October 22, 2025 • 41 mins
To The Contrary’s Charlie Sykes examines Trump’s destruction of the White House—both literal and metaphorical. Then Lawfare’s Anna Bower details her wild text exchanges with prosecutor Lindsay Halligan.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and a pardon. January sixth, Rider is
accused of threatening to kill a minority leader, Jeffries. Who
could have seen it? Not I We have such a
great show for you today. To The Contrary's own Charlie
(00:20):
psych stops by to talk about Trump's destruction of the
White House, both literally and metaphorically. And we'll talk to
law Fair's own Anna Bauer about her insane text with
Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
But first the news Smiley Ice got that generous budget,
and you know, we've seen some reports that they're not
having the easiest time hiring, which is why they're giving
student loan forgiveness and very sad hiring. Basically anybody who
could grudge ooh immigrants there.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yes, slap on some Oakley's bad boy. You're coming Ice.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So there's a new report here from independent journalist jud
Legum on what they did buy and it's pretty fucking horrifying.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, here's the story. Ice has ten billion dollars and
they're spending it. Actually, it's more it's like forty eight
billion dollars and they're spending on seven hundred percent more
on weapons. What they bought will terrify you. So in
twenty nineteen they spent just five point seven million on
the small arms category. Now they're buying things like Tomahawk missiles.
(01:27):
Now they're buying things like guns, armor guided missile warheads
with explosive components. Those are very good in cities. These
are people, by the way, who couldn't get into the
army or the police. Okay, so Chicago is gonna be
everywhere like that's what we're seeing. Like the minute New
(01:49):
York is able to elect a mayor that is not
in the tank for Trump, Donald Trump is going to
send ice here and I think we all see that
coming them all the way. By the way, the susident
should not be threatening states like this is not how
any of this is supposed to work.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah. I don't like the idea of people like this
having weapons in our streets, that there's no recourse about
what they do, and it seems they can just do
whatever they want.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Speak for yourself. I love it, Just kidding, Molly.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You and I have a upcoming project on regulation.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We love it.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
We do. And one of the things we talk about
it is collusion in real estate and all the fuckery
that can go on to raise housing prices which helps
squeeze Americans, and how regulation protects you from it. But
the US Supreme Court is declined to revive an antitrust
lawsuit against Siloh.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Corporate corruption they love it. In case you're wondering, this
crew very big on corporate corruption. No one should be
surprised that this Supreme Court has decided that if you're
a big company and you want to do crimes, it's
all good. I'm not surprised by any of those, but
I do think you know, they can't just rule for Trump.
(03:03):
They also have to rule for big businesses. You know,
this Supreme Court, they are very involved in radically making
the country to look like their image, and I for one,
am not surprised.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, we're going to definitely need to have courts that
actually keep our regulations intact and directives and actually have
these agencies like the FTC be able to have teeth
in the future. So let's hope we get there someday.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, you know, the court is going to have to
be looked at, But for today, they are just going
to blank check any corrupt Republican thing they can.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So I'm going to shock you. And we've never discussed
this on this podcast ever. No, never independent newspapers. They
are dying in a lot of this is because of
private investment firms.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So we are in a local news crisis right now.
Not surprising, but very annoying. We got here through ibate
equity firms buying newspapers trying to make them more profitable
by and basically crushing them. You know, we are in
a news desert. So the more you have no local news,
(04:13):
the more you don't trust local news, the more you
start trusting, you know, ai news that says your city
is a healscape when you can walk down the street
and see it's not. And this is like this scary,
uncanny valley stuff. So more than a third of the
eight thousand, eight hundred and ninety one US newspapers that
(04:34):
existed twenty one years ago are gone two hundred and
thirteen have zero locally based news sources. That means that
you are just you know, and some of these places
have only one news source and it's a conservative news
source or it is like a Sinclair or something.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, a lot of time, it's those ones that are
real big aggregates where they're just not really doing local
news anymore, and it's just news from across the state,
aggregated from a few different papers, and it's kind of
useless to your local area.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, and that's what we're seeing, and that is kind
of shocking.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So North Carolina's advanced new congressional maps to help Republicans
get additional House seats.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So welcome to the arms race where Republicans tried desperately
to prevent a midterm loss by redistricting. This is like
an insane thing to do. And what they're doing here
is they're trying to rob black people of representation. That's
something that the Supreme Court is looking into.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Two.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
This is section two of the Voting Rights Act, which
they are going to rule on. So Republicans have eleven
hour fourteen seats in North Carolina. Again, here's what's happening.
And I think it's really important to Republicans in Texas
give Trump five House seats because he doesn't want to lose.
Then Gavin Newsom goes and gets five for the Democrats.
(06:06):
Then even now we're seeing different Republican states will redraw
in order to please the Mango god king. I want
to point out something that I think is really important,
which is, and I think this is really really really important.
A normal, healthy democracy has checks and balances. So when
(06:30):
the president says I'm doing unpopular stuff some of it
is criminal, I don't want to get investigated, So redraw
the congressional maps for me. The people say, no, we're
not going to do that. That's not what's happening here.
What's happening here is that the administration that serves this
president is just doing whatever whatever he wants. We're going
to see more like this. Charlie Sykes is the author
(06:55):
of the Newsletter to the Contrary and the book The Iconic,
the Brilliant and also very charming Charlie Sykes.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Boy, that's you're putting a little pressure on today. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Right now we're going to talk about the Nazi group chats,
not one, but do Nazi group chats.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
You know, if you didn't know better, It's almost like
it's a pattern, isn't it. I mean, you know, why
why does this keep happening to this nice bunch of guys?
But it is awfully interesting. Okay, let's leave the yrs
aside for the moment is Paul and Grascia, who's the
nominated to run the office of the Office I mean
special counsel. I mean it's a it's a big deal job.
(07:35):
And you know what, it's not actually shocking if you
know anything about Paul and Grossia that he writes stuff
like this. The fact that it hasn't been disqualifying yet,
that's what speaks volumes. I mean, this is the key thing.
Guys go around. You know, I love Hitler, you know,
I'm kind of a Nazi, and it's like they are
still in good standing in MAGA and I don't know,
what do you think, Molly, what are the odds JD.
(07:56):
Van's going to come out and say, oh, come on,
we got to stop this pearl clutching.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Tell us more about Paul Grossia, because I don't know
who he is, so it sounds like you have some
experience with him. I'm just actually curious.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Well, I don't have the notes in front of me,
but but I will say that he's one of those
guys you know, on the far edges of the fever
swamps who's been a troll for some time. As the
extremes have become the mainstream. He's sort of been dragged
along with with the tide, and I don't can it
Just like this one almost feels like a digression because
before we see its taping this, I'm looking at Barry
(08:32):
Weiss's the Free Press.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I was actually going to ask you about Barry Weis,
so go.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
On, yes, well, and they had this piece They're they're
kind of now getting concerned about it. It kind of
seems like something's happening on the right that they seem
to be, you know, being overrun by all these extremists,
these conspiracy theories and these nut jobs, and it's like, huh,
you know, how long has this been going on?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Really?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
You know, and when you have the the nick fuintes Is,
who's basically a neo Nazi except for the Neil part,
sort of pounding on the door and going okay, I'm next,
I'm next up, you know. And so if some of
us have been saying, you know, you are perhaps identifying
a pattern that has been right in front of your
face for the last ten years.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And this, I think is ultimately going to be Barry
Wise's problem. And it's the problem that a lot of
Republicans have found themselves on, which is there's not a
wide lane in that party for socially liberal and right
like you're gay, you're zionist. Okay, a lot of conservatives
or Zionists that that been diagrammed. But then the Nazi
(09:36):
stuff that kind of knocks you out of the contention there.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
You would think, so, you know, I would well have
to check back in about a month or so to
you know, find out what's acceptable and what's not. I mean,
I think the extraordinary thing about last week with the
you know, Hitler Hitler standing young Republicans was that the
Vice President of the United States felt the need to
step forward to minimize and defend them. Now, yeah, you know,
(10:00):
so again if they were just sort of washed out,
everybody said, okay, yeah, definitely that's a red line. Yeah,
that's disqualifying. You know, fine, let's move on. Embarrassing. But
it is interesting that that JD. Vance had to come
out and signal to them, I got your back, because
the most of the world sees that as an incredible
(10:22):
outrage JD.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Vance.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
And this is the key to sup why there's a
little substance here. He thinks those are his constituents, not
necessarily the people on the chat, but the people who
are adjacent to the chat, and so all the rhetoric
about pearl clutching and yeah, you know, kids will be kids,
they weren't kids.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Some of them were fortunate.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Jd. Vance does not want to be outflanked on the right.
