What Winning Looks Like

sixteen people, including children, are dead. The governor has said that whole families may have perished in this flash flooding and that there is more rain to come. You take in all of these climate crises, because this is what this is right. This is not just a product of happenstance. It is not just a regular quote unquote natural disaster. It is a product of climate change. It is a

product of climate denial. I think about the state of Kentucky, which has had Mitch McConnell as its senator for at least the last forty some odd years. They voted for him with fifty eight point seven percent of the vote. A man who has blocked legislation along with the entirety of the Republican Party that would actually do something with regard to climate change that just outright denies it. They voted for Donald Trump in twenty twenty sixty two percent,

right at sixty two percent. And I think to myself, you know, when we are watching these images and we are feeling so bad for these people, which you should. I think about Jonathan Metzel's book Dying of Whiteness, and I think about why these people continue to vote against their best interests. Like, you're not fucking winning, right, Remember when Donald Trump's big thing would say, Oh, you're sick of winning yet, like we're going to be winning so much,

you're going to be sick of winning. Is this what winning looks like. It looks like people who deny reality. It looks like people who, in order to line their pockets with money from big coal and big oil, deny their constituents the aid that they need. Because at the end of the day, folks, whether or not you know you believe in climate change, much in the same way of whether or not you believe in COVID, it doesn't stop it from happening, right, It doesn't stop it from existing,

and it won't stop it from killing people. Because that's the conversation that we weren't having about time. It changes the amount of deaths that it's going to cause. From the extreme heat episodes that we've seen in this country and around the world. Hundreds of people have lost their lives this summer. Right Tens of thousands of acres of land have been burned up, homes have been burned up,

flooded underwater. I mean, this is some when you're looking at what is happening right now, and if you are a person of religion or faith, this is some biblical shit, right, Like I'm just out here waiting for the locusts right between monkey pocks and fucking COVID and these extreme climate events that keep happening. Between mass shooting, It's like, dear God, you just feel like every day you're getting up and

you're like bracing for impact. I wrote a piece that is upright now at Medium entitled Life on the Brink because I've been trying to wrap my mind around the feeling that I keep having. And I talk about this. I talk about it on Twitter, I talk about it on TikTok, and I talk about it here with all

of you. You know, in twenty twenty, they coined the term languishing, right, this feeling of aimlessness, this sluggishness that we all had because we were locked inside, and even when you know, the doors finally flung open to the outdoors, it didn't look the way that it did in twenty nineteen. It didn't feel the way that it did. And I think for many of us, we thought that we would get the vaccine and then we would be able to pick up where we left it off, where we left off.

That hasn't happened. Right. There is this this layer, this

feeling of overwhelm, of consistent anxiety coupled with depression. The New York Times once again coined a term distract depression, right, because they're talking about the rise in the use and the prescriptions of antidepressants, anxiety medication, distraction medication, etc. Well, there is another term that we now know called ambient stress, which is a stress that kind of runs in the background of our minds right now, so I wrote about that.

Go ahead and check it out at Medium. Coming up next today, my conversation with our friend Glenn Kirshner giving us the latest with the January sixth committee and the latest with who is testifying in front of that committee and where we think Steve Bannon will end up? Will it be thirty days, will it be sixty? Could it be up to two years? That and more is coming up next on WOKEA. Indisputable with Doctor Rashid Ricci is one of the latest shows on the TYT network and

also the fastest growing news show in America. On his show, Doctor Ricci plays no games regarding policy, delivering a heavy dose of fact based truth and penetrating an analysis on all the top news stories focusing on racism, criminal and social justice, politics, police brutality, Karens, and much more. Listeners can also expect interviews with fascinating guests, political leaders, commentators, and even fiery debates with conservatives on a wide range

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all the noise and the news. Each week on the gap Fest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathlon and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter. We do not always agree, We definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time. So subscribe to Slates Political Gapfest new episodes every Thursday. Friends. You know that whenever I have the opportunity to chat with the host of Justice Matters

and MSNBC Legal contributor Glenn Kirshner, I am always thrilled. Glenn. The Department of Justice is doing what I'm referring to as a little bit of a two step. They want they seem to want to have things both ways at this moment, which is we now know, or at least we believe that we know that the Department of Justice, moving at its glacial pace, is in fact investigating people with regard to the insurrection. The architects are being brought

before Grand Juries. Right. There's a little distinction that is being made in the press and with the Department of Justice We're investigating Donald Trump's actions, but we're not necessarily investigating Donald Trump. So Glenn, help me make this make sense in understanding this nuance, this two step that is being done in both the press and with the Department of Justice. Yeah, in order to really understand this, you kind of need to be immersed in the details of

how the grand jury works. But the bottom line is Donald Trump's conduct, behavior, and crimes are being investigated by the grand jury. But here is why some people are pushing back and saying, you can't claim the grand jury is investigating Donald Trump. So when we go into the grand jury. For decades, I spent countless hours and the Grand Jury in Washington, DC investigating crime and indicting cases.

