Slow Walk to Justice

and just enjoy some play. As we head into this week, I can't help but wonder, you know, at the beginning of each and every week, I can't help but wonder, will this be the week that Merrick Garland takes action? Will be the week that there is no other news story other than the fact that Donald Trump and company are indicted with mountains and mountains of evidence that show that they worked in practice, in step by step and lockstep with one another in order to overturn our election.

Is this going to be the week when Don Trump Junior is picked up for having text messages back and forth that signal right to Mark Meadows and to all Republicans that we quote own all the paths to power? Is it going to be the week that Jared Kushner gets picked up and is an indictment is opened and an investigation is opened into oh, I don't know what

was worth two billion dollars from Mohammed been Salam. Why would Mohammed bin Salam go against his own advisors, who we know don't are not filled with scruple or morals to decide to back someone who his own business partners say is not a good businessman, this is risky, it's two billion dollars, but decide in any way to go forward with his business plan with Jared Kushner. Why is that?

Why is it that we allow the media to continue to have conversations on the front page of every major newspaper about Hunter Biden's laptop when Hunter Biden is not inside of the White House, When Hunter Biden's laptop is just as OH I don't know, convenient and necessary to the Republican narrative as Hillary Clinton's emails were. But then we saw what happened when Trump went into the White House. We learned about oh I don't know, Ivanka Trump using

a private server. We learned about other people within the Republican administration and party using private servers. But this was all the rage, all the rage for the twenty sixteen election cycle. So what do we think right that Republicans

are setting themselves up for. Well, I can tell you what my thoughts are, which is this, it would be very convenient for when Republicans, if and when they were to win midterms, decide that they're going to open up a commission and investigations into Hunter Biden and his relationships in Europe and what he knew and when he knew whatever, just to make up what a media circus. And you see what frustrates me about this is that Democrats don't

need to make up a media circus. They just need to share the truth about what they have been covered over the last two years or so of investigations around Donald Trump and company. You see, Democrats don't need to make up anything. They don't need to lie. All they need to do is tell the truth. But tell it on national television, tell it on every goddamn station, tell it on radio, tell it on satellite, tell it on podcast,

tell it anywhere and everywhere. Turn this campaign around securing our democracy into an all out media onslaught where even if you are an avid Fox News watcher, you could not learn right about what is going on, because it would be everywhere that you could try so desperately to stick your head in the sand of the Fox News orbit, but you would still know that something is going on

with Donald Trump and all of his sickothans. Is this going to be the week, dear friends, when we open up an investigation into Jinny Thomas and we discover whether or not we have a current active member of the Supreme Court who in just two months is getting ready to strip away, strip away abortion care for women and people with uteruss in this country that are getting ready to make decisions to strip away New York City's ability to be able to create policy gun policy that keeps

us all safe. After a mass shooting last week on a fucking train. So do you see how the Democrats desire to do nothing, to make nothing of note about what is being discovered and what we know to be true a scene if you are not utilizing media in every single form to tell the truth far and wide to the American people. And I don't mean just giving people a bunch of statistics and facts. I mean tell the fucking story, because you see, friends, this is what

Republicans are really good at. They're really good at now rating a story about paint you the picture of who they think is the most dangerous person. Right, I'll tell you something funny. I went on MSNBC yesterday morning, Easter Morning, and you know, friend of the show Katie Fang has a new early morning show on the weekends on MSNBC called Katie Fang. So I joined Katie and our other friend Kurt Bardella on the show and she's like, Oh, we have to talk about this whole thing that Tucker

Carlson is doing with his media company, Like, what is this? Well, Tucker Carlson is doing a quote unquote documentary on what he believes is one of the biggest issues that is hitting the United States that apparently we're not talking about. Is it gun violence? No? Is it climate change? No? Is it the crumbling of our democracy and voting rights? No?