So everybody is like, look, everybody knows Paul and Grassey
is a complete nut. I mean they all know that.
I mean, look, we have Cash Battel and we have
you know, Telsea Gabbard and RFK Junior. Yeah. But the
thing is that right now, it's not even about right
left ideology. It's about absolute slavish adoration and a refusal
(11:06):
to break with MAGA in any way whatsoever. And this
is going to be the problem with that, you know,
the Barry Weiss I think and by the way, I'm
not as down on her as other I think she's
going to be way out of her depth there, way
out of her depth. But on both sides, things becomes
shakier as the Republican Party becomes more like more like
North Korea, you know what I mean, you know you
(11:28):
know where I'm getting that here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, And you know, I want to just say this
should be disqualifying on the left and the right Nazi stuff. Yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
And and look, Democrats, you know, can't get into the
loop of thinking, well, if they're not going to disqualify
anyone on their side, we have to stick with them.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
No.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
You know again, that's the difference between insane party and
the sane party. And also, this is one of those
moments where Democrats, I think, have they Well, they're going
to have to make this decision over and over again.
Do you want to, you know, go down in flames
with your guy, Do you want to scratch your ideological
id or are you going to do what it takes
(12:07):
to win either the House or the Senate or both
of them? Because quite frankly, I mean, here's the thing. No,
King's great, fantastic, wonderful, successful, beyond the wildest expectations. And
yet you're not going to have a meaningful resistance to
Donald Trump unless benefessially, yeah, unless you win the election.
(12:27):
That's going to require a certain ruthlessness.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah. I didn't mean to step on your punchline there,
because it is important and you got to win those elections,
and you also got to run in this redistricting arms race.
The Supreme Court has this opportunity to shut down this
redistricting arms race to say, like no redistrict day. Maybe
they get to even maybe they throw out the Voting
(12:51):
Rights Act and they Republicans get twenty seats. Either way,
the Founding Fathers did not. This was not the plan.
Like clearly there was no textualist interpretation where like the
President wanted them to just cut away, you know, like
talk us through how insane this is.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Well, I mean it is insane, and it is dangerous,
and it will make absolutely everything worse. It will become very,
very difficult to unwine. The Supreme Court opened the door
to this. I think it was involving the Wisconsin case
where they basically said partisan jerrymandering is not a problem. Look,
I agree with you. I will be glad to have
them shut this down. I think that that in fact,
(13:30):
though there will show difference to the States. Look, you
want to talk about originalism in the Constitution, and I'm
going off a little bit of a tangent here. The
originalist interpretation of both the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence is no kings right. It is the entire point
click of the original text of the Constitution was to
(13:50):
divide power so that you would not have an emperor
who would be able to dictate to the country. It's
why you create three branches of government, why create checks
and balances, why you create why you have a Bill
of rights, why you enumerate the powers the government has
and it doesn't have. So you look at all the
(14:10):
stuff that's going on right here, and no, I think, Molly,
I think it's safe to say that this is not what.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
The founders.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
He said.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
So the Supreme Court justices who say our job is
to revive the original intent of the Constitution, look out
of your fucking windows.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Do you honestly exact?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
This is this what I mean?
Speaker 5 (14:32):
Know?
Speaker 4 (14:32):
And I hope we talk about Donald Trump being, you know,
the first president to actually begin to destroy the White
House at some point, because again, I the founding fathers
that kind of probably remember when the British burned down everything,
probably had a different attitude toward the vandalization of the
White House. Right now, but I'm sorry, now, I'm now,
(14:52):
I'm just now I'm wandering now, I'm just I'm just.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I wonder if you could talk about the White House,
those pictures of the White House ball because I actually
think there are a couple of things this administration is
doing that are like, I mean, small relative to some
of the other stuff they're doing, but I actually think
are really going to hurt them in profound ways. And
I believe that what Donald Trump is doing to the
(15:18):
East wing right now those pictures that I saw, people
are I think deeply affected by them, and I don't
think that this administration has like completely priced in how
traumatic those pictures are.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
I hope you're right about this, because you could certainly imagine,
you know, on Earth one point zero, somebody is saying
that the president, you know, at a time when the
government is shut down, when people are faced with massive
increases in their healthcare prices and inflation is resurging, the
only optics of tearing down the White House to install
(15:52):
a two hundred and fifty million dollars goldfist stooned ballroom
paid by your billionaire oligarch friends. That just wouldn't look right,
you know. It kind of cuts against your populist grain.
And so you have a you have a you know,
the critics, the Democrats have a bit have an opportunity
to connect some dots here.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
You know that.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
And by the way, as I wrote in my newsletter
the sometimes called wait just to the contrary to Actually
I actually led with this, and I said, you know,
sometimes the symbolism is just two on the nose, too obvious.
Here's Donald Trump vandalizing the White House. So I think
people ought to be offended at the arrogance it shows,
(16:38):
but also how out of touch this, you know, the
the people's president really is when you're talking about this
gaudy ballroom that he's that he's doing this.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
They can fit nine ninety nine people, not a thousand going.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Yeah, So I mean, I I hope that they make
that case. I mean, you know, we we've I don't
want to be the ten millionth person to comment on
the Democrats messaging issues, but I think that you can
connect some dots to this, this overriding thing that, you
know what, Donald Trump is really not on your side.
Donald Trump really doesn't give a shit about you. Donald
Trump will shit on you, but he really doesn't give
(17:17):
a shit about the problems you have. And because who
was he for, He's for himself and his you know,
his age of Gilded Age friends, creating this Gilded Age
obscenity in the White House.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I wonder if you could talk about the House of Representatives,
Mike Johnson has sent them home. There's a calendar. I'm
sure you've seen this graphic of account. Yeah, they've worked
like an hour. I mean, basically talk us through what
you think about that.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Well, it is interesting. I mean, here you have Mike
Johnson who's got plenty of time to provide commentary about
the No King's rally, which you call the Hate America Rally,
and then he's actually defending the Trump's AI thing where
he takes a dump on on the love satire, Donald
tru satire, and yeah, Mike Johnson really is a student
of satires. It's the kind of thing you would find
(18:11):
in deuterotomy right where the Old Testament, that kind of
that kind of thing. The larger point is that everything
that's happening is happening again, going back to the Founders.
The Founders thought that the constant that the that the
Congress was the most powerful branch of government. Under Mike Johnson,
the Congress is gone. They're not just potted plants. They
(18:32):
are elsewhere. You look at that calendar, and he's basically
shut them down. They are taking a very very very
very long taxpayer funded vacation, and I think it's worth
noting that one of the reasons they're doing that is
because he so desperately does not want to have a
vote on the Epstein files, I mean tweet coming back.
(18:54):
Those Epstein files had become so important, are so sticky
that the Congress of the United States has essentially shut
down for the duration and Mike Johnson again is he's
not even swearing in the new congressman. But it is remarkable.
I would urge people to look at that calendar because
I think I'm trying to remember what I wrote about this.
