Rogue Justice

we are with regard to the Department of Justice. Finally hearing murmurings from the ever so mute Merritt Garland that he has finally decided or has been working behind the scenes to hold those not just the foot soldiers, but hold those that were the architects and they don'ts of the insurrection that had the ability to make it happen. Right, we have to understand that what we saw on January sixth, twenty twenty one wasn't just like your run of the

mill event. It wasn't just something that happened out of the thin blue air. And I think that that is what's really important about what we are hearing from federal judges right who are saying that beyond a preponderance of a doubt that there is criminal ongoings here between John Eastman, donald Trump's attorney, and Donald Trump. And for those people that were in a war room, folks, they had a

war room put together at the Willard Hotel. If you've never been to Washington, DC, the Willard Hotel is right by the White House, right. So these people were not just down to the Ellipses to air their grievances about, you know, their frustration that their man didn't win. They were putting together a reconnaissance team ahead of time to provide tours of the Capitol buildings so that the insurrectionist,

the foot soldiers knew exactly where to go. They put together a PowerPoint presentation John Eastman laid out all of the ways that we can overthrow the government. They had a working war room where Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon were present, right. They had people like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys that had go team stationed across

the water in Virginia. In the event that they were able to take over not only the Capitol building, but what we have learned through the over five hundred interviews that had been done already by the how Select Committee is that they had people in place, because the desire wasn't just to take the Capitol building. It was to take the house buildings, it was to take the Senate buildings. It was essentially to turn Washington, d C. Into Ottawa, Canada.

And that was before Ottawa Canada actually happened. It was to lay siege to the federal government, to shut it down, to keep their king in place. So this was not a pop up protest allah the Black Lives Matter movement and the twenty twenty uprisings, that an incident then sparks

these protests that would then happen. No, And so for Judge McFadden, the federal judge who says, well, these insurrectionists, they're non violent, and so they should just get a slap on the wrist and be sent home, what do you think happens when you don't provide responsibility and accountability. Then you have just shown people how much further they're able to push, what else they're able to get away with. And so if you do not make an example, and I if I were a parent, that is how the

fuck I would parent? Right? You get but so much leash, so much room, right, but there are you level set on expectations, rules and order. That's what we believe the Constitution to be. It was an agreed upon document that said, this is how we are going to conduct ourselves in these United States. This is what it means to form a government for and by the people. Right, these are

agreed upon political norms and our laws. Donald Trump, over the course of his four year reign, the reign of disaster over the United States, broke every single political norm that we ever knew or thought of. And then something we didn't he ran roughshod over the Constitution. That's what the fuck. He was probably crumbling up in his mouth and swallowing, because you know that's normal behavior to eat paper.

So in this conversation that I have with Glenn for the first time in god, what feels like the two years that we have been in conversation about the fate of our democracy and about the fate of our institutions. For the first time ever, this actually felt like a more dare I say it, folks, Dare I say hopeful conversation where we feel like there is actual movement here.

But the thing that I'm still hung up on on this good Monday The thing that I'm still hung up on is the fact that we have a compromised Supreme Court justice. We have a compromised Supreme Court justice. The things that set America apart from other nations, from dictatorships, authoritarianism, from fascism, from banana republics, from all of these makeshift right, these makeshift governments, is the fact that we have a rule of law and a code of conduct that we

all agree on. Right, Clarence Thomas with his decision not to recuse himself from hearing the Trump case, with regard to his records that the House Select Committee was asking for him being the lone dissenter on that, and knowing knowing that his wife was in communication with the White

House on the day of the insurrection. So having all of that information, Glenn will tell us that even a first year law student, and fuck it, I say, even somebody that just binge watches the first season of Law and Order would know what it means to recuse yourself from a case because you do not want, particularly at the Supreme Court level, you do not want the appearance right, the appearance that there is wrongdoing happening because you are

at the highest court of the land. So the fact that we have a sitting Supreme Court justice whose wife was at the insurrection and then she decided that, oh, she needed a sweater. It was too chilly outside, so she decided to leave right, oh, just in time. But then make sure that she was on the horn the whole time with the chief of staff. And now we have four hundred and fifty seven minutes worth of tape that we don't know where it is. And for those people,