Is it LGBTQ policy, No? Is it abortion? No, it is the fact that testosterone levels in men are dropping and this spell's disaster apparently for the country and for the planet. Yes, I shit, you not Google Tucker Carlson documentary trailer, and you folks will believe that you are watching somebody's homo erotic something or other, because it's sure as hell doesn't look like a documentary on anything other than white men with bare chests and six packs, drinking

glasses of raw eggs and tanning their nether regions. Yes, that's what's in the trailer. That's what I discussed on MSNBC. And you know, the question was posed, which I the show tweeted out and I will be sure to share it with all of you in the clip. But Katie asked, Danielle, what do you see when you see this like trailer?

And I said, well, you know, I'll be honest with you, I've never seen a better example of white male fragility in my entire life than a Tucker Carlson and b this trailer, right, And the fact that the more that we discuss equity, the more that we deviate from the lens of sis white straight men in this country, the more terrified Tucker Carlson and all of his white male Fox News viewers become, you see, because in order for them to succeed, subjugation is necessary. Does that sound like

strength to you? No? It sounds like really small, fragile people that in order to feel big and strong, need to step on other people because they believe that that's a sign of strength. You see, Tucker Carlson is terrified about what is going to happen to what he believes

as an endangered species, the straight white Republican male. My god, if we're not chaining women to children and inside of the household, if you're not able to beat and kill and disparage black people, right, then how will we know that we're better than everybody else? Right? That's the mindset of Tucker Carlson and the entirety of the white men who watch Fox News. So I will say say this, there are many pressing issues many there are tons of them.

Not one of them has to do with the testosterone levels of white men that are worthy of a documentary, None of them. But my god, does this man screaming at the top of his lungs frantically about testosterone levels and masculinity and toxic masculinity at that give you everything that you need to know about Tucker Carlson and the Trumpers,

the trump Men. So I don't know, friends, what this New Week will bring us but coming up next my conversation with our friend Glenn Kirshner to walk us through where we are in terms of the House Commission, the one six Commission, whether or not this is going to be the week that they refer write a letter to the Department of Justice that they refer Donald Trump and company receive criminal charges because of the detailed investigation and

now to Glenn's point, over nine hundred interviews that they have done that are leading us in one direction, in one direction only, which is Donald Trump needs to be criminally indicted. And Glenn and I will go through why the tepidness? What the hell we are waiting for? Are we waiting for Republicans to take back over right the House and the Senate to make a absolute mockery right of what is left of our democracy and our government structures and agencies? Is that what we are waiting for.

That conversation, folks, is coming up next, folks. As always, you know that I am thrilled when I have the opportunity to sit down with our friend Glenn Kirshner, a

host of Justice Matters and an MSNBC legal analyst. Glenn, so let me tell you that when I heard the news with regard to the one six House Commission and the fact that there was a possibility that they were split on whether or not to go the whole marathon, not just twenty six miles, but the point two, which would be to end with a referral to the Justice Department for criminal charges for Donald Trump. The murmurings are, well, we don't want to hamper what the Justice Department is

already doing. We don't want to, you know, speed up Merrick Garland's glacial like pace. We don't want to do these things. What was your reaction when those stories started to perculate out. Yeah. I think people tend to overthink this stuff sometimes, Danielle. I've heard some of the analysts say, well, if they make criminal referrals, then people will attack anything

the Department of Justice does as being politically motivated. I'm sorry, no matter what the Department of Justice does, they will be attacked for doing it based on politics and not based on the facts and the law once they start dropping indictments on these people. So I don't know why we fall into the trap of deciding we have to depart from doing what's right for fear of what the wrong People will say, and how they'll try to spin

it and mischaracterize it to criticize us. That's insane. So I think Representative Jamie Raskin laid that to rest last nights Hayes, and I can quote precisely what it's said, because it's actually encouraging for a couple of reasons. First of all, he said, the truth is coming out in these hearings we're holding behind closed doors. He said, regarding criminal earls, we have not been shy about criminal evidence we've encountered, and our report will be profuse in setting

forth crimes that have not yet been alleged. And then he said about the public hearings, it will be both agonizing and riveting for the country to see just how close we came to losing it all. But Representative Raskin said, I don't understand what the media is talking about when they say we're not going to make criminal referrals. We haven't been shy about it before, we won't be shy