(19:14):
I mean, with what the numbers are. I think they've
been in session, like you know what, you know, sixteen
days over the last six I mean twenty days over
the last sixteen weeks or or something like that. Something
absolutely something absurd like that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And they're being paid, and they have staffs, and they
have the best healthcare in the world, which is kind
of amazing. So usually in a shutdown, what happens is
that you keep the branches in even if they're not
doing anything, because they're negotiating because it looks better. You
think Mike Johnson is making a mistake here.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I don't think Mike Johnson has any power. I mean yes,
I mean, yes, there's there's cascading mistakes, but I mean
the fundamental thing is that, and this is the sign
of our times, is that he's got a very very
narrow house majority. He doesn't necess really have complete control,
and his entire function is to do what Donald Trump
tells him to do. I mean, there was once a
(20:07):
time when the Speaker of the United States would if
he met with the president, he would meet as a
virtual coequal, at least in terms of like what's going
to happen next. That's not the you know, that's not
the situation right now. So Mike Johnson is Mike Johnson
is willing to do something the founders never imagined. Surrender
(20:27):
all of his clouts, surrender all of his power, go
home in service of Donald Trump's, you know, demand that
he cover up for pedophiles and do whatever he wants
him to do.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, and it is just amazing. So one of the
things when I've talked to people about the shutdown in leadership,
obviously not on the Republican side, they say something to
the effect of, like, this shutdown lasts until Donald Trump
wants it to end. Because they don't see likely that
he's the way out of this, or they make some
(21:01):
kind of deal, but that if he wants to end
it tomorrow he can well.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Again, the Democrats have some agency, They have a little
bit of clout. I am a little concerned about what
the Democrats' endgame is. Do they have an exit strategy?
If Donald Trump does call them up and say, Okay,
I'm going to give you the healthcare subsidies?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Are we good?
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Are we just going to go back? Are you going
to sign on to a deal that you know that
they won't live up to. They've made it clear that
there are more decisions. How do you even sign a
piece of paper with them when they've announced that they're
going to ignore it, not to mention, like everything else
that's going on. How will the base react? What will
the people have turned out for no Kings feel when
(21:40):
King j Jeffries and Chuck Schumer go to the White
House and say, Okay, we've decided to reopen Donald Trump's government.
I mean, this is this.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Is this is just a problem. Problem problem.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Yeah, I mean, I mean one you know, one scenario
that I certainly you know I am not looking forward to,
is that Republicans just simply basically say fuck it, We're
going to do away with the filibuster. We're going to
pass this with our own votes. We're going to open
the government, which has the advantage at least short term,
of sparing the Democrats voting to refund Donald Trump's state.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
That could really happen. I do think though, there's a
weakness in the Senate, like you could see a world
where the Republicans peel off a few people, but you
have seen Republican appropriators saying this is not don't make
a deal with these people.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yeah. So I again, I think that part of the
part of the weird, the weird dynamic of this shutdown
is that frankly, nobody seems to be talking about it
that much. You know, given given given the new cycle
of who notice this, all the conversations that you have
with people, know there are twenty things to talk about
in any given day, and it's certainly possible you won't
(22:54):
you won't get even to the shutdown to lighteen or nineteen.
So the normal sort of pressure on the part needs
to settle, like oh my god, this cannot go on,
we can't do anything. Has not happened and we haven't
had the kind of pain.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
We obviously social Security checks will go out, the military
is still being paid, so you know, until there is
some irreversible pain, I don't know what the pressure is
going to be. So I mean I see people now
speculating that we might have a shutdown until Thanksgiving. I
don't think that that's out of the remal possibility.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Charlie Sikes, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
How the right lost its mind? Anna Bauer is a
senior editor at law Fair. Welcome to Fast Politics, Anna,
thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
No, I'm so happy to be here. I, like I said,
huge fan of your work and really grateful that you're
having you on.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So you write a lot about the courts, the law,
the fuckery happening, and the Trump administration, but this is
an amazing I want you first to talk about a
text message you got. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:04):
So two saturdays ago, I was sitting in my apartment.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
I was about to watch Netflix.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
I'd spend the morning tweeting, touching up on the news,
particularly about the indictment that had just been handed down
against New York Attorney General Letitia James. A woman named
Lindsay Halligan is handling that case. She's also handling the
case against former FBI director James Comey.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
She had been brought in too, because no one else
would sign off on this. And Lindsay Halligan, friend of Trumps,
had originally been a Parking lawyer.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
No, well, no, so that's a different Trump lawyer. So
Lindsay Halligan was a Florida insurance lawyer who was brought
in to be one of Trump's personal lawyers around twenty
twenty two. That was when the criminal investigations were heating up.
She was one of the people who joined his criminal
defense team.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
For some time.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
At the time, I had just started cover during the
criminal cases against Trump. People might remember there was the
mar A Lago search, all these efforts by Trump's team
to kind of put a stop to the Justice Department's
investigation of retention of class by documents. And one of
the people who worked on that case was Lindsay Halligan.
(25:18):
And at the time I actually ran into her a
few years ago while I was covering this case after
a hearing, she was eating dinner at the same restaurant
I was with another criminal defense attorney for Trump named
Jim Trusty. All of which is kind of context for
what comes next, which is fast forward years later. I
have not spoken to Lindsay Halligan. She's embroiled in controversy
(25:40):
over the fact that she's been placed as the top
prosecutor by Trump in the Eastern District of Virginia to
prosecute his perceived political enemies. And I'm sitting there on
a Saturday in my apartment about to watch TV when
I get a text message on Signal, which is a
messaging app that Mini j lest use to speak with sources,
(26:03):
and the person who's texting me claims to be Lindsay Halligan.
It's not every day, even as someone who covers legal issues,
it's not every day that I get a message from
a sitting United States attorney, much less the attorney who
is prosecuting the president's political enemies. I thought it was
a hoax, thought it was a troll of some sort,
(26:24):
or at most a phishing effort by someone you know.
And so I respond on the off chance that maybe
it really is her, by asking her where we first
met and who she was with. And that is why
I brought up that I had met her a few
years earlier, because.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And then what does she say.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
She immediately correctly responds, she says, you know, I was
with Trustee, and then she named the place where we
met in Florida after this hearing. And so I'm like, oh,
maybe this really is Lindsay Halligan, because I've never spoken
publicly about the fact that we ran into each other
briefly a few years ago. So I start asking her
some questions as any journalist would, and it becomes clear
(27:06):
that what she's reaching out to me about is quite
unusual in a number of respects. The first is that
she is reaching out to me about some tweets that
I'd sent earlier that day that didn't include my own
reporting about the Letitia James case, but instead some arized
(27:26):
a New York Times story that had been published about
the Letitia James case, and in that tweet, I summarized
this report specifically about grand jury testimony in the case.
Now this is really important because for people who aren't
familiar with, you know, how Justice Department.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Norms and federal law works.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Typically, federal prosecutors a don't talk about active investigations or
ongoing prosecutions because there's just like so many things that
can go wrong if you do there's all kinds of
ways that defense counsel can pick apart what a prosecutor says.
It might result in pre trial publicity emotions, you know,
(28:09):
where the defense is arguing, oh, they they've said things
that are prejudicial to my client. You know, we want
to move the case to a different district. Like, you know,
there's that kind of thing. But particularly with grand jury matters,
there's a really strict rule under the federal rules of
criminal procedure that prohibits an attorney for the government from
(28:30):
disclosing anything that occurred before the grand jury. And she's
reaching out to me about a story that involves grand
jury testimony in my summary of that testimony. So it
was very surprising to me in that context because typically
federal prosecutors like don't even go anywhere near that kind
of subject matter.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
But in her defense, she has no idea what the
folks she's doing.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
Right, So, and this is one of the reasons why
you know, we found all of this in the end
to be quite us work, is that, like it clearly
underscores that this is a woman who does not seem
to understand the norms around prosecutions and the law and
does not have the relevant experience that you know, a
(29:15):
normal federal prosecutor in her position would. But what is
really strange to me, Molly, and you are as aware
of this kind of thing as I am, is the
kind of media engagement element of it all. Where like,
even though this woman has no prosecutorial experience, she is
a person who has experienced engaging with the media, right
(29:37):
Like she has an undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism. She
worked on Trump's criminal defense team for several years. That's
a very high profile position where she made many, you know,
television appearances on behalf of her client. She then worked
in the White House. Everyone in Washington knows that when
you are a public official, you are talking to a reporter,
(30:00):
clearly a reporter you don't know, you don't have an
ongoing kind of relationship with. At the outside of that conversation,
you talk about the basis on which you are speaking,
whether that is, you know, maybe you want to speak
off the record, and that means the reporter can't report
anything that you discuss. Instead, Lindsay Halligan didn't say anything
(30:21):
about the basis on which we're speaking, And the default
rule is that that means everything is on the record.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Again.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I just can't underscore how weird all of this is,
because she's a city United States attorney talking on the
record to a reporter about someone else's reporting that concerned
grand jury testimony, and all of that put together is
just highly strange. And we spoke to a number of
former prosecutors, current and former journalists to see if in
(30:50):
their experience, they'd ever heard of anything like it, and
the universal answer was no, So.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Explain to us she talks to you, and then what happen?