We investigate a crime. So, for example, I believe on January seventh, the day after the attack on the Capitol, federal prosecutors walked into the Grand jury and opened a grand jury investigation. And we call it a grand jury original Why because nobody's been arrested, So it's an original investigation that we opened in the grand jury to see what the heck just went on up at the Capitol. Here's what we call that. We will caption it or name it or title it in ray possible violation of

the Federal Code Section for Insurrection eighteen USC. Twenty three eighty one way by make it the number wrong. That's what we call it in ray. Possible violation of a federal law. And then we begin investigating. We're not investigating a person, We're investigating the crime of insurrection. However, as you move forward in your investigation and you learn more about who was responsible for the insurrection, you begin to

focus on the conduct of the perpetrator or perpetrators. What we know now Danielle, based on great reporting by Carol Lenning and others at the Washington Post, is that she knows the questions that are being asked in the grand jury of witnesses like Greg Jacob and Mark Short. Vice President Pence's high aids right and people should also know that prosecutors are prohibited from breathing a word of what goes on in the grand jury Publicly, we can't even

confirm or deny that anybody has appeared before the grand jury. Investigators, agents, detectives are prohibited from breathing a word of it. The grand jurors are prohibited from breathing a word of it. It's a secret proceeding by law. You know, who's not prohibited from talking about it? The witnesses. They're not prohibited under the rules or the law. We advise every witness. Danielle, you know, we would ask you, respect respectfully not to talk about what goes on in the grand jury, but

we cannot prohibit you. So you now know Carol Lennig is talking to witnesses like Greg Jacob, Mark Short and others because what did she report? And this was blockbuster, she said, The prosecutors in the grand jury are asking the following questions, what did Donald Trump say next? What did Donald Trump do next? What did Donald Trump then arrange with his lawyers? What did Donald Trump tell Vice President Pence to do? What did Donald Trump? What did

Donald Trump? What are they doing? They're investigating Donald Trump for the crimes he committed. Now can you say they've launched a criminal investigation of Donald Trump? Well know, because that's not what we all grand jury investigations. We launch investigations of crime and we investigate those responsible. So as I'm sitting here, based on everything I've seen publicly reporting, yes, Donald Trump's crimes, his behavior, his conduct is being investigated

by a federal grand jury. So let me ask you this, and this is a question that I actually watched Amon Mohadeen ask our friend Joyce White Vance this week, and I want to ask you the same question he asked. You know, So, we have now been through eight hearings with the January sixth Committee. We know that they're not finished right there, they're pausing for you for summer as Congress. Does they have done over a thousand interviews, they have

tens of thousands of documents. Does the Department of Justice just get to be handed over that binder because we know that they are now cooperating and collaborating right on two different tracks, because we know that there are two different tracks that are happening. But does the Department of Justice then have to redo all of that work on their own or can they work off of what the

January sixth Committee has already laid out? Great question, and it's really it's kind of somewhere right in between those two ends of the spectrum. So, first of all, I am completely confident that the j six Committee will give over wholesale everything they've developed in their investigation to the Department of Justice. But I also think Benny Thompson is entitled to flex his coequal branch of government muscle and say, Okay, DJ,

we know you want our work product. We've worked very hard to put it together and present it to the American people. So and by the way, y'all could have been doing this from jump as well. But we will give it to you at a time and in a manner that doesn't interfere with our responsibility to present this in a compelling way to the American people. They're entitled to do that. And you know what, if the Department

of Justice wanted to subpoena those transcripts, they could. They're trying to work through the accommodation process and make the request and play nicely with a coequal branch of government. All of this stuff is probably even going over now as we speak, to the extent the J six Committee thinks they can give over five hundred of the transcripts without interfering with the remaining public hearings that they are

going to want to put on. It's all going to go over, so right to your question, the Department of Justice will do two things. One, they will hopefully at light speed, review all thousand transcripts and prioritize, figure out, Okay, what witnesses are most important to present to the grand jury based on what we now know. They told the J six Committee, they will bring those witnesses in and here's what they're gonna do. I promise you, because I've

