscene. It's obviously dangerous and what I hope the Department of Justice will also begin to wrestle with Danielle is holding politicians accountable for their speech that is designed to incite imminent violence, because that doesn't enjoy First Amendment protection. And DJ has to get over its timidity and its fear of being criticized for trampling on our First Amendment rights. Don't you don't

have First Amendment rights to incite imminent violence. That's what some of these Republicans are doing. So, I mean, I know we're screaming into the void saying we hope DJ does X, but you know, I do think in the long run, even though they're going to try to steal the twenty twenty two midterms in the twenty twenty four presidential election with this dirty state legislation they keep trying to pass, in the long run, the Republican Party is

destined to become extinct. Does Liz Cheney rise up from the ashes? I don't know. Ideologically I hope not. But dispositionally she's fighting for our democracy, so I hope so, because then maybe we can get back to fighting over policy and ideology instead of fighting over whether we should

be a democracy or a dictatorship. You know, Glenn, I want to ask you something about this rise in the rhetoric for political violence that is coming from Republicans because it is one sided, right, as much as the media wants to talk about it, generally, it is one party that is doing this, and the reality is, like you're saying, we don't really have strong laws in my humble opinion around what it is that politicians can and cannot say.

I mean, we have seen Republicans running for office that are using their political opponents as target practice, literally using an holding an AR fifteen and having their face and saying, you know, I'm going hunting for rhinos, or remember before Gabby Giffords was shot, right that Sarah Palin had her on her website in gun crosshairs. This type of attitude

and demeanor by the Republican Party is not new. It is just gotten it is just increased, right, and the and the rhetoric has risen, and so I wonder, you know, do you feel as if, and this is a question that was posed by the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago, are we headed towards some type of civil

war here? Like? Is this something that shouldn't continue to be ignored as we did with Palin and as we do with these other members like a Marjorie Taylor Green, who again used visual political violence in her campaigning for Congress like it, do you feel that they are just egging this on? And what can be done with the laws that are on the books to actually stop this?

I actually believe there are plenty of laws on the books and including communicating threats, threats against public officials, what we need. I don't. I don't think we are actually heading towards civil war because I don't think the Trump supporters that sort of ugly ten percent of the most hateful, most dangerous Trump supporters are brave human beings. I mean, you know they're brave when they walk around with their big automatical weapons strapped across their bellies. But they're not

brave people. They're not going to organize. They're not going to fight if it means putting themselves in harm's way. Will there be pockets of violence? Where will there be lone wolf idiots Trump supporters who will attack an FBI field office with a nail gun? You know, yes, there will be pockets of violence, isolated incidents of violence. I don't believe that we're heading toward a civil war, but there actually is an easy way to if not put a stop to it, send a great, big signal of deterrence.

Prosecute just one of them. Prosecute one politician for speech that is designed to incite imminent violence. Just one and Danielle. I don't care if they lose the case. It's more important to try cases than to lose cases, because once we try just one politicians for crimes they commit with

their dangerous speech inciting imminent violence. These people are so weak and scared and motivated by self preservation that they will stop or cut back on their own reckless rhetoric because they ultimately won't say, well, if I get indicted by the Department of Justice, I will eventually beat the case like that other person did. They don't want to be indicted. They don't want to live for a couple of years in court fighting against a possible criminal conviction.

They're weak and they're sniveling, and they don't stand on principle indict one, Just indict one if the evidence supports an indictment, and it does many times over, We've seen it. You've got to get off the diamond do it. Every day we fail to indict criminal politicians, we are adding fuel to their fire, and I don't know why we continue to do that. Let's talk about Mara Lago now and the fact that Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice has gone to court to want to unseal the affidavit.