Speaker 5 (31:00):
Yeah, So she talks to me, mostly complaining about my reporting,
trying to suggest that I got something wrong in my
summary of this New York Times story. I try to
follow up multiple times to understand what was inaccurate. You know,
I think I asked four or five times, like what
specifically is wrong with my post? She never answers the question. Look,
(31:25):
I kind of didn't quite understand if she was serious
about opening a line of communication with me, because at
one point she offers to answer any questions that I
might have. So, you know, as any journalist would, I
try to ask her questions about the case. It eventually
becomes clear she's not interested in actually engaging with me.
(31:46):
And then you know, she starts, she starts ghosting me.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
And so as.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
We're writing the story a few hours before we published,
after we confirm that it actually was her number by
obtaining her phone number which connected to her signal account,
we went to the Justice Department to seek comment, which
is the thing that you always do as a reporter.
So we gave them an opportunity to comment. All that
(32:11):
we said in the request for comment was we're publishing
this story today about this exchange. Here's a transcript of
the exchange. And then we listed a number of questions
that we had, you know, for example, does Lindsay Alligan
deny that these are her genuine messages?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
You know, things like that, And we.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
Gave them a four fifteen pm deadline, and after days
of ghosting me, at four to ten, before we'd even
heard back from the Justice Department, Lindsay Halligan reactivates our
signal chat and says to me, by the way, everything
I said was off the record. Again, if you know
how these things typically work, that is not how it works.
(32:53):
You don't get to say retroactively, or to demand retroactively
that something you said as a public officials off the record,
and so I expressed that to her and said, that's
not how this works. I'm sorry, and she said, yes,
it is how it works off record, And again I
said I would have been happy to speak with you
(33:14):
on that basis, which I definitely would have.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
You would have had to specified, yeah, but.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
We had no agreement, and I still haven't agreed to
speak to you on that basis. And her response to
that was, it was obvious it was off the record.
It was on signal, disappearing messages were set and you know,
to mee, yeah, ViBe's based agreement.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
To me, this is again I want to underscore that, Like,
there are occasions when if you have an ongoing kind
of source reporter relationship with someone, you might have an
agreement with that person that everything is off the record
unless we agree otherwise, right, like the inverse of the
normal kind of assumption. So there are contextual situations when
(34:02):
you know, you kind of implicitly understand that something might
have been off the record.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
This is not one of those. She approached me.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
She's the most high profile prosecutor in the country quite literally,
anything she says about these cases is going to be newsworthy,
and she never once even suggested that we were off
the record. Meanwhile, the Justice Department, while you know, verifying
that these were indeed genuine messages, claimed that I was
(34:30):
threatening to lead the conversation.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
That's their favorite, by the way. That's like, you know,
it's like that Pentagon thing. We might just have to
arrest you to see what happened, you know.
Speaker 5 (34:41):
Yeah, And look, I think it was particularly ironic here
because Lindsey Halligan is messaging me about this ongoing prosecution,
and then a few days later reportedly fired some career
prosecutors and released a statement around it, suggesting that they
have leaked information about an ongoing prosecution. She claimed that
(35:05):
the Eastern District of Virginia, which she oversees as a
zero tolerance policy on unauthorized disclosure to the media, that's
not true, right, And then Chad bill Martin with the
Justice Department had a long statement about we speak through
our filings, we don't comment on ongoing prosecutions.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Well, then she should have texted you, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
So it's all very just kind of you know, I
think it shows her inexperience, but it also it shows that, like, look,
there are so many ways that the defense can pick
apart this kind of communication and this kind of conduct.
I don't know if they will. But Abby Lowell, who
is Letitia James's defense.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Counsel, pretty good lawyer.
Speaker 5 (35:51):
Yeah yeah, I mean, look, and he's handling all types
of these high profile cases. And I will not be
surprised if we see some about this interaction and these
comments that she's made find their way into some type
of motion that Abby Lowell might file or already plans
to file, you know, related to the case. And all
(36:13):
of it really just you know, is still kind of
baffling to me that you.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Would risk that in the position that she's in.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
So what can you extrapolate from this? Like I want
you to put on your psychiatrist hat, like why do
you think she texted you? And what do you think
the game was there? And what do you think it
speaks to.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
I've thought about this over and over and over again,
and everything that I can come up with is pure speculation,
because of course I.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Still don't understand it. If I had to guess, I
would say.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Like she's under immense pressure and public scrutiny and has
been heavily criticized by so many for bringing this case
that does not appear to be strong at all. You
can read the piece to understand why we don't have
to go into that. But she's under this immense pressure,
(37:07):
and I think maybe it's just she had a moment
of frustration where she's, you know, happens to be online
on a Saturday and see someone posting about something, and
maybe that's what it was. Frankly, I just don't understand it,
and I don't know Mollie, Like, what do you make
of it? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I think she knows she's over her head, and I
think she's scared my gas. And again, this is all conjecture,
because you know, I mean, you know her, I don't.
But I think when people email other people or text
them about what they post, they're usually trying to control
the narrative. I think she's trying, and I think it's
scary because she knows there's no world in which she's
(37:48):
you know, will Trump protect her? I mean, did Trump
protect Rudy Giuliani? No?
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of examples of people who,
you know, were Trump lawyers who things did not end
well for them. You know, I believe it was Hugo
Lowell at The Guardian who said, you reported at one
point that Lindsay Alligan told law school asso she had
at one time that she wanted to be the next
(38:13):
Hope Picks. Well, look, I covered Trump's criminal trial in
New York, and here's how things ended for Hope Picks.
She was on the witness stand as a witness against
him in his criminal trial. She ended up breaking down
crying about it. That's how they there not a great ending.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Those still better than Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yeah right, I.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Mean Rudy Giuliani. There's all kinds of bar discipline issues
and all that. I think overall that what this shows
is that there's a reason why you've put really experienced,
qualified people in these United States attorneys positions, because they
are people who would know better.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
But Lindsay Halligan apparently did not.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, so interesting. I mean, most importantly, you have now
birthed the meme, which I think those who are interested
in internet culture, you have now birthed the meme. By
the way, Dash, Dash, everything I ever sent you is
off record. Period. You're not a journalist, so it's weird
(39:13):
saying that, but just letting you.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Know, it's incredible, No more perfectly Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
So Molly Laura Ingram, Fox News host. She talked on
and on about Hunter Biden's arisma, all this business collusion,
how it's corrupt selling the office of the presidency. Who
do you think she's in business with? Now?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Is it Hunter Biden?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
No?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Is it Ashley Biden? No?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Now they're too busy stealing her diary?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Is it Don Junior?
Speaker 2 (39:48):
It is Don Junior, a man whose eyes do very
strange things what he talks.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Wait, so you're telling me that Laura Ingram, a journalist,
is also doing a business deal with Don t from Junior.
I am shocked, I tell you shocked.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, it's almost like at this point, it's like a satire.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
I heard somebody say that they're just dabbing on us
all the time, and that's kind of what this feels like.