done this a thousand times. They will show them their transcript. They will say, do you agree that everything you said before the J six Committee was accurate? Did you make any mistakes? Is there anything in your J six transcript you'd like to correct? And sometimes witnesses misspeak or they've learned some additional details in the intim and they want to add those, but the witnesses will generally say, yes,

that my transcript of my testimony is accurate. They will then slap a grand jury exhibit sticker on it, and they will hand it to the grand jury. Done. Now, let's move on to the next witness. But if there's information that the federal prosecutors feel they need to give the grand jury to supplement what the witness said at the J six Committee hearing, they'll call that witness and they'll say, first of all, do you adopt this transcript as your testimony before this grand Jury. Yes, I do.

Now we have ten twenty one hundred follow up questions we'd like to ask you about what you told the J sixth Committee. So they'll supplement the testimony of that witness, and they will quickly move through this witness after witness after witness. So the answer is yes, they will use that information and give it to the grand jury, but they'll supplement it as necessary. So it will definitely compress the time they need to get all that information before

the grand jury. Oh this is exciting. Like this, this, I actually feel like we have movement. Why do you think, Glenn, that it was Pence's people who went I guess first, or at least that we know of sat before this grand jury? Why do you think it was his people as opposed to who we have thus far presented via the J six Committee. Because people like Mark Short and Greg Jacob are loyal to Mike Pence, and they know Donald Trump set Mike Pence up to be harmed, indeed

to be hanged. And we know that Donald Trump expressly, out of his own mouth, said I agree with my supporters, maybe he should be hanged because he didn't have the courage to corruptly keep me in office. Man. If I worked for Mark for Mike Pence and I had any loyalty to him, you bet your ass. I would beat feet before the Committee and the Federal Grand Jury and say, let me tell you what I know about how Donald Trump set my boss up to be hurt when all my boss was trying to do was follow the law

and abide by the constitution. Oh man, you could never shut me up if you did that to my boss. And I was loyal to my boss. And of course I'm going to testify truthfully because I take the oath very seriously. But I absolutely believe that Mark Short and Greg Jacob laid Donald Trump out in the Grand jury. And as Liz Cheney said, the dam is breaking. And that's why. Now what do you see? You see? You know some things you can't get rid of. Right, They

keep coming back like crab Grass, Mold and Mick mulvaney. Right, So, all of a sudden, these Trump sycophants are running to the Grand Jury or running to the J six Committee. I want to tell my story too. I mean, Minutchin forgot that rodent, right. Mike Pompeo all of a sudden wants to talk because they know the damn is breaking. And the longer they cover up the crimes of Donald Trump, the more at risk they are of being criminally liable for the cover up, for accessory after the fact, from

misprision of a felony. Those are crimes. When you cover up the federal crimes of another, you're committing a crime. These people have committed that crime of the cover up in Layman's terms. So all of a sudden they're like beating feet to testify about what they know. The damn. I'm not going to say the damn is breaking. I think the dam has broken. And I want to ask you, Glenn, what is it that you think that has finally What

was the final sledge hammer into the dam? Right? Because you know, again I am cautiously optimistic finally in the direction that things are actually moving. But what you know, we know Liz Cheney said it. But what from your vantage point do you think was the sledge hammer or the many hits that finally has this breaking. Cassidy Hutchinson brought us inside the White House and inside the Oval office, and once that barrier was broken, and she said, let

me tell you about the misconduct of Mark meadows. Let me tell you what Pat Sippoloney did. Let me tell you what Tony Arnado, this Secret Service Trump blacky, let me tell you what he did. And let me tell you what I heard Donald Trump say with his own mouth, like, I don't care if my supporters are armed, They're not here to hurt me. Let them in, take down the metal detectives, and then the entire armed mob will march

on the Capitol. All of a sudden, we're now inside the Oval Office and all of those other week week week men air quotes intentional around the word men are like, oh my god, Cassidy gave it up. We gotta get in there and tell our side of the story or we're gonna look like crap. That is what I more than any other strike to the damn I think it was a very brave young woman, Cassidy Hutchinson, who will turn out to be one of the pivotal heroes of

this sad side. Going back to Cassidy Hutchinson's a testimony, we learned from there that Donald Trump essentially allegedly assaulted a Secret Service agent demanded to be taken to the Capitol building. The Secret Service, according to the press said that didn't happen. January sixth, Committee asked for requested the