I want to understand the difference between you know, the push and for people to say that Trump needs to release the release the warrant because he has the warrant and knows exactly what he means affiantic. So explain to me the difference, Like, explain to me the difference with what it is that the Department of Justice is trying to do, what Trump is trying to cover up, and

why they had to go into court. Okay, So there are three parts to a warrant for purposes of this discussion, and Let's be clear, it's a pretty historic thing that the Department of Justice went to a federal judge and said, Judge, we have evidence that there is crime, evidence of crime located on the property of a former president's home, and we can prove it by a by probable cause. And they convince the judge that there's evidence of crime right now as of the date they applied for that warrant

on Donald Trump's property. That's pretty dramatic. The other thing I'll say before I talk about the three pieces that make up a warrant, is that there are three crimes that are cited in that warrant as the basis for having gone down and hit Marilago and recovered all of that evidence of crime, and none of those three crimes, Danielle require that the documents be classified. So I want to set aside all of this nonsensical debate we've been having over whether Donald Trump can think in his mind

something's classified declassified and it magically is. None of that matters for the three charges in the affidavit that served as a basis for the search horn. Let's talk about the three pieces of a search horn. One is what i'll call the face sheet. All that is is the formal document by which a judge authorizes the search. So it has the location of the search, it has the date of the application, it has the judge's signature authorizing the search, and it doesn't really tell us anything about

the evidence. It's like a bureaucratic document officially authorizing the search. That's been unsealed, and I think that is the document that showed us those three crimes that the Department of

Justice is pursuing involving Donald Trump. The other thing that's been unsealed and that we have, although it's been redacted, is the inventory or the property receipt or the list of stuff that was taken, but it's redacted or it's generally described fifteen boxes of highly classified materials, right, So that we have that's been unsealed, But it's the one in the middle. The one in the middle is like

the story of the crime. It is the affidavit, and affidavit is a fancy word for a long narrative describing all of the evidence that leads the Department of Justice to conclude the crimes were committed and evidence of those crimes will be found at Mara Lago. That's all the good stuff. That's the book, the story, the movie of the crime that gave rise to the probable cause to search.

That is under sealed, and a hundred times out of one hundred remains under sealed in a criminal investigation until there's an indictment, and then we have to give over those investigative documents to the defense so they can prepare for trial. That's when it will first be disclosed and not disclosed publicly, mind you, only disclosed to the defense team so they have all the evidence so they can

prepare for trial. But I think it's important for people to know that the hearing that was just held down in Florida was not the Department of Justice versus Donald Trump. It was the news media, the fourth estate, news organizations asking the judge to unseal in the public interest, and the public does have an interest in seeing what this criminal president has been up to and the evidence that

led to the search of mar Lago Danielle. Donald Trump's defense team had every opportunity to jump in and join that motion and say we want to disclose too, and they didn't do that. Why because it's going to kill him if all a figuratively speaking in the court of public opinion. It's going to kill him if we see that movie of all of the evidence of Donald Trump's crimes that led to the search warrant. He doesn't want that unsealed. He wants it to remain sealed so the

Republicans can yell and scream that it's a cover up. Right. His lawyers didn't even ask the judge to unseal it, but the news organizations did, including you know, my parent organization, NBC News MSNBC, and I don't. Not only do I

not blame them. The public does have a right to know as much as we can know about Donald Trump's crimes, but I don't want to know anything that would impair the ongoing investigation, that would compromise national security, or that would hurt witnesses or deter other witnesses from participating in the investigation. So DJ actually a friend of mine, somebody

I worked with for decades, I believe. Over at the DCUs Attorney's office, Jay Bratt was the attorney in court, arguing Judge, we can't unseal any of this because it's you know, involves highly classified national security information. It would disclose witnesses, and we know witnesses have been tampered with. Think of Cassidy Hutchinson. So Judge, we can't disclose any of it. And the judge took an appropriate middle ground, in my opinion, he said, Okay, I hear you. Here's

what I want you to do. I want you to try to redact everything out of the affidavit that would compromise the investigation, hurt national security, or endanger witnesses, and show me the rest of it that you think wouldn't run the risk of doing any of those things, such that we can disclose at least some of it to the public, to the media. I think that's an appropriate

middle ground. Now, it may be at the end of the day when DJ takes that crack at redacting out stuff it believes it needs to redact out, the judge may say, you know what, You've persuaded me that you really would have to redact so much that there would be no useful information for the public at the end of the day because it would be a word here and a line there that was not redacted. So I'm

not going to order you to disclose anything. It could be the judge says, I agree with your redactions let's go ahead and disclose what you believe can be disclosed, or he might say, I disagree with your redactions. I want you to unredact more and show that to me, because this is going to be a work in progress until I'm satisfied that you know you're only redacting what would really hurt your investigation. So this is not over.