If it's just like, yeah, you know, I remember what
we told you, we cared about what. We don't care
about the rules. We really don't.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
No, they really don't care about their rules. The rules
are for dems, yeah and losers.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah. It reminds me of that tweet that says democrats
often treat politics like watching a dog dunk a basketball,
and say a dog can't dunk a basketball, and the
dog just keeps dunking the basketball.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, it turns out dogs can, in fact dunk.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Air Bud is real.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
There's no special dogs can dunk. That's it for this
episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
and Saturday the best minds and politics make sense of
all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send
(41:07):
it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks
for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and a pardon. January sixth, Rider is
accused of threatening to kill a minority leader, Jeffries. Who
could have seen it? Not I We have such a
great show for you today. To The Contrary's own Charlie
(00:20):
psych stops by to talk about Trump's destruction of the
White House, both literally and metaphorically. And we'll talk to
law Fair's own Anna Bauer about her insane text with
Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
But first the news Smiley Ice got that generous budget,
and you know, we've seen some reports that they're not
having the easiest time hiring, which is why they're giving
student loan forgiveness and very sad hiring. Basically anybody who
could grudge ooh immigrants there.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yes, slap on some Oakley's bad boy. You're coming Ice.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So there's a new report here from independent journalist jud
Legum on what they did buy and it's pretty fucking horrifying.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, here's the story. Ice has ten billion dollars and
they're spending it. Actually, it's more it's like forty eight
billion dollars and they're spending on seven hundred percent more
on weapons. What they bought will terrify you. So in
twenty nineteen they spent just five point seven million on
the small arms category. Now they're buying things like Tomahawk missiles.
(01:27):
Now they're buying things like guns, armor guided missile warheads
with explosive components. Those are very good in cities. These
are people, by the way, who couldn't get into the
army or the police. Okay, so Chicago is gonna be
everywhere like that's what we're seeing. Like the minute New
(01:49):
York is able to elect a mayor that is not
in the tank for Trump, Donald Trump is going to
send ice here and I think we all see that
coming them all the way. By the way, the susident
should not be threatening states like this is not how
any of this is supposed to work.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah. I don't like the idea of people like this
having weapons in our streets, that there's no recourse about
what they do, and it seems they can just do
whatever they want.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Speak for yourself. I love it, Just kidding, Molly.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You and I have a upcoming project on regulation.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We love it.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
We do. And one of the things we talk about
it is collusion in real estate and all the fuckery
that can go on to raise housing prices which helps
squeeze Americans, and how regulation protects you from it. But
the US Supreme Court is declined to revive an antitrust
lawsuit against Siloh.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Corporate corruption they love it. In case you're wondering, this
crew very big on corporate corruption. No one should be
surprised that this Supreme Court has decided that if you're
a big company and you want to do crimes, it's
all good. I'm not surprised by any of those, but
I do think you know, they can't just rule for Trump.
(03:03):
They also have to rule for big businesses. You know,
this Supreme Court, they are very involved in radically making
the country to look like their image, and I for one,
am not surprised.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, we're going to definitely need to have courts that
actually keep our regulations intact and directives and actually have
these agencies like the FTC be able to have teeth
in the future. So let's hope we get there someday.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, you know, the court is going to have to
be looked at, But for today, they are just going
to blank check any corrupt Republican thing they can.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So I'm going to shock you. And we've never discussed
this on this podcast ever. No, never independent newspapers. They
are dying in a lot of this is because of
private investment firms.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So we are in a local news crisis right now.
Not surprising, but very annoying. We got here through ibate
equity firms buying newspapers trying to make them more profitable
by and basically crushing them. You know, we are in
a news desert. So the more you have no local news,
(04:13):
the more you don't trust local news, the more you
start trusting, you know, ai news that says your city
is a healscape when you can walk down the street
and see it's not. And this is like this scary,
uncanny valley stuff. So more than a third of the
eight thousand, eight hundred and ninety one US newspapers that
(04:34):
existed twenty one years ago are gone two hundred and
thirteen have zero locally based news sources. That means that
you are just you know, and some of these places
have only one news source and it's a conservative news
source or it is like a Sinclair or something.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, a lot of time, it's those ones that are
real big aggregates where they're just not really doing local
news anymore, and it's just news from across the state,
aggregated from a few different papers, and it's kind of
useless to your local area.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, and that's what we're seeing, and that is kind
of shocking.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So North Carolina's advanced new congressional maps to help Republicans
get additional House seats.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So welcome to the arms race where Republicans tried desperately
to prevent a midterm loss by redistricting. This is like
an insane thing to do. And what they're doing here
is they're trying to rob black people of representation. That's
something that the Supreme Court is looking into.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Two.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
This is section two of the Voting Rights Act, which
they are going to rule on. So Republicans have eleven
hour fourteen seats in North Carolina. Again, here's what's happening.
And I think it's really important to Republicans in Texas
give Trump five House seats because he doesn't want to lose.
Then Gavin Newsom goes and gets five for the Democrats.
(06:06):
Then even now we're seeing different Republican states will redraw
in order to please the Mango god king. I want
to point out something that I think is really important,
which is, and I think this is really really really important.
A normal, healthy democracy has checks and balances. So when
(06:30):
the president says I'm doing unpopular stuff some of it
is criminal, I don't want to get investigated, So redraw
the congressional maps for me. The people say, no, we're
not going to do that. That's not what's happening here.
What's happening here is that the administration that serves this
president is just doing whatever whatever he wants. We're going
to see more like this. Charlie Sykes is the author
(06:55):
of the Newsletter to the Contrary and the book The Iconic,
the Brilliant and also very charming Charlie Sykes.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Boy, that's you're putting a little pressure on today. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Right now we're going to talk about the Nazi group chats,
not one, but do Nazi group chats.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
You know, if you didn't know better, It's almost like
it's a pattern, isn't it. I mean, you know, why
why does this keep happening to this nice bunch of guys?
But it is awfully interesting. Okay, let's leave the yrs
aside for the moment is Paul and Grascia, who's the
nominated to run the office of the Office I mean
special counsel. I mean it's a it's a big deal job.
(07:35):
And you know what, it's not actually shocking if you
know anything about Paul and Grossia that he writes stuff
like this. The fact that it hasn't been disqualifying yet,
that's what speaks volumes. I mean, this is the key thing.
Guys go around. You know, I love Hitler, you know,
I'm kind of a Nazi, and it's like they are
still in good standing in MAGA and I don't know,
what do you think, Molly, what are the odds JD.
(07:56):
Van's going to come out and say, oh, come on,
we got to stop this pearl clutching.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Tell us more about Paul Grossia, because I don't know
who he is, so it sounds like you have some
experience with him. I'm just actually curious.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Well, I don't have the notes in front of me,
but but I will say that he's one of those
guys you know, on the far edges of the fever
swamps who's been a troll for some time. As the
extremes have become the mainstream. He's sort of been dragged
along with with the tide, and I don't can it
Just like this one almost feels like a digression because
before we see its taping this, I'm looking at Barry
(08:32):
Weiss's the Free Press.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I was actually going to ask you about Barry Weis,
so go.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
On, yes, well, and they had this piece They're they're
kind of now getting concerned about it. It kind of
seems like something's happening on the right that they seem
to be, you know, being overrun by all these extremists,
these conspiracy theories and these nut jobs, and it's like, huh,
you know, how long has this been going on?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Really?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
You know, and when you have the the nick fuintes Is,
who's basically a neo Nazi except for the Neil part,
sort of pounding on the door and going okay, I'm next,
I'm next up, you know. And so if some of
us have been saying, you know, you are perhaps identifying
a pattern that has been right in front of your
face for the last ten years.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And this, I think is ultimately going to be Barry
Wise's problem. And it's the problem that a lot of
Republicans have found themselves on, which is there's not a
wide lane in that party for socially liberal and right
like you're gay, you're zionist. Okay, a lot of conservatives
or Zionists that that been diagrammed. But then the Nazi
(09:36):
stuff that kind of knocks you out of the contention there.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
You would think, so, you know, I would well have
to check back in about a month or so to
you know, find out what's acceptable and what's not. I mean,
I think the extraordinary thing about last week with the
you know, Hitler Hitler standing young Republicans was that the
Vice President of the United States felt the need to
step forward to minimize and defend them. Now, yeah, you know,
(10:00):
so again if they were just sort of washed out,
everybody said, okay, yeah, definitely that's a red line. Yeah,
that's disqualifying. You know, fine, let's move on. Embarrassing. But
it is interesting that that JD. Vance had to come
out and signal to them, I got your back, because
the most of the world sees that as an incredible
(10:22):
outrage JD.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Vance.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
And this is the key to sup why there's a
little substance here. He thinks those are his constituents, not
necessarily the people on the chat, but the people who
are adjacent to the chat, and so all the rhetoric
about pearl clutching and yeah, you know, kids will be kids,
they weren't kids.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Some of them were fortunate.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Jd. Vance does not want to be outflanked on the right.