about it in the future. And you know, I think when we see all of the criminality that they have captured in evidence, evidence that can be used by the Department of Justice. When the J six Committee is done. It's gonna just sort of knock the wind out of us, and it will give even more reason for DJ to have to indict these people, which I still believe they will. You know, Glenn, the Justice Department, these are your old cronies, right, many of them, I'm certain of probably still there. But

you have an inner working and understanding. What are we missing here in terms of the pace that Merrick Garland and team are working at Because to your point, to Congressman Raskin's point, the evidence is overwhelming, and yet we keep hearing this same phrase, Oh, I don't we don't

want to be perceived as if we're playing politics. I'm confused because I don't know what other kind of game you play in Washington, DC but politics, Right Like, I don't know what else you would call trying to overthrow the government from inside the White House, other than playing politics. So we have the evidence and the public on our side, why do we still hear about this tepidness? So if we're missing anything, we're just missing sort of the culture

and the mindset of federal prosecutors. Because I was on the inside for decades, I had to fight my own superiors at the Department of Justice at times to bring cases that were maiden legal voyages that presented novel issues where there was no rock solid precedent to support what I wanted to do, even though it was the right thing to do based on perhaps a new and novel set of facts. I sometimes had to fight. I did it three times. I had to fight to bring novel cases.

I won approval to bring all three. I lost one of those three, and I won the other two. I was never afraid to lose, you know, you know, there's no shame in losing, But there's nothing but shame in declining to bring a righteous case for fear of losing. So the only thing that I think we're missing is that there's a reason the perception is that the FEDS never lose a case. It's because they rarely bring very difficult, challenging novel cases. And this is a challenging and novel case,

not on the facts. The facts prove a thousand times over Donald Trump committed any number of crimes against the people of the United States, but it is still novel and challenging to prosecute a former president of the United States. That's the only thing that I think people on the outside are missing. The timidity and the handwringing and the legal navel gazing of some of the folks at the

Department of Justice can be paralyzing. They can often find all sorts of reasons to decline to bring a case rather than bringing a challenging case where there's a risk they might lose. So that, I think is why this thing is moving so slowly, at a glacial pace, as you put it. I do believe this iceberg is going to ultimately bump into a big old indictment and these cases will be indicted, but not quickly enough. And I just hope that these cases are indicted in time for

our democracy to recover, because that's an open question. You know. One of the things that I want to also bring up with regard to Representative Raskin's comments on all In, which is the fact that you know, he's saying, how close we almost came to losing our democracy. The reality is is you know, to quote somebody that I don't really like, Bill Maher, he said, this is a slow moving coup, right, So we didn't actually stop anything. We

hit pause. And so for me, when I even hear members that I agree with and I'm always one hundred percent in Raskins camp. It is the fact that I believe that they think that this ended on one six, when we were finally able to get people out of the Capitol Building, as opposed to making the connection with this ongoing coup, with the legislation that is being put out across this country, whether it's abortion or don't say gay, or voter suppression laws, and then the continue continuation of

the Big Lie. The other thing that is that again we're supposed to be going after the architects and those that are not just the foot soldiers that entered the Capitol Building that day. Where are we as a country in investigating whether or not one of our sitting Supreme Court justices, you know, maybe compromise because his wife was going back and forth with then Chief of Staff Mark

Meadows on the day of the insurrection. I don't know where we are, but I haven't heard any announcement that either of the judiciary committees in the House or the Senate is contemplating opening a hearing. I think we should open an impeachment inquiry. I'm not saying we need to rush to impeachment, but we do need to rush to transparent. We need to figure out why Justice Thomas violated every rule of ethics when it comes to a judge removing himself or herself from a case in which they have

a conflict. He presided over a case involving whether his wife's incriminating let's call them what they are, text messages to Mark Meadows should be buried from the J six Committee in public view, or should be revealed and run the risk of incriminating his wife. There's not a judge in the United States that doesn't understand other than Clarence Thomas, and he fully understands it out that you must remove yourself from a case in which you have a family

conflict right a family's interest at stake. And here's what this has proved. It's proved that the Supreme Court cannot be trusted to police itself, and we need to do something about that. It's a challenge because of the separation of powers, and it's hard for Congress to do anything to install any sort of oversight or guardrails on the