I think the judge is taking a sensible middle ground, even though as a prosecutor, I would be the one arguing Judge, please don't disclose any of it, because we're hard at work investigating the crimes of Donald Trump and we don't want anything to interfere with that. I mean, I just think that it is crazy, Glenn, that this man left the White House with fifteen plus boxes of classified information and we know, let's just put it out there.

Donald Trump is in debt, right and we know exactly where he gets his money from the people that are supposed enemies of the United States. MBS gave Jared Kushner two billion dollars post him leaving the Trump administration. You have putin and the amount of money that is held up over in Russia that the Trumps have, so I you know, my feeling is this. They went they retrieved the boxes that they've been asking for for the last nineteen plus months to get back and avoid right, avoid

all of this. But do we not think that Donald Trump has already done something with those documents? I mean, we have computer scanners, fax machines. I mean, do we really think that America's national security hasn't been breached and isn't at risk. No. I absolutely believe he has already exploited those documents to his advantage, which is in part what continues to make this a national security investigation of one of the crimes listed in the search warrant authorizing

the search. One of the crimes DJ is investigating falls under the Espionage Act, and it is removing, concealing transmitting national defense information that's under that's the charge under the Espionage Act that is being investigated, and that served as a basis for this search warrant. So do you think once Donald Trump stole and damn it, let's call it what it is. He stole the stell from the White House,

He didn't have any right to it. And remember fifteen boxes is what the National Archives got months and months ago. And then DJ went down there the secure The National security officials went down there in June, and Trump and his team said, we've given it all. We've given it all, We've given it all. And that was a lie. And then they went down and got another ten or twelve boxes. Right, so, and and the part and see what I've just articulated there about the course of the way this played out.

We know that and that that I just described as going to be in the affidavit, And that brings me back to how the judge could say, listen, everybody knows that part. So it doesn't really interfere with the ongoing investigation if DJ gives over big chunks like that that we already know. And frankly, this cuts against the prosecutor

in me. I hope the judge orders unsealed as much as he can without damaging the ongoing investigation, because damn it, we do need to know, and the pressure needs to get ratcheted up, and all the ridiculousness coming out of the republic Republican Party needs to be met with the force of facts and reality. And we'll get some of that from the affidavit. I mean, the fact that this man is not indicted at this point the fact that he has not been indicted, the fact that we now

know that he's a ligit. He is a traitor, right like, this is treason. He is literally selling state secrets, right like, never in our wildest dreams would we imagine a former president of the United States, anyone entering into this office doing something like this. And yet we're all carrying are your Republicans carrying around like carrying on as if like it's the it's it's the Department of Justice? Is you know vendetta? Unlike? Do you not get that we're under threat?

We're already under threat under so many different ways in this country, and Donald Trump up the ante and no one cares. Um, Glenn, let's let's quickly talk about Weisselberg and the fact that you know what, I quote quote tweeted your tweet because I know that you'll be doing a video on his hundred day sentencing, which he doesn't have to testify against. Donald Trump doesn't have to do much of anything. Basically, fifteen years of stealing, thieving, lying

gets you one hundred days. I quote tweeted you because I wanted to remind America about Calife Browder. I wanted to remind people about the sixteen year old black boy that was picked up under suspicion of having stolen a backpack and spent three years three years and rikers and then was released, no trial, no guilty charge, nothing was released after three years, and he would kill himself like a little bit after that release because of the trauma

that he went through. Glenn, how do we continue to say that we have a justice system when we see things like this happening and we know that these people keep criming because nothing ever happens to them, nothing of note. Yeah, it's a darn good thing. Alan Weisselberg didn't snatch a purse, sell a rock of crack, or selsom loose cigarettes, because then he would have been in real Oh wait, no,

he's white. He wouldn't have been in any trouble if he had done those things either, And he didn't get in any significant trouble by running a fifteen year criminal scheme to defraud in the first degree at the Trump Organization, with Donald Trump defrauding the taxpayers of the City of New York in the State of New York out of millions of dollars, not to mention the taxpayers of the United States because he also committed federal tax crimes for which he has not been indicted, and he gets a deal.