So everybody is like, look, everybody knows Paul and Grassey
is a complete nut. I mean they all know that.
I mean, look, we have Cash Battel and we have
you know, Telsea Gabbard and RFK Junior. Yeah. But the
thing is that right now, it's not even about right
left ideology. It's about absolute slavish adoration and a refusal
(11:06):
to break with MAGA in any way whatsoever. And this
is going to be the problem with that, you know,
the Barry Weiss I think and by the way, I'm
not as down on her as other I think she's
going to be way out of her depth there, way
out of her depth. But on both sides, things becomes
shakier as the Republican Party becomes more like more like
North Korea, you know what I mean, you know you
(11:28):
know where I'm getting that here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, And you know, I want to just say this
should be disqualifying on the left and the right Nazi stuff. Yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
And and look, Democrats, you know, can't get into the
loop of thinking, well, if they're not going to disqualify
anyone on their side, we have to stick with them.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
No.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
You know again, that's the difference between insane party and
the sane party. And also, this is one of those
moments where Democrats, I think, have they Well, they're going
to have to make this decision over and over again.
Do you want to, you know, go down in flames
with your guy, Do you want to scratch your ideological
id or are you going to do what it takes
(12:07):
to win either the House or the Senate or both
of them? Because quite frankly, I mean, here's the thing. No,
King's great, fantastic, wonderful, successful, beyond the wildest expectations. And
yet you're not going to have a meaningful resistance to
Donald Trump unless benefessially, yeah, unless you win the election.
(12:27):
That's going to require a certain ruthlessness.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah. I didn't mean to step on your punchline there,
because it is important and you got to win those elections,
and you also got to run in this redistricting arms race.
The Supreme Court has this opportunity to shut down this
redistricting arms race to say, like no redistrict day. Maybe
they get to even maybe they throw out the Voting
(12:51):
Rights Act and they Republicans get twenty seats. Either way,
the Founding Fathers did not. This was not the plan.
Like clearly there was no textualist interpretation where like the
President wanted them to just cut away, you know, like
talk us through how insane this is.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Well, I mean it is insane, and it is dangerous,
and it will make absolutely everything worse. It will become very,
very difficult to unwine. The Supreme Court opened the door
to this. I think it was involving the Wisconsin case
where they basically said partisan jerrymandering is not a problem. Look,
I agree with you. I will be glad to have
them shut this down. I think that that in fact,
(13:30):
though there will show difference to the States. Look, you
want to talk about originalism in the Constitution, and I'm
going off a little bit of a tangent here. The
originalist interpretation of both the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence is no kings right. It is the entire point
click of the original text of the Constitution was to
(13:50):
divide power so that you would not have an emperor
who would be able to dictate to the country. It's
why you create three branches of government, why create checks
and balances, why you create why you have a Bill
of rights, why you enumerate the powers the government has
and it doesn't have. So you look at all the
(14:10):
stuff that's going on right here, and no, I think, Molly,
I think it's safe to say that this is not what.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
The founders.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
He said.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
So the Supreme Court justices who say our job is
to revive the original intent of the Constitution, look out
of your fucking windows.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Do you honestly exact?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
This is this what I mean?
Speaker 5 (14:32):
Know?
Speaker 4 (14:32):
And I hope we talk about Donald Trump being, you know,
the first president to actually begin to destroy the White
House at some point, because again, I the founding fathers
that kind of probably remember when the British burned down everything,
probably had a different attitude toward the vandalization of the
White House. Right now, but I'm sorry, now, I'm now,
(14:52):
I'm just now I'm wandering now, I'm just I'm just.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I wonder if you could talk about the White House,
those pictures of the White House ball because I actually
think there are a couple of things this administration is
doing that are like, I mean, small relative to some
of the other stuff they're doing, but I actually think
are really going to hurt them in profound ways. And
I believe that what Donald Trump is doing to the
(15:18):
East wing right now those pictures that I saw, people
are I think deeply affected by them, and I don't
think that this administration has like completely priced in how
traumatic those pictures are.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
I hope you're right about this, because you could certainly imagine,
you know, on Earth one point zero, somebody is saying
that the president, you know, at a time when the
government is shut down, when people are faced with massive
increases in their healthcare prices and inflation is resurging, the
only optics of tearing down the White House to install
(15:52):
a two hundred and fifty million dollars goldfist stooned ballroom
paid by your billionaire oligarch friends. That just wouldn't look right,
you know. It kind of cuts against your populist grain.
And so you have a you have a you know,
the critics, the Democrats have a bit have an opportunity
to connect some dots here.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
You know that.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
And by the way, as I wrote in my newsletter
the sometimes called wait just to the contrary to Actually
I actually led with this, and I said, you know,
sometimes the symbolism is just two on the nose, too obvious.
Here's Donald Trump vandalizing the White House. So I think
people ought to be offended at the arrogance it shows,
(16:38):
but also how out of touch this, you know, the
the people's president really is when you're talking about this
gaudy ballroom that he's that he's doing this.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
They can fit nine ninety nine people, not a thousand going.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Yeah, So I mean, I I hope that they make
that case. I mean, you know, we we've I don't
want to be the ten millionth person to comment on
the Democrats messaging issues, but I think that you can
connect some dots to this, this overriding thing that, you
know what, Donald Trump is really not on your side.
Donald Trump really doesn't give a shit about you. Donald
Trump will shit on you, but he really doesn't give
(17:17):
a shit about the problems you have. And because who
was he for, He's for himself and his you know,
his age of Gilded Age friends, creating this Gilded Age
obscenity in the White House.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I wonder if you could talk about the House of Representatives,
Mike Johnson has sent them home. There's a calendar. I'm
sure you've seen this graphic of account. Yeah, they've worked
like an hour. I mean, basically talk us through what
you think about that.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Well, it is interesting. I mean, here you have Mike
Johnson who's got plenty of time to provide commentary about
the No King's rally, which you call the Hate America Rally,
and then he's actually defending the Trump's AI thing where
he takes a dump on on the love satire, Donald
tru satire, and yeah, Mike Johnson really is a student
of satires. It's the kind of thing you would find
(18:11):
in deuterotomy right where the Old Testament, that kind of
that kind of thing. The larger point is that everything
that's happening is happening again, going back to the Founders.
The Founders thought that the constant that the that the
Congress was the most powerful branch of government. Under Mike Johnson,
the Congress is gone. They're not just potted plants. They
(18:32):
are elsewhere. You look at that calendar, and he's basically
shut them down. They are taking a very very very
very long taxpayer funded vacation, and I think it's worth
noting that one of the reasons they're doing that is
because he so desperately does not want to have a
vote on the Epstein files, I mean tweet coming back.
(18:54):
Those Epstein files had become so important, are so sticky
that the Congress of the United States has essentially shut
down for the duration and Mike Johnson again is he's
not even swearing in the new congressman. But it is remarkable.
I would urge people to look at that calendar because
I think I'm trying to remember what I wrote about this.