Supreme Court. But what you have to do is open a hearing, an impeachment inquiry, to see whether articles of impeachment against Justice Thomas are the right thing to do to help restore the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, because right now the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is about as low as it could yet, and it's about to make all kinds of decisions that may end up revoking women's constitutional privacy rights for example. You know, this is

a toxic mix and a potentially explosive mix. When you have an illegitimate court about to revoke women's constitutional privacy rights. How long? How long will the people of our nation accept this? You know, I would never advocate violence, but you know, these people are creating a powder keg right, and they better start working to enhance the integrity and the legitimacy of the institutions of government, not continue to

tear them down. I just you know, I got to tell you when you say that you and you lay these things out, because I have been saying for so long on this show that I believe that things are going to get bloodier before they get better. And I don't advocate for violence at all, but when you create the conditions for you know, for economic devastation, for lack of transparency and integrity in our in our government agencies.

When you're seeing the poll numbers not only for the Supreme Court, but for the President of the United States Congress as a whole, you know, in the toilet, what that tells us is that all is not well right, and there's all only so much pressure that you can

put on people before they explode. You know. I want to talk a bit more about where we are with the insurrection because several things have again come to light, and I just notice in media that they are not making front page news, such as Donald Trump Junior's text messages. Since we're talking about text messages, the number of text messages that went and said, we own all the paths to power? How is how is Don Junior still walking around Glenn, We own all the paths to power? So

what that alerts is that they knew they lost. They knew they lost. So again the denial and the lies around, oh, we just wanted to certify and make sure that this election was free and fair. They knew that they lost. And what Don Junior's text message allows us to get

an insight into is that they did not care. The treasonous bravado of Don Junior's text to Mark Meadows and not only we own all the paths to power, but on November fifth, before the votes were counted, before the election was called, he said my father's He actually said, potuses, my father's second term must start now before the election

votes were even tallied. That is so deeply treasonous in the lay sense of trees and not in the legal sense that how can that not earn Don Junior on a you know, as a key defendant in the conspiracy indictment to commit offenses against the United States by overturning the results of an election. He said it. I mean, he just said, my father must be installed as president now before the election results are even final, before a president has been announced. That is that's insanity, it's criminality.

And yet when there's so much criminality going on, it does, and when everything now is overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, you know, we are left to wonder will any of this ever come home to roost. I still think it will, but you know, as each day passes, I get a little less confident that DJ will end up doing, you know, what it needs to do to save our democracy, to give it a fighting chance, because if you wait too long,

we will lose it all. So Don Junior is yet another spoke in the wheel of the hub and spoke conspiracy that is Donald Trump and all his criminal associates. I mean, not to mention, you know, the casual and US and the two billion dollars that Jared Kushner was able to recoup from Mohammed bin Salam post Donald Trump's presidency, after his own advisors. I mean, when the advisors, when the Saudi advisors are saying to MBS, oh he is

not actually you know, on the up and up. He doesn't really have much business acumen and we may not want to get in bed with him. But then he decides to give him two billion dollars. Anyway, what is that a payoff for? But nobody's investigating that. But we got Fox News still talking about Hunter Biden's laptop, not two billion dollars that were that was given to Jared Kushner, not these text messages that went from Don Junior to

Mark Meadows the day before the election. And you know, you say, and we need action so that we have time to restore our democracy. But as I list out these things, Glenn, I don't know if restoration is actually possible because the corrosion is so deep, right, the corrosion is so deep, and the desire to make any moves to the contrary to show some fighting spirit seems to

be non existent. Yeah, if restoration wasn't a possibility, you know, I think I would just kind of pack up my little camera gear and go to Mexico and get my PBR and just sit there and drink and just you know, call it a day. Wait, But I still think, I still think restoration is possible. So lastly, we had another decision with one of the foot soldiers in in the insurrection. These cases have started to trickle in with um, you know,

with decisions coming in. We had one that was completely exonerated. We've had others where we've looked at sentencing to a matter of months to a couple of years. What's the significance with the most recent insurrectionist and how they decided to plead their case. That makes it interesting for the larger scope that we're waiting on the DJ four. Yeah, yesterday's guilty verdicts across the board, guilty verdicts against the