text messages from January sixth and January seventh. They've changed platforms and coincidentally, all of those text messages on the most historic day in the country somehow turn up missing. What do you make of that? And now that these

twenty four members of the Secret Service have retained private council. Yeah, this is so disturbing, Danielle, because when I was a federal prosecutor, I worked cases with the Secret Service with all of the federal law enforcement agencies in DC, and when we would seize evidence pursue into a search warrant that included cell phones and computers, and we needed to have forensic searches done on those cell phones, for example, especially if we thought the bad guy had deleted information

and evidence off of that cell phone. You know, I didn't go down to the FBI lab at Quantico, even though they have great forensic services down there. We would go to the premier law enforcement agency, the United States Secret Service Forensic Sciences Division, and they were the ones who were best at retrieving deleted evidence off of cell phones. It sounds like you're making that up right, because this is now the agency that says whoops and they can't

retrieve their own deleted text messages. That makes no sense to me none. Now, we can't leap to the conclusion that it's a criminal conspiracy to delete important evidence about their communications with or about Donald Trump that day. However, I believe there's enough evidence to open a criminal probe. And here's the thing. You know, they've already lawyered up right. And let me I'm not mocking the sixth Amendment right

to counsel. Everybody is entitled to retain a lawyer. But there's kind of an incongruity there when you're a law enforcement agency and you have certain legal duties and responsibilities to the American people in the Constitution, and then when it looks like you did something wrong, you lawyer up. Well, that's because they're afraid of what's about to come. So here's what we do. We open a criminal probe. We

have the FBI investigate what really happened. And if the Secret Service did nothing wrong, they should welcome that criminal probe because they will be exonerated. But a criminal investigation needs to be open to look into how it is they destroyed what is some of the most critically important

evidence to what really happened on January sixth. You know what else I find troubling about this too, is that the watchdog group, who knew months and months ago that those text messages were no longer available, didn't tell the January sixth commit didn't alert Congress to this fact, which I mean, Glenn, it just there are too many coincidences, right, There are too many things that keep coming up that lead me to believe that there is a conspiracy here,

that Trumpism is become so entrenched in our agencies that we can no longer trust that the oath that people are taking are what is actually being upheld. And it seems to me that we are in an intense moment of cover your own ass, right, you have all of these trumpe will now coming out like you had said earlier, coming out of the woodwork, saying, oh, I'll testify, I'll testify now that the quote unquote damn seems to be breaking and I you know, I guess, does do you

think you know your former federal prosecutor? Does the Department of Justice take these coincidences you know, as they are, or is it like we got to open up this investigation, this investigation, that investigation because none of this makes sense. Yeah, we don't. We don't really believe in these kind of coincidences. What we do is we investigate, and if it turns out this was some sort of pre planned phone migration, okay,

we'll take that into account. But here's the thing. We've learned that this deletion of information, whether criminal or innocent, happened after they were asked to preserve and produce this information. So saying trying to say, well, but it was an innocent phone migration, doesn't really cut it, because then you allowed that innocent phone migration to happen after you were

asked to preserve and produce those text messages. So there really is no compelling innocent explanation based on what I've seen publicly reported, which is why we need to investigate. No, the Department of Justice doesn't take what seemed to be transparently BS explanations at face value. And now, of course we now we've seen reporting that DHS officials like Chad Wolf their text messages of God missing too, and I am shocked, said absolutely nobody. I mean, it's just because

it's just so absurd. Okay, So now we mentioned this at the top, I want to get to McK mulvaney and then end with Steve Bannon. Nick mulvaney has now made himself available to the January sixth committee. It was asked by an NBC reporter, did you just walk in the door where you subpoenaed? He of course was subpoened. He was not walking in of his own reconnaissance into into that hearing. Why do you think that he's there now?

And what do you think that he can offer that is different or maybe than what it is that we already know. Is he there just to bolster Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony? What do you think that his purpose is? So don't forget he was acting chief of staff to Donald Trump until Mark Meadows was made chief of staff. I don't know if that's a trade up or a trade down. You know, only the best people, for sure. And then they gave him some on voyd, a Northern Ireland kind

of thing to placate him. But I urge everybody to look at the statements mc mulvaney made publicly January seventh, because he laid out Donald Trump hard for his responsibility for the insurrection. I mean really in some of the most direct terms that any of the Trump lackeys ever,

you know, offered publicly. So they're obviously going back to that, in my opinion, and saying let's talk about your basis for that, and let's talk about all of the evidence and information you have about why you made those statements

that Donald Trump was responsible. Here's the other thing, though, you know, let's not let's not let Mick mulvanny off the hook, because you know, your viewers should always keep in mind that he was the guy that facilitated the corrupt leveraging of Donald Trump using congressional funds to demand

a dirty political favor from Ukrainian President Zelenski. I know you want to save the lives of your Ukrainian citizen with this money Congress has appropriated to you, but I need a favor, though, I need you to lie and announce that you're opening an investigation into the bidens Mick mulvaney was the one who helped facilitate that dirty deal, and then he went on TV and very publicly boasted that we do it all the time. Get over it.