(19:14):
I mean, with what the numbers are. I think they've
been in session, like you know what, you know, sixteen
days over the last six I mean twenty days over
the last sixteen weeks or or something like that. Something
absolutely something absurd like that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And they're being paid, and they have staffs, and they
have the best healthcare in the world, which is kind
of amazing. So usually in a shutdown, what happens is
that you keep the branches in even if they're not
doing anything, because they're negotiating because it looks better. You
think Mike Johnson is making a mistake here.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I don't think Mike Johnson has any power. I mean yes,
I mean, yes, there's there's cascading mistakes, but I mean
the fundamental thing is that, and this is the sign
of our times, is that he's got a very very
narrow house majority. He doesn't necess really have complete control,
and his entire function is to do what Donald Trump
tells him to do. I mean, there was once a
(20:07):
time when the Speaker of the United States would if
he met with the president, he would meet as a
virtual coequal, at least in terms of like what's going
to happen next. That's not the you know, that's not
the situation right now. So Mike Johnson is Mike Johnson
is willing to do something the founders never imagined. Surrender
(20:27):
all of his clouts, surrender all of his power, go
home in service of Donald Trump's, you know, demand that
he cover up for pedophiles and do whatever he wants
him to do.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, and it is just amazing. So one of the
things when I've talked to people about the shutdown in leadership,
obviously not on the Republican side, they say something to
the effect of, like, this shutdown lasts until Donald Trump
wants it to end. Because they don't see likely that
he's the way out of this, or they make some
(21:01):
kind of deal, but that if he wants to end
it tomorrow he can well.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Again, the Democrats have some agency, They have a little
bit of clout. I am a little concerned about what
the Democrats' endgame is. Do they have an exit strategy?
If Donald Trump does call them up and say, Okay,
I'm going to give you the healthcare subsidies?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Are we good?
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Are we just going to go back? Are you going
to sign on to a deal that you know that
they won't live up to. They've made it clear that
there are more decisions. How do you even sign a
piece of paper with them when they've announced that they're
going to ignore it, not to mention, like everything else
that's going on. How will the base react? What will
the people have turned out for no Kings feel when
(21:40):
King j Jeffries and Chuck Schumer go to the White
House and say, Okay, we've decided to reopen Donald Trump's government.
I mean, this is this.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Is this is just a problem. Problem problem.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Yeah, I mean, I mean one you know, one scenario
that I certainly you know I am not looking forward to,
is that Republicans just simply basically say fuck it, We're
going to do away with the filibuster. We're going to
pass this with our own votes. We're going to open
the government, which has the advantage at least short term,
of sparing the Democrats voting to refund Donald Trump's state.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
That could really happen. I do think though, there's a
weakness in the Senate, like you could see a world
where the Republicans peel off a few people, but you
have seen Republican appropriators saying this is not don't make
a deal with these people.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yeah. So I again, I think that part of the
part of the weird, the weird dynamic of this shutdown
is that frankly, nobody seems to be talking about it
that much. You know, given given given the new cycle
of who notice this, all the conversations that you have
with people, know there are twenty things to talk about
in any given day, and it's certainly possible you won't
(22:54):
you won't get even to the shutdown to lighteen or nineteen.
So the normal sort of pressure on the part needs
to settle, like oh my god, this cannot go on,
we can't do anything. Has not happened and we haven't
had the kind of pain.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
We obviously social Security checks will go out, the military
is still being paid, so you know, until there is
some irreversible pain, I don't know what the pressure is
going to be. So I mean I see people now
speculating that we might have a shutdown until Thanksgiving. I
don't think that that's out of the remal possibility.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Charlie Sikes, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
How the right lost its mind? Anna Bauer is a
senior editor at law Fair. Welcome to Fast Politics, Anna,
thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
No, I'm so happy to be here. I, like I said,
huge fan of your work and really grateful that you're
having you on.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So you write a lot about the courts, the law,
the fuckery happening, and the Trump administration, but this is
an amazing I want you first to talk about a
text message you got. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:04):
So two saturdays ago, I was sitting in my apartment.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
I was about to watch Netflix.
Speaker 5 (24:10):
I'd spend the morning tweeting, touching up on the news,
particularly about the indictment that had just been handed down
against New York Attorney General Letitia James. A woman named
Lindsay Halligan is handling that case. She's also handling the
case against former FBI director James Comey.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
She had been brought in too, because no one else
would sign off on this. And Lindsay Halligan, friend of Trumps,
had originally been a Parking lawyer.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
No, well, no, so that's a different Trump lawyer. So
Lindsay Halligan was a Florida insurance lawyer who was brought
in to be one of Trump's personal lawyers around twenty
twenty two. That was when the criminal investigations were heating up.
She was one of the people who joined his criminal
defense team.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
For some time.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
At the time, I had just started cover during the
criminal cases against Trump. People might remember there was the
mar A Lago search, all these efforts by Trump's team
to kind of put a stop to the Justice Department's
investigation of retention of class by documents. And one of
the people who worked on that case was Lindsay Halligan.
(25:18):
And at the time I actually ran into her a
few years ago while I was covering this case after
a hearing, she was eating dinner at the same restaurant
I was with another criminal defense attorney for Trump named
Jim Trusty. All of which is kind of context for
what comes next, which is fast forward years later. I
have not spoken to Lindsay Halligan. She's embroiled in controversy
(25:40):
over the fact that she's been placed as the top
prosecutor by Trump in the Eastern District of Virginia to
prosecute his perceived political enemies. And I'm sitting there on
a Saturday in my apartment about to watch TV when
I get a text message on Signal, which is a
messaging app that Mini j lest use to speak with sources,
(26:03):
and the person who's texting me claims to be Lindsay Halligan.
It's not every day, even as someone who covers legal issues,
it's not every day that I get a message from
a sitting United States attorney, much less the attorney who
is prosecuting the president's political enemies. I thought it was
a hoax, thought it was a troll of some sort,
(26:24):
or at most a phishing effort by someone you know.
And so I respond on the off chance that maybe
it really is her, by asking her where we first
met and who she was with. And that is why
I brought up that I had met her a few
years earlier, because.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And then what does she say.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
She immediately correctly responds, she says, you know, I was
with Trustee, and then she named the place where we
met in Florida after this hearing. And so I'm like, oh,
maybe this really is Lindsay Halligan, because I've never spoken
publicly about the fact that we ran into each other
briefly a few years ago. So I start asking her
some questions as any journalist would, and it becomes clear
(27:06):
that what she's reaching out to me about is quite
unusual in a number of respects. The first is that
she is reaching out to me about some tweets that
I'd sent earlier that day that didn't include my own
reporting about the Letitia James case, but instead some arized
(27:26):
a New York Times story that had been published about
the Letitia James case, and in that tweet, I summarized
this report specifically about grand jury testimony in the case.
Now this is really important because for people who aren't
familiar with, you know, how Justice Department.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Norms and federal law works.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Typically, federal prosecutors a don't talk about active investigations or
ongoing prosecutions because there's just like so many things that
can go wrong if you do there's all kinds of
ways that defense counsel can pick apart what a prosecutor says.
It might result in pre trial publicity emotions, you know,
(28:09):
where the defense is arguing, oh, they they've said things
that are prejudicial to my client. You know, we want
to move the case to a different district. Like, you know,
there's that kind of thing. But particularly with grand jury matters,
there's a really strict rule under the federal rules of
criminal procedure that prohibits an attorney for the government from
(28:30):
disclosing anything that occurred before the grand jury. And she's
reaching out to me about a story that involves grand
jury testimony in my summary of that testimony. So it
was very surprising to me in that context because typically
federal prosecutors like don't even go anywhere near that kind
of subject matter.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
But in her defense, she has no idea what the
folks she's doing.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
Right, So, and this is one of the reasons why
you know, we found all of this in the end
to be quite us work, is that, like it clearly
underscores that this is a woman who does not seem
to understand the norms around prosecutions and the law and
does not have the relevant experience that you know, a
(29:15):
normal federal prosecutor in her position would. But what is
really strange to me, Molly, and you are as aware
of this kind of thing as I am, is the
kind of media engagement element of it all. Where like,
even though this woman has no prosecutorial experience, she is
a person who has experienced engaging with the media, right
(29:37):
Like she has an undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism. She
worked on Trump's criminal defense team for several years. That's
a very high profile position where she made many, you know,
television appearances on behalf of her client. She then worked
in the White House. Everyone in Washington knows that when
you are a public official, you are talking to a reporter,
(30:00):
clearly a reporter you don't know, you don't have an
ongoing kind of relationship with. At the outside of that conversation,
you talk about the basis on which you are speaking,
whether that is, you know, maybe you want to speak
off the record, and that means the reporter can't report
anything that you discuss. Instead, Lindsay Halligan didn't say anything
(30:21):
about the basis on which we're speaking, And the default
rule is that that means everything is on the record.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Again.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I just can't underscore how weird all of this is,
because she's a city United States attorney talking on the
record to a reporter about someone else's reporting that concerned
grand jury testimony, and all of that put together is
just highly strange. And we spoke to a number of
former prosecutors, current and former journalists to see if in
(30:50):
their experience, they'd ever heard of anything like it, and
the universal answer was no, So.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Explain to us she talks to you, and then what happen?