defendant named Dustin Thompson are actually pretty significant. Dustin Thompson argued to the jury, his lawyer argued quite effectively, I will say, and he testified at his own trial that listen, I only came to DC on January sixth because the President told me to. And I only marched on the Capitol because the President told me to, because he said that my vote had been stolen from me, and the election was stolen and it wasn't legitimate. My president was

being stolen from me. Joe Biden was not going to be a legitimate president. And he told me go to the Capitol and fight like hell, or you won't have a country anymore. And I love my country, and I listened to my president. He told me those things. I didn't think he was lying to me. And so there's a couple of really important takeaways from more and more of the insurrectionists who are mounting that defense. The first

takeaway is that's not a legal defense. Sorry about your luck, but I believe, I absolutely believe that mister Thompson and so many of these other insurrectionists did what they did because Donald Trump lied to them, told them their vote was stolen, and told them they have to march on the Capitol and stop the certification. So it's not a legal defense. It's not a factual defense. The jury convicted them basically before they even had enough time to pick

a foreman. They just banged three hours. They banged them out guilty on all six counts. It is a mitigator because it's not like this guy just woke up and said, I'm going to go attack the capitol. This guy said the President told me to attack the capitol, so I'm going to do what the President tells me because I don't know. I'm not smart enough to figure this stuff out for myself. That's a mitigator. So maybe he gets lesser punishment than if he was just an abject criminal

who did this for fun. Right. But here, I think is the most important takeaway at Donald Trump's trial for inciting the insurrection, which I believe will happen someday. Now, you take Dustin Thompson to put him on the stand as a prosecution witness against Donald Trump. You say, mister Thompson, please tell this jury what you told your jury about

why you attacked the capitol. And he repeats all these things, and if he doesn't, you impeach him with his transcript, and you use his trial testimony to prove all of this to the jury and say thank you, mister Thompson, and you turn to the jury and say, ladies and gentlemen, there is proof positive that Donald Trump incited directed the insurrection.

Find him guilty. So what DJ is doing by bringing all of these lesser cases against Donald Trump's foot soldiers is they are building an evidentiary record that they can then use to indict, prosecute, and convict Donald Trump and the others who are responsible for inciting the insurrection. So

there is some good coming out of these prosecutions. Last question for you today, Glenn, will we be hearing will we be seeing these public hearings in the way that we sat through Benghazi, which came up with zero goose egg, absolutely nothing but a media smear campaign against Hillary Clinton before she was going to run for president. When is that going to happen? The latest, the latest I think word we got from any member of the J six committee was, I think a few weeks ago they said

they were hoping for late April. Then I may have heard somebody say may, but I can't swear to it. My guess is it's going to be late spring, early summer. And as Representative Raskin said, it will be both agonizing and riveting for the country to see this evidence, this testimony, which will include evidence of crimes that nobody has seen yet.

And he also said, by the way, there have been a number of heroes that have emerged in the testimony of these eight approaching nine hundred witnesses, and he said, we're going to make sure we highlight them as well. These god these folks understand, these men and women on the committee understand the importance of this hearing may be important beyond any public hearing we've ever had in our nation, and I do think that will help momentum gather for accountability.

I still think the Department of there have been reports in recent weeks they've expanded their criminal probe with the Grand Jury issuing subpoenas to people in Trump's orbit that we haven't heard about. So what we know, Danielle, based on that reporting is there have been Grand jury subpoenas going out to former officials in Trump's orbit, as the Washington Post reported, and we haven't heard anything about it.

So what does that tell us? Yes, they are investigating, and it's not leaking in the way it typically would. So let's hold on to that and you hope that they're doing whatever we kind of suspect they're doing. They're doing it, you know, a hundredfold. I mean, God willing, Glenn As always, thank you so much for making the time to join wike AP and walk us through this slow walk that we're doing to justice. But God willing we get there sometime soon and in enough time to

actually save restore our democracy. We appreciate you. Thank you, Danielle. That is it for me today here on Woke f AS always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.