That's who Mick mulvaney is. And if I were on the j six Investigative Committee, or I was one of the prosecutors in the federal grand jury questioning Mick mulvaney, you can damn be sure I would be talking with him about the bribery and extortions team of President Zelenski, for which Donald Trump has never been held account So we will find out, I'm assuming in the fall, right when season two of the January sixth Committee returns for

the fall sweeps. In the meantime, Steve Bannon had his day in court and was found guilty on both charges. What can we expect, Glenn from this sentence saying here? What what do you believe it will look like? So I watched that. I was in court watching that trial from start to finish, so you don't have to You're welcome, Thank you. It was It was not a lot of fun.

But I want to say a couple of things about it. One, we heap a lot of criticism on the Department of Justice, but there were two remarkable federal prosecutors, Amanda Vaughan and Molly Gaston, who just tried that case expertly, and we need to give credit where credit is due, because we the people were extremely well represented by those two women in that prosecution, really, and I got to talk to them.

You know, they're there. It's being prosecuted out of my old office, right, So anytime I go back to court, I feel like it's it's a reunion for me, and I really enjoy it. Now. Steve Bannon, it was a week long trial. He was the jury convicted him in less than three hours, working in a lunch break. So

that wasn't just a guilty verdict. That was a statement by the jury that Steve Bennon could not have been more guilty of those two criminal charges contempt of Congress for refusing to provide documents and contempt of Congress for refusing to testify. So his sentencing is coming up in October. These are misdemeanors, so all he's facing. Listen, I don't want to do one day in prison, so I don't want to diminish the impact of any any sentence of incarceration.

But each one of these convictions carry with it a thirty day mandatory minimum by law, so the judge has no discretion to go below thirty days, and there's a question of whether these two thirty day periods of incarceration can run together or have to run separately. So he's facing a minimum of at least thirty to sixty days and a maximum of two years in prison. I predict the judge will give him somewhere between six months, nine months, maybe upwards of a year for his two contempt of

Congress convictions. But it really is anybody's guests at this point. Should other people right who have snubbed their nose at Congress? Right? Mark Meadows being one of them who actually was sent over to the Department of Justice. Department of Justice decided

not to go after Mark Meadows for these charges. I don't know why, but should other people now look to Steve Batten as a cautionary tale, like we're not above the law, and we don't get to just say executive privilege when we have none and not answer the call of Congress. Yeah, the answer is yes, because now we can say there are concrete consequences, including prison for up to two years, if you defy a Congressional subpoena. There are three reasons why Mark Meadows may not have been

large by the Department of Justice. Either, he's cooperating, or they are intending to indict him for the larger conspiracy to defraud the United States and all of the other crimes that fall under that umbrella, which is my hope

for Mark Meadows. Or they just decided we're never going to indict a chief of staff to the President of the United States for defying a congressional subpoena because institutionally, that gives us too much heartburn, and if we do it once, then every chief of staff for all time moving forward will always be indicted for something if politicians are willing to do things for nefarious purposes, and we

know the Republicans are. So those are the three reasons, and it may be a combination of those three reasons, but that doesn't really explain why Dan Sabino wasn't indicted for his contempt of Congress. Now, Peter Navarro was indicted for his contempt of Congress. So someday, when all of this becomes a matter of public record, which it all will in the future, maybe years in the future, then we'll get an answer to the question why did doj indict some people for contempt of Congress and decline to

indict others who committed precisely the same crime. But to go right to your question, absolutely there are consequences, and I think that may be part of the reason all of a sudden everybody is sprinting into the j sixth Committee to want to testify. Yeah, that is not a coincidence, Glenn Kirshner. As always, we appreciate your breakdown of the latest and greatest and I feel like we are getting to a place where justice may in fact actually matter as you as you say every day, let's hope that

we get there. Appreciate you. Thanks Daniel. That is it for me today, dear friends. As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke. As fun