Speaker 5 (31:00):
Yeah, So she talks to me, mostly complaining about my reporting,
trying to suggest that I got something wrong in my
summary of this New York Times story. I try to
follow up multiple times to understand what was inaccurate. You know,
I think I asked four or five times, like what
specifically is wrong with my post? She never answers the question. Look,
(31:25):
I kind of didn't quite understand if she was serious
about opening a line of communication with me, because at
one point she offers to answer any questions that I
might have. So, you know, as any journalist would, I
try to ask her questions about the case. It eventually
becomes clear she's not interested in actually engaging with me.
(31:46):
And then you know, she starts, she starts ghosting me.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
And so as.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
We're writing the story a few hours before we published,
after we confirm that it actually was her number by
obtaining her phone number which connected to her signal account,
we went to the Justice Department to seek comment, which
is the thing that you always do as a reporter.
So we gave them an opportunity to comment. All that
(32:11):
we said in the request for comment was we're publishing
this story today about this exchange. Here's a transcript of
the exchange. And then we listed a number of questions
that we had, you know, for example, does Lindsay Alligan
deny that these are her genuine messages?
Speaker 3 (32:28):
You know, things like that, And we.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
Gave them a four fifteen pm deadline, and after days
of ghosting me, at four to ten, before we'd even
heard back from the Justice Department, Lindsay Halligan reactivates our
signal chat and says to me, by the way, everything
I said was off the record. Again, if you know
how these things typically work, that is not how it works.
(32:53):
You don't get to say retroactively, or to demand retroactively
that something you said as a public officials off the record,
and so I expressed that to her and said, that's
not how this works. I'm sorry, and she said, yes,
it is how it works off record, And again I
said I would have been happy to speak with you
(33:14):
on that basis, which I definitely would have.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
You would have had to specified, yeah, but.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
We had no agreement, and I still haven't agreed to
speak to you on that basis. And her response to
that was, it was obvious it was off the record.
It was on signal, disappearing messages were set and you know,
to mee, yeah, ViBe's based agreement.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
To me, this is again I want to underscore that, Like,
there are occasions when if you have an ongoing kind
of source reporter relationship with someone, you might have an
agreement with that person that everything is off the record
unless we agree otherwise, right, like the inverse of the
normal kind of assumption. So there are contextual situations when
(34:02):
you know, you kind of implicitly understand that something might
have been off the record.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
This is not one of those. She approached me.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
She's the most high profile prosecutor in the country quite literally,
anything she says about these cases is going to be newsworthy,
and she never once even suggested that we were off
the record. Meanwhile, the Justice Department, while you know, verifying
that these were indeed genuine messages, claimed that I was
(34:30):
threatening to lead the conversation.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
That's their favorite, by the way. That's like, you know,
it's like that Pentagon thing. We might just have to
arrest you to see what happened, you know.
Speaker 5 (34:41):
Yeah, And look, I think it was particularly ironic here
because Lindsey Halligan is messaging me about this ongoing prosecution,
and then a few days later reportedly fired some career
prosecutors and released a statement around it, suggesting that they
have leaked information about an ongoing prosecution. She claimed that
(35:05):
the Eastern District of Virginia, which she oversees as a
zero tolerance policy on unauthorized disclosure to the media, that's
not true, right, And then Chad bill Martin with the
Justice Department had a long statement about we speak through
our filings, we don't comment on ongoing prosecutions.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Well, then she should have texted you, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
So it's all very just kind of you know, I
think it shows her inexperience, but it also it shows that, like, look,
there are so many ways that the defense can pick
apart this kind of communication and this kind of conduct.
I don't know if they will. But Abby Lowell, who
is Letitia James's defense.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Counsel, pretty good lawyer.
Speaker 5 (35:51):
Yeah yeah, I mean, look, and he's handling all types
of these high profile cases. And I will not be
surprised if we see some about this interaction and these
comments that she's made find their way into some type
of motion that Abby Lowell might file or already plans
to file, you know, related to the case. And all
(36:13):
of it really just you know, is still kind of
baffling to me that you.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Would risk that in the position that she's in.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
So what can you extrapolate from this? Like I want
you to put on your psychiatrist hat, like why do
you think she texted you? And what do you think
the game was there? And what do you think it
speaks to.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
I've thought about this over and over and over again,
and everything that I can come up with is pure speculation,
because of course I.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Still don't understand it. If I had to guess, I
would say.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Like she's under immense pressure and public scrutiny and has
been heavily criticized by so many for bringing this case
that does not appear to be strong at all. You
can read the piece to understand why we don't have
to go into that. But she's under this immense pressure,
(37:07):
and I think maybe it's just she had a moment
of frustration where she's, you know, happens to be online
on a Saturday and see someone posting about something, and
maybe that's what it was. Frankly, I just don't understand it,
and I don't know Mollie, Like, what do you make
of it? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I think she knows she's over her head, and I
think she's scared my gas. And again, this is all conjecture,
because you know, I mean, you know her, I don't.
But I think when people email other people or text
them about what they post, they're usually trying to control
the narrative. I think she's trying, and I think it's
scary because she knows there's no world in which she's
(37:48):
you know, will Trump protect her? I mean, did Trump
protect Rudy Giuliani? No?
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of examples of people who,
you know, were Trump lawyers who things did not end
well for them. You know, I believe it was Hugo
Lowell at The Guardian who said, you reported at one
point that Lindsay Alligan told law school asso she had
at one time that she wanted to be the next
(38:13):
Hope Picks. Well, look, I covered Trump's criminal trial in
New York, and here's how things ended for Hope Picks.
She was on the witness stand as a witness against
him in his criminal trial. She ended up breaking down
crying about it. That's how they there not a great ending.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Those still better than Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yeah right, I.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Mean Rudy Giuliani. There's all kinds of bar discipline issues
and all that. I think overall that what this shows
is that there's a reason why you've put really experienced,
qualified people in these United States attorneys positions, because they
are people who would know better.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
But Lindsay Halligan apparently did not.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, so interesting. I mean, most importantly, you have now
birthed the meme, which I think those who are interested
in internet culture, you have now birthed the meme. By
the way, Dash, Dash, everything I ever sent you is
off record. Period. You're not a journalist, so it's weird
(39:13):
saying that, but just letting you.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Know, it's incredible, No more perfectly Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
So Molly Laura Ingram, Fox News host. She talked on
and on about Hunter Biden's arisma, all this business collusion,
how it's corrupt selling the office of the presidency. Who
do you think she's in business with? Now?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Is it Hunter Biden?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
No?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Is it Ashley Biden? No?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Now they're too busy stealing her diary?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Is it Don Junior?
Speaker 2 (39:48):
It is Don Junior, a man whose eyes do very
strange things what he talks.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Wait, so you're telling me that Laura Ingram, a journalist,
is also doing a business deal with Don t from Junior.
I am shocked, I tell you shocked.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, it's almost like at this point, it's like a satire.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
I heard somebody say that they're just dabbing on us
all the time, and that's kind of what this feels like.
If it's just like, yeah, you know, I remember what
we told you, we cared about what. We don't care
about the rules. We really don't.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
No, they really don't care about their rules. The rules
are for dems, yeah and losers.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah. It reminds me of that tweet that says democrats
often treat politics like watching a dog dunk a basketball,
and say a dog can't dunk a basketball, and the
dog just keeps dunking the basketball.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, it turns out dogs can, in fact dunk.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Air Bud is real.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
There's no special dogs can dunk. That's it for this
episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
and Saturday the best minds and politics make sense of
all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send
(41:07):
it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks
for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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