I got to tell you something. So folks know that I am new to TikTok, right because what I have discovered, and this is something that you know if you are, if you have a business or in business, and you're a person of a certain age like I am, and you're thinking to yourself, well, this platform isn't for me. What I realize, with the seriousness that our democracy, that our country is in right now, that I need to find mediums wherever I need to disseminate information wherever people

are getting their information. So if that is a sixty second fifteen second TikTok, if that is a forty five minute podcast, if that is national television, you will see me in all of those places and spaces because I think that the times that we are living in are so consequential. But somebody said to me on TikTok that, oh, well, you know, Donald Trump was probably just using his cell phone,

so I don't understand the big deal. Let me tell you something about these fucking maga apologists, Like this is the thing that actually does want to keep me away from social media because sometimes when I go through the comments in places, particularly like TikTok, who don't know me because I'm new to the platform, they say some wild shit.

And that's when I realized that Donald Trump was right, that he could in fact shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and nothing would happen to him, that he would probably gain supporters as opposed to losing them.

Because the way that these people will twist themselves into fucking pretzels to come up with any explanation as to why there would be no incoming or outgoing calls for a four hundred and fifty seven minutes while the Capitol Building is under siege is so fucking absurd that you would have to detach yourself from reality in order for that to even make sense, right, Like, it makes absolutely none Nixon resigned because of eighteen minutes that were lost.

Donald Trump went rogue for a fucking work day. That is warranting much more scrutiny than it's receiving right now in the mainstream press. And I will continue to say and call them out and be like, why is that? Why is it that Hunter Biden's laptop still remains a point of conversation, but four hundred and fifty seven missing minutes from the White House doesn't. And it makes me

beg the question who was in cahoots with who? So coming up next, Friends, my conversation with our friend Glenn Kirshner, host of Justice Matters and MSNBC Legal analyst. Folks, it has been a long time since we have had a good conversation with our friend MSNBC Legal analysts and the host of Justice Matters, Glenn Kirshner. On Glenn dare I say, I think this episode, this segment maybe one that we land on something good ish. A lot has transpired with

regard to the insurrection investigations the Department of Justice. Take us through what has happened this week, because this week has had my head on a swivel. As I'm sure it has yours, but a lot has happened. So let's start at the beginning. We have some movement, it seems, from our friends at the Department of Justice. What have you been hearing? Yeah, so rarely do we get to say it's been a pretty good week for justice. Now,

it hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows. Right, we'll break to the you know, some of the less optimistic stories. But you know, there were some really block buster developments reported first by the Washington Post, and there was a follow up article in the New York Times. And what we learned is that the Department of Justice is involved in a criminal probe of matters and in ways we

knew nothing about. So, first of all, we learned that they are criminally investigating the funders, the planners, and the organizers of the insurrection, and most pointedly of the pre insurrection pep rally on the Ellipse right at which Donald Trump and company launched the attack. So what does that tell us? It tells us they are absolutely working their way up the command structure of the insurrection, and they're

doing it criminally. We need to remember the January sixth Congressional Committee has been doing it all along, but they can't bring criminal charges. The Department of Justice has been investigating this criminally. Second big development is they've also expanded their criminal probe into not just the fake electors, but the Trump loyalists and lackeys who were pushing the fake elector scheme to criminally overturn the elections results. So the

DOJ is getting after it. They're not just getting after the foot soldiers of the insurrection, you know, the mopes who actually broke into the Capitol. They're getting after the command structure of the insurrection and other efforts, other avenues that Trump and company used, like the fake electors to try to undermine the elections results. And then this was buried in the Washington Post article. But I actually think

it's the biggest revelation. They said that for the past two months, and I wrote it down because I wanted to quote it precisely. The Department of Justice has been subpoenaing quote, officials informer President Trump's orbit, quoth what does that tell us? For two months They've been issuing grand jury subpoenas two officials that had been in Trump's orbit when he was president, and Danielle we knew nothing about that. It's true. And so you and I've been talking about this,

and I've said, where the hell is Merrit Garland? I put his face on a milk carton. We've been screaming about it. Why do we see no evidence that they're criminally investigating. Well, now we know they have been, including by issuing grand jury subpoenas, and we know nothing about it. That gives me lots of optimism. That stuck has been going on for quite some time, and you know, at the bottom of it all, we shouldn't hear anything about it.

We often do because when they start issuing grand jury subpoenas, we have leakers, liars and lawyers, you know, and the liar piece I always use George Popadopolis, right, We subpoena him and he goes into the grand jury and then he steps to the cameras and lies like crazy about what's going on in the grand jury. But that liar

reveals that there's a grand jury investigation. The lawyers, the people who represent the witnesses who get subpoena to the grand jury, because you know what, the criminal defense bar, the white collar bar in DC, they all like to say, I got the biggest client and they talk. So it's the liars, it's the lawyers, and then it's the leakers. Once an investigation, a grand jury investigation, is open, it can leak out, and mind you, it can leak out from the Department of Justice. It can be FBI agents

improperly leaking. It can be prosecutors improperly leaking. It can be the staff of the Department of Justice one hundred and ten thousand of them improperly leaking, leaking. Flyers and lawyers usually end up revealing that there's a grand jury investigation. Now we know there has been one for at least a couple of months, and I'm betting longer and we know nothing about it is very encouraging. So let me ask you this, because you know, on this show we

have talked about grand juries. We've talked about the differences in different types of sitting juries. Is there a difference between a federal grand jury, right and what we have seen and discussed with regard to the Manhattan District Attorney before Alvin Bragg came into his position when Sidevance had called a special grand jury. Is there any delineation between these types of grand juries and what folks need to

understand if there are any differences to note. You know, their jobs and their procedures and their goals are largely the same. Federal grand jury will hear evidence in federal cases involving federal crimes and violation of federal laws new York state. They're exclusively restricted to what crimes may violate New York state law, not federal law. Now, there are some significant differences. Federal grand juries typically sit for about eighteen months at a time, maybe one two, three days

a week, so they can hear long term investigations. Most state grand juries sit for a much shorter period of time, often four or six weeks, so they have to do their work quickly, or they have to get special permission from the court to impanel an extended grand jury like they did in New York. And then there's a special grand jury that was impaneled in Georgia to look into Trump's selection crimes down there. So you know, they're large. They're very similar bodies with similar goals. One is all

about federal law. One is all about the state law in the state in which the grand jury sits. Okay, so we have a couple of federal judges that have

been making some noise with regard to the case. The first one that I want to discuss, but briefly, is McFadden, who said that essentially he's a Trump appointee, has been hearing some of the lower level insurrection cases and has basically said these are non violent offenders, they shouldn't be serving any time, and made the comparison between their involvement in an attempt to overthrow the government and protests during

the Summer's uprising in twenty twenty. Can you speak to that, and you know what we should take, what we should glean from that insight that he provided with the several quotes that he offered up. All right, I'm going to take a deep breath, and I'm going to pause for a second because I know Trevor McFadden from the days

he was at the US Attorney's office. I was discouraged when I saw that he sat on some Trump litigation a couple of years ago for a period of time that was inexplicable, that was negligent in my view, and I began to have my questions even before, but certainly as a result of that Trump litigation. He did not seem to be handling in an expeditious manner. Now, when I hear his criticism, it reinforces the fact that, unfortunately, we are now left with asking the question who appointed

that judge? And when we hear it's Donald Trump, and we know that Mitch McConnell crammed him and others down America's throat. And these people are extreme ideologues, many of them, many of them unqualified to serve according to the American Bar Association rating. I don't know if McFadden falls into that category. I don't believe he does. I don't think the ABA rated him unqualified. But I don't have confidence

in Judge McFadden's fairness and independence. Unfortunately, but he's only one judge, and there are hundreds of Federal Court judges, and his view will be marginalized, It will be disregarded by the other judges, and it will stand out like a sore thumb as somebody who is out of the mainstream in dealing with insurrection cases. Because here's the thing, Daniel, there are so many cases. Every judge in federal court is carrying a healthy dose of insurrection cases. So I'm troubled,

disappointed in McFadden. But I'm not surprised. Um, you did a very good job, Glenn. I tried to remain as professional. I don't know about what kind of imprints may be on your tongue right now from mightn it, but you did a very good job. So talk to us about the other federal judge who is judge is it? Is it Carter? David Carter? Carter, So David Carter, David Carter also has been making some news. Tell us about this because this is actually good news, and this is huge.

And I think at first, blush, we may not have appreciated what Judge Carter found and ruled because we hear so much about Donald Trump's crimes. It's like, oh, look, another judge said, Donald Trump committed some crimes. Here's why this is so important. Now. First of all, this was in the context of treasonous lawyer John Eastman, who wrote a memo how to overturn Democracy for fun and profit, and then when he got caught, he said about his own memo, and you can't make this up. Anybody who

took my memo seriously is quote crazy. So he was bad mouthing his own legal memo. Why, because that's consciousness of guilt because he got caught right, So then he wanted to hide all of his emails and other written communications from the J six Committee by claiming, oh no, they all enjoy attorney client privilege with Donald Trump. And he litigated that. And here's what federal judge in California,

David Carter said. First of all, you lose on seven or eight different grounds your claim that these were protected and can't be turned over to the J six Committee. So turn them over. And one of the ways you lose is by the application of a little thing called the crime fraud exception. He found that there was, by a preponderance of the evidence. I'll talk about how important that is in a minute, by a preponderance of the evidence that Donald Trump committed the crimes of obstructing the

official congressional preceding the vote certification. And he found, by a preponderance of the evidence that Donald Trump and John Eastman were in a conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States. Now, when I say he found that by a preponderance of the evidence, there are whole lots of different evidentiary standards in the law, both civil and criminal. A preponderance is simply more likely than not fifty one

that's the standard that applies to civil trials. A jury has to decide by fifty one percent whether the defendant wins or whether the plaintiff wins. Right, But in criminal trials, we all know that to hold to convict somebody, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That the granddaddy of all burdens of proof, a very high standard. But here's the thing. Judge Carter found that Donald Trump committed these crimes by a preponderance of the evidence fifty one percent

more likely than not. The evidentiary standard, Danielle to indict somebody for a crime is probable cause significantly below the evidentiary standard that Judge Carter concluded was already met a higher burden showing that Donald Trump committed crimes. So you know when I saw that, like j you've got a federal judge who said you have more than enough evidence to indict Donald Trump for these crimes. And Danielle, what

did we get out of DJ? Like the next day we got leaks that they've expanded their criminal investigation in all these ways. I don't believe for a minute that was a leak. I think that was what I would call a covert press release. They let that they let that come out because of the public clamor when a federal judge has already concluded that there's more than enough

evidence to charge Donald Trump with a crime. So let me ask you this, because I am a cynic and everybody knows that, and I also understand pr and communications because that's part of the work that I do. How likely is it that this, you know, covert press release on the part of the Department of Justice is just to keep the peanut gallery happy enough, but it is the perception of their being work done, but actual work,

actual indictments, we won't see. So what is the likelihood that me, as a deep cynic, am wrong and that we wouldn't hear or see any type of leak if they weren't actually committed to seeing this through as opposed to providing just crumbs to the public to shut us all up. Yeah, so you're the cynic and I'm the Pollyanna naive. One who shouldn't be naive after thirty years is a fed But I don't think this was a disinformation campaign by the Department of Justice, particularly because they

said the reporting was for more than two months. They've they've been subpoenaing, using the grand jury subpoena power as part of a criminal investigation to get evidence from former officials Donald Trump's orbit. You can you know, listen if it was like we're hard at work and we're expanding our criminal probe, that's one thing. Boy, These were concrete details about investigative steps that have been taken. I don't think that's disinformation. Okay, So here we are now we

have it activated Department of Justice. Right, the Department of Justice has woken up from its year plus slumber with regard to the insurrection Donald Trump is. We can assume that when we say Trump's orbit, donald Trump himself is being investigated. Right. Judge Carter says, oh my god, Like there is more than enough information to go through. Here. We have the House Select Committee that has now asked for subpoenas for Ivanka Trump, for Jenny Thomas, who I

want to get to next, and for others. If I am in Donald Trump's circle, what am I feeling right now after this week? Yeah, pressure bursts pipes. So they're coming for Donald Trump's closest criminal associates, which may end up being his family members as well, and they are

coming for Trump. I believe that everything we're learning puts the truth to what Garland and Monco number two Lisa Monico in the Department of Justice have been saying over and over, and they feel like it's all they can say, which is that we are going after everybody who committed crimes at any level of government. They keep saying that over and over, but we haven't seen any evidence of it. So we are skeptical at best, disbelieving at worst. I

think we are now finding reasons to believe them. Here's the one concern I continue to have. I always compare the Department of Justice to a big, old steamer ship. It takes a very long time to gain steam and momentum and begin moving in the direction of accountability. And they're investigating this enormous criminal conspiracy, the biggest ever in the history of our nation, and a conspiracy designed to end our democracy in the way they would traditionally investigate

these enormous cases. And what I don't think they appreciate is the urgency of the moment, with public safety at risk and our democracy hanging in the ballots, which to me suggests that maybe you should consider being on a more accelerated track than you ordinarily would, because there's nothing ordinary about this series of crimes. Got it okay? So the Thomas is right. The only celebrity couple that should have been in the news for the last week plus

should have been Clarence and Jenny Thomas. To remind folks, it was discovered visa Viann interview that Jenny Thomas gave that she was in fact at the precursor to the insurrection, which was the stop the Steel rally on the Ellipses

on January six. Then she went home because it was too cold out, because that's Jenny Thomas's version of I didn't inhale, but go ahead, right, So she she goes home, but then when she's home, she decides to die a up Mark Meadows multiple times, apparently right on January six, insurrection is happening. We have seven hours plus of phone log records from the White House missing Glenn. So we've accelerated from eighteen minutes in the age of Nixon to an entire work day for Donald Trump to an entire

normal American work day is missing. But we know that Jenny Thomas was on the horn to Mark Meadows, and that Clarence Thomas was the loan dissenter, the loan dissenter in providing the House Select Committee with access to the phone logs because he said, Clarence Thomas, it was unnecessary. Make this make sense that these people are not being investigated,

that they are still being politely asked. Jenny Thomas is being politely asked to come and sit before the Select Committee, and we don't have a bust open investigation and looking at her phone records and Clarence Thomas phone records and their financial records as it pertains to one six. Yeah, this is some of the sort of deepest and most troubling form of corruption and it really begins to make

us look like a banana republic. And you know, the facts as we know them involve Jenny Thomas badgering, pressuring, not that the pressure was not welcome, but pressuring Mark Meadows, the chief of staff of the President of the United States, pressuring him to unconstitutionally overturn the results of a free and fair presidential election, telling Mark Meadows to completely run rough shot over the expressed views of the American voters.

And she did it. When you read some of her texts she did it from a complete platform of lies. One of the texts said, Mark, there are ballot fraudsters right now being detained on barges off of Gitmo, preparing to be tried by military terry tribunals for sedition. You must and I'm going to take liberties with The message was so you must overturn the elections results. That's not just Q and on nonsense. Those are flat out provable lies.

So what does that provide? It provides corrupt intent for Jinny Thomas, which makes her Danielle a spoke in the wheel of the hubb and Spoke conspiracy. That is, the conspiracy to overturn the election. So this is nothing to play with now, people, Oh, it's this wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice. So that's the third rail. We can't grab hold of it. Well, there seemed to be a lot of third rails and not a lot of trains rolling down the tracks. She should be subpoenaed like

any mere mortal by the J six Committee. She should be investigated criminally by the Department of Justice because she is yet another, if not high government official, the spouse of one of the highest government officials in our land, Clarence Thomas, who is not only pressuring the White House to criminally overturn the election, but who says in her text, and I'm talking to my best friend about this. She always uses the term best friend to describe her husband. Now,

what does Clarence Thomas do with this? Oh, dear Clarence. Now listen, we are not our spouse's keeper, right, We are not necessarily accountable for everything our spouse chooses to

say or do so. But because she says I'm talking to him about these things, mind you, Danielle, At the same time Donald Trump is saying I'm going to take the election fight to the Supreme Court, then a case comes up for review whether Jenny Thomas's text messages, which are part of the information that the National Archives has, because Jinny and Mark Meadows are going hot and heavy in the text exchange about overturning the election results, and

let me just add a footnote. When she throws all that bs into the mix about why they should overturn the election results because people are being detained on barges outside of Gitmo, Mark Meadows doesn't say, miss Thomas, that's you're that's true that I feel your pain. But that's not a good reason. He just feeds into it and

accepts it, right the chief of staff. So now the Supreme Court has asked whether Donald Trump should get to hide all of those text messages from the J six Committee and from the public by extension, or whether they should all be turned over and revealed Thomas's wife's text messages. Thomas absolutely has a conflict, a direct textbook conflict. He cannot sit in judgment over a case involving his wife's

incriminating text messages, so he must recuse himself. But he doesn't, and so that shows the Supreme Court cannot be trusted to police itself. So then not only does he refuse to remove himself from the case, as any first year law student would tell you, is mandatory for an ethical judge, he's the only of the nine justices who votes in favor of taking that case, so inferentially he can bury his wife's incriminating text messages. This is Banana Republic territory.

When you have a Supreme Court justice acting in a case involving incriminating information about his wife, communicating it to the White House in a case that the White House says we're gonna take up to the Supreme Court. This is banana. Banana Republic's laugh at us. They're like, we may be corrupt, but at least we ate the United States. I mean, my god, Glenn, you do not need a

law degree to understand the corruption that is running. When they say there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, they are talking about the US Supreme Court that is supposed to be beyond reproach. And so given all of this that we know, I am outdone by the silence from Democrats. There are only a handful that are saying that we need to be having an investigation into this. Chuck Schumer got up on a pressor and said, oh, well, you know, there should be some type of ethics rules

for the Supreme Court. And I'm saying, some type of ethics rules, you'll put them in. Declarence Thomas is about to overturn Roe v. Wade. You have all of these things, these major cases that are coming up that are going to affect the day to day lives of the American people,

and we know that this man is corrupt. I just I mean, if we had people in power who had sense, Glenn, what would be the natural order that we would be taking once information, blockbuster bombshell information like this came to light, anybody who cares about the legitimacy, the credibility of the Supreme Court would conclude there has to be the opening of an impeachment inquiry by the Judiciary committee, whether House

or Senate. I don't pretend to know the sort of little jurisdictional breakdown who takes the lead on what judiciary issues. There needs to be an impeachment inquiry of Justice Clarence Thomas. I mean, I am. I got to tell you, and I wrote a piece, you know, talking about how I believe that mainstream media is complicit in all of this because it's not front page news, it is not a one above the fold. And I'm telling you we were, you know, back in Nixon days. We're talking about missing

eighteen minutes. We have ours, we have text messages, we have spouses of sitting Supreme Court justice attending the precursor to a violent attempt to overthrow the government. I don't understand how there is not an alarm that is ringing and a sense of urgency that is beyond anything that we have ever seen activated, right now in our Congress, in our White House, I honestly don't get it, and it can't be just oh well, we have fear if what if the case, you know, the case isn't made.

I'm like, if you're not making the case to the American public at this point on these issues, how were they to be trusted? Oh, Glenn Well, I thank you so much for taking the time to join us and

run through. I mean, I'm happy, for the first time we have good ish news, and I'm hoping that in the coming weeks that we will uncover more that the Department of Justice has been doing and get more insight into who is being targeted within Trump's orbit and who they have subpoena because my hope is that we will see something before we head to midterms in but a handful of months. Yeah, I feel like the accountability snowball is beginning to gather some mass and some momentum, and

I think it's moving in the right direction. And even DJ has apparently had enough and I think is beginning to send signals that listen. I know y'all say every day we're not doing anything. We are. We've been, in fact, using the Grand Jury to criminally investigate. Nobody's known about it because we're not supposed to tell anybody about it. But we are moving, still too slowly, but at least I think we can credit that they're moving. Yeah, I

appreciate you, Gonn. We will pick this up again next week. Will happen. That is it for me here, Friends, as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.