So when we deal with cooperating witnesses, defendants that we want to flip and turned them into cooperating witnesses, Danielle I did it hundreds of times. I was known as the King of the cooperators, and that was not a compliment. But I worked a lot with cooperating witnesses because they were my de facto experts on crime. They were inside the criminal world. They were the ones who could tell me who did what, who killed whom, who was running guns,

who was, you know, manufacturing drugs. I dealt with them a lot in my thirty years as a prosecutor. And here's what I did. When there was an important defendant that I knew could give me a bigger criminal fish that I needed to take down to protect the community, I told that person basically, it's my way or the highway.

My way is that you tell me the truth about everything everything you did, and then everything that the bigger criminal fish did, and then you plead guilty to all of your crimes only, and I will only give you a benefit if you testify truthfully against everybody. And if you say nope, I'm not giving up the bigger fish, I don't say, okay, even though you're facing life in prison. I'm gonna give you a one hundred days anyway, thank you very much. That feels beyond recklessness by Alvin Bragg.

It feels worse than just recklessness because they gave Alan Weisselberg a sweeththeart deal and they said, and by the way, you don't want to testify about Donald Trump or help us in our investigation of Donald Trump's crimes, That's okay, you don't have to. That's what's on paper. That's what played out in court in Weiselberg's guilty plea. That is

the opposite of what prosecutors should do. If you didn't want to plead guilty and cooperate against bigger criminal fish, then you're going to trial or you're taking what we called a soldier's plea. The soldier's plea is when somebody says, I ain't cooperating because I'm scared, or I'm loyal to the mob boss or whatever. I am going to plead to every single count in the indictment, and I'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life because I'm not. I am less afraid of jail than

I am of cooperating against bigger fish. You can make

that decision. I can't stop you from entering a soldier's plea, but you know what, You're not going to get one day of benefit from me, and instead the prosecutors gave him a hundred days when he was facing life in prison given his age that I don't understand, and people are saying, wait a minute, Alvin Bragg has a double secret probation plan and he's gonna still use Weisselberg, to which I say, and why then with the top prosecutors Pomeranson done, who said Alvin Bragg killed the case when

we had enough evidence to try and convict Donald Trump, we resign what they didn't know about the double secret probation plan to hold Donald Trump accountable. Okham's raiser, the simplest explanation is the most likely. Alvin Bragg blinked or he is compromised. I don't know which, But boy, you talk about a deeply unjust resolution that highlights the deep injustice of our system. Exhibit A. Alvin Bragg in my

humble opinion needs to be investigated. And I have said this since those two high profile prosecutors quit that after all this time special grand jury, all of this work being done, they just decide to leave because he's not going to do anything right. There's only I mean, if something smells, it's because there's something rotten, right, And I don't know if we'll ever get to the bottom. I'm assuming we won't, but my goodness, it's just so blatant

it's obnoxious at this point. Glenn, as always, thank you so much for walking us through this tangled web of Trump, trump Ism and criminality that I don't know if we'll ever find ourselves out of. To be honest. Public service announcement, Danielle, Let's remember that Donald Trump launched an armed attack on the Capitol try to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power. That's the end of the PSA. In case anybody's forgotten that, Yep,

stolen classified documents, weaponized your own white militia mob. And he still has a tea time this morning. Yep, Sure it does. Oh, Glenn, Well, we'll talk more. You keep your eyes open, folks, make sure that you are following Glenn on Twitter. That you are watching Justice Matters because if you want to know the inner workings of what is happening and why you want to pull your hair out, Glenn is making the case every single day. We appreciate you.

That is it for me today. Here friends on Woke a app as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts

from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you at your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday.