Flying the Coup

slew of interviews with some of our favorites. I am really excited to introduce for today's show our friend MSNBC legal analysts Glenn Kushner, who is going to run us through all of I would say the latest and greatest, because that's what usually would rhyme, but all of the mayhem and misery of the legal fuckery that Trump and his associates are in right now. He's going to break down for us where things stand, whether or not we are going to see the indictment parade that we have

been talking about for what seems like forever. Also joining I am so excited to welcome her back to woke FPP Daily, our friend Yasmin Vasuki, and you watch her.

You see her on MSNBC. She anchors on the weekends and she is extraordinary, and we're going to talk to her about media's responsibility in this moment, of the global health pandemic, of the racial uprisings, and whether or not you know we're doing the job that people need us to do, which is to be truthful and transparent, as well as talking about a lot of the places that don't get a lot of coverage that she covers on her show, which is areas of the Middle East that

we really do not give any attention to, any good attention anyway. And so with these two guests, I hope that you guys enjoy the conversation, send me comments and dms. Even though I'm on vacation, you know that I can't help myself but to respond to all of you. So I hope that you enjoy this show. Coming up next, friends, I am always so excited when we have the opportunity to be joined by our friend MSNBC legal analyst and

the host of Justice Matters, Glenn Kirshner. Glenn, you wrote a piece this week for MSNBC dot Com entitled DJ Officials Thwarted Trump's coup. Next step a criminal investigation. Glenn, We've been talking about this at nauseum for the better part of a year, and what is interesting as we continue to wait for the parade of indictments. Is that the evidence that Donald Trump committed a conspiracy in order

to overthrow the election is just mounting. We have Jeffrey Clark's letter, we have now testimony that happened from Jeffrey Rosen. I just what are we what is it that we need? What is it that you think that we need in order to begin these proceedings? Like how much more bite size pieces, huge bite sized pieces of evidence do we need in order to say now is the time? On the evidentiary front. We have all we need and then some. So you know the standard, the FBI standard for opening

a criminal investigation. Fancy fifty cent word or phrase when a nickel word will do. That's what lawyers like to do, so they can charge money to define those complex words. Adequate predication and in the FBI manual, this is all that means that there is some information or allegation, some minimal evidence that conduct constituting a federal crime has been committed, may have been committed, or maybe in the process of being committed. It is as low and evidentiary standard as

we have in our criminal practice. So we know that there's adequate predication. Times a thousand right there. Really, I would maintain, Danielle, there's evidence beyond a reasonable bout that Donald Trump committed a conspiracy to defraud the United States by unlawfully trying to overturn the election results, just as my friends Barb McQuaid, Joyce Fans, and Lawrence Tribe argued recently in their joint Washington Post op ed. So we're

not waiting for the evidence to come in. What has to happen, and what I maintain is happening at the Department of Justice. And I can talk about why I have that bedrock belief in a minute. Is that it all has to be presented to the grand jury, and that is no small task, and then we have to craft and we prosecutors have to craft an indictment. They have to get the grand jury to vote on it, and then we're off to the races. So all of that, I think it have been accomplished long ago. With some

of Donald Trump's crimes, it hasn't been accomplished yet. I think in part because the DOJ leadership team is still relatively new, right, I have complete confidence. I remain confident in this DOJ leadership team, even though I don't like some of the decisions on the institutional front that Merrick Garland has made. But Merrick Garland, Lisa Monico, Deputy Attorney General, Vanita Gupta, Kristen Clark, I have confidence, faith and trust

in this leadership team. That's why I believe they are criminally investigating, given the very low bar required to open an investigation. But I think what frustrates the heck out of us is it has moved too slowly while Donald Trump trapeses around the country recruiting foot soldiers for insurrection. Two point oh public safety as at is at risk. So for God's sakes, drop an indictment on this man's

head already. So let me remind folks. And this is according to the piece that you just referenced by Barbara McQuaid, Lawrence Tribe, and our friend Joyce White Vance. Here's a roadmap for the Justice Department to follow and investigating Trump. And this is in the Washington Post. And I want to remind folks because again I thought one of these things alone, Glenn was enough to move forward. So here's

what we have. We have the call with Donald Trump, with Brad Raffen Raffensberger, the Georgia Secretary of State, find me eleven thy seven hundred and eighty votes. Then we have Trump's pressure on Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen as well as Mike Pence to advance the big lie. Then we have recently revealed the phone call between Trump and Rosen to say, just say the election was corrupt and then leave the rest to me and my Republican allies.

Then you have Trump's own public statements along with Drudy Giuliani Moe Brooks to incite the mob on January sixth, And what they say in this piece is that none of these facts alone proves the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. But I mean, again, I'm not an attorney, but I completely disagree. How does the President of the United States calling the Secretary of State one of the one of the states being contested, Georgia, and say, find me the exact amount of votes that I need to win. How

is that not beyond How is that not criminal? Beyond a reasonable doubt? I disagree with my learned colleagues. And that's a lot of brain power, Joyce, Barb and Lawrence, and it's a lot of experience, and most importantly, it's a lot of dedication to the rule of law. All I ever was. I was never a bureaucrat. I was never a muck any muck. I'm not accusing them of being those things. Mind you. All I did was proved

cases in court for more than three decades. There's proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump committed BOOKOO crimes. BOOKO is a legal term, including as you just precisely pointed out, there are Georgia's state election crimes that can be proved by that recorded phone call where Donald Trump said I want to steal the election and I need eleven thousand, seven hundred and eighty votes to do it.

Find them for me. I couldn't disagree more with anybody who contends that we don't yet have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Yes we do. We also have an in Volume two of the Mullah Report for multiple counts of felony, obstruction of justice. We have it everywhere. We are awash in evidence of Donald Trump's crimes, and we need to

move out. We need to begin to hold him accountable because the public trust and confidence is waning every day in every day, Glenn, Because you know when I just first, when we heard the call with Georgia State Secretary. I said, damn, this man is caught, right, then nothing happens. Then we hear yet another call with now Jeffrey Rosen. Just say, just directing him if that is not coercion when we're talking about right, um, coercion, Just say that the election

was corrupt. Whether or not you can find anything, I'll handle the rest. Is that not like a direct order from a mob boss? Me and my body's got it. I just need you to do this one thing for me. Yeah, you just blow open the bank vault door. You leave the rest to me. It's it's mob talk. It's it's

transparent what he was saying, folks. I am so excited to welcome in the studio my first in studio guest, our friend returned Na Yasmin Vesugi and you know her as an MSNBC anchor on the weekends Saturday and Sunday three to five pm. Yasmen, what a crazy time to be on television. You know, how do you I want to start off because there's so many things that I want to talk to you about. But you know, we haven't seen each other in person since twenty since you know,

the beginning of the pandemic. By the way, we're both vaccinated, and we're both vaccinated. What was it like to be on television at home trying to both parents be on air telling us about what was going on? Why you're trying to figure out what was going on? I don't think that we've ever heard from like actual media people, anchors, reporters about what it was, what it was like in the height for you, it was like it was so surreal. I mean on so many levels. First of all, the

first time they brought a camera into my house. I have an apartment in New York City. You know, um, we have a three bedroom apartment and we were in you know, lockdown. I have a four and a two year old child, and so we needed as much space in my apartment as possible because we were going to be stuck inside together for months on end. We didn't even know how long. So I put a camera set

up in my bedroom. Wow, that's how it started. Okay, So that wasn't great for my marriage literally, And if you remember, at the same time, I was still on that five AM show, So my alarm would go off for like three three in the morning. I would roll out of it. My poor husband was like asleep. He would like put a pillow over his head and um, and I would you know, he would like leave the room at five, you know, at four fifty five he

would get up and leave before the show. He would like, go bake me coffee and he was like and you know, So that went on for three months like that. Um, oh my god, God bless him. Yeah. No, we we got through it, and and then you know, we were able to We ended up renting a house out in Long Island just for a little while because we need to like get away from it all. Yeah, we're able to move on a camera thing there and figure it all out, and it was out of the bedroom at

that point. But it was like it's been a very intense and same period. I mean, like dealing with young children through this whole thing. Yeah, and the uncertainty surrounding that, and I think the saving grace before of course the delta variant and now possibly this new lambda thing obviously, which terrible news that children were kind of escaping you know, the worst of it, right, So that was like the

saving grace of all of it. And you know, I've always been in the situation as a journalist because I've reported overseas for quite some time as well, where people were always wanting and you know, I was on the steps of the capital. People always wonder like when you're in the midst of it, do you see your own kind of fate? Like do you understand the fear and

the kind of danger that you yourself are in? Yeah, And I think like the same can be applied to the pandemic in which like when I was out in the field, like reporting in front of hospitals or you know, you know, we had like in front of a field hospital or whatever it is that I've been doing, or you know, if I'm in the chair anchoring, you know,

you're always seeing it like as a job, right. The difference is is that you're then kind of asking the questions and trying to get the answers that you yourself need, right, and you're understanding that the world also needs too, And

so suddenly it's very personal. So I'm not just like interviewing, you know, send her coons about Afghanistan as we watch yet another city be taken over, and you understand like all these people that sort of were allies of you know, American troops and soldiers for so long are being literally killed every day by the Taliban, and you're watching it from Afar and asking questions on behalf of them. Instead, you're asking questions on behalf of yourself and you and

the safety of your own family. And they're while they're too equally important distinctions, it's like so much more personal, right, And so Kvida Btel is on the air with me, and I'm saying, to listen, how is this affecting children now? How is the delta variant affecting Like? What do I need to do as a parent parent? Yeah, And I know that I'm speaking for every parent out there. I know that I'm speaking for every parent when I say what do I do? Do Do I send my kids back

to school? Do I put masks on them? You know? What are the symptoms? What are we looking for? And so I think all of it has been It has stretched me as a journalist personally. It's made me better, It's made me more present because the fact that I understand kind of I mean, every our work is always important, I hope, and I always understand how important it is for us to ask the right questions and get the

right answers. But it is so much more personal and is like, I mean, the number of lives that have been lost during this pandemic, it is I mean, it's unbelievable to think about every single day and the people that continue to die, and how lives have completely chan, families have completely changed, the makeup of families have completely changed.

We are in such a different time now, even than we were like in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen when we were screaming from the rooftops as things were going down and we were in the midst of the Russian investigation and the It's like we were waiting for this time to see Like I felt like we were hanging on for hope right that we could that Trump was going to be our biggest problem. I feel like in in this country was you know, we can solve this

wheel vote, We'll get him out of office. And then it seems to me, I feel like we were in a worse position than we were a year ago, folks. That is it for today's Woke, a daily podcasted to you here. More from me, including five full hour long shows every single week, exclusive guest interviews, and more. Support me on Patreon at Patreon dot com slash woke. F power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.