While Republican senators worked to protect Kash Patel from answering some ver-wee hard questions at his confirmation hearing, not one of them had the audacity to suggest that he is the best person to lead the FBI. Meanwhile, the new administration is clearing out some of the most seasoned and effective veterans at the bureau who will be needed during a crisis. Plus, Elon is trying to get our private financial records at the Treasury Department, and Paramount is so worried that mean Mr. Trump would block a merger deal that it's ready to settle his frivolous, written-in-crayon lawsuit against "60 Minutes." Also, Tim makes an earnest plea to Sen. Bill Cassidy from the heart of New Orleans. Andrew Weissmann joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Weissmann's and Mary McCord's podcast, "Main Justice" Weissmann's Substack page Tim's playlist
Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got my friend Andrew Weissman up here in a minute to talk about Kash Patel and the various legal issues swirling around the second Trump administration. But I want to talk first about my senator here in Louisiana, Bill Cassidy. I've frequently... been talking about avoiding the temptation to slip into nihilism.
This is, as many of you have probably figured out, as much about you as it is about giving myself a pep talk, as the siren song of nihilism is quite appealing to me. But when there appears to be an opening for anyone to but particularly an elected Republican, to do the right thing, we should encourage it.
We should not despair and be without all hope that somebody might do the right thing in these moments. I'm not saying we should be gullible or taken advantage of or be loosey with the football here, but... In strategic moments and moments of conscience and crisis, sometimes people do the right thing. We saw it with Mike Pence. We've seen it before.
And I think that there's a chance that my Senator Bill Cassidy might do the right thing. So I want to send a message to him and to you guys. But first, let's listen to a little bit of his closing statement from the RFK Jr.
We're about the same age. Does a 70-year-old man, 71-year-old man who spent decades criticizing vaccines and who's financially vested in finding fault with vaccines, can he change his attitudes and approach now that he'll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States? Will you continue what you have been or will you overturn a new leaf at age 70?
I recognize, man, if you come out unequivocally, vaccines are safe, it does not cause autism, that would have an incredible impact. That's your power. So what's it going to be? Will it be using the credibility to support lots of articles, or will it be using credibility to undermine it? And I got to figure that out for my vote.
But if there's someone that is not vaccinated because of policies or attitudes you bring to the department, and there's another 18 year old who dies of a vaccine preventable disease, helicoptered away, God forbid dies. It'll be blown up in the press.
The greatest tragedy will be her death, but I can also tell you an associated tragedy, well, that will cast a shadow over President Trump's legacy, which I want to be the absolute best legacy it can be. So that's my dilemma, man, and you may be hearing from me over the weekend. You may be hearing from me over the weekend. I once again thank you for your time.
So Cassidy's a doctor, as he said, and... He voted to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment. Those are the two key facts here. And I think that it's pretty clear that he's weighing what to do. And so my message to Bill Cassidy is just go out with your head held high, man. You can do the right thing here. I think that opposing...
RFK and preventing him from becoming the Secretary of Health and Human Services is something that is both the right thing for him to do for the country, for the health of the people that live in this country, but also maybe for him politically and certainly for his legacy. Let's just kind of go through all this. Look, Bill Cassidy broke it down in the hearing. He knows that RFK Jr.
is not the right person to lead HHS. He knows. I mean, he said it clearly that it is irresponsible and dangerous to have somebody that is a vaccine conspiracist running these agencies. He gave you an example of what the consequences of that might be, of deaths. Tommy Vitor talked about this yesterday, of what we saw in Samoa. We've seen the increase already in
in instances of whooping cough and some of these other you know diseases that we have immunizations for if that proliferates there will be young people to die if that proliferates the country all of us all of our kids will become less protected from disease like bill cassidy knows this he does And so just from a medical standpoint, from a health standpoint, the obvious vote here is no.
From a political standpoint, if you're Bill Cassidy, right now you're going to be up for Senate for reelection. The way that elections work in Louisiana, Senate and federal primaries are closed primaries, traditional primaries. So it's just Republicans that can vote in them. There's already a guy, John Fleming, that has said that he is going to challenge Cassidy.
There is another guy that is a MAGA local elected official that's looking at challenging Cassidy. There was some, there's some drama down here in Louisiana that, uh, Cassidy had denied that guy, I'm blanking on his name, but had denied him tickets to the DC Mardi Gras ball. That's how you do hardball politics in Louisiana.
Rep Clay Higgins, who's one of the most insane members of the House of Representatives, who is from down here in Louisiana, sent a threatening tweet to Bill Cassidy yesterday with his picture. It says, RFK is going to run HHS whether you like it or not. So these guys are going to try to bully him and they're going to run against him.
And it's just hard for me to see, even if Bill Cassidy comes around and does the right thing, we've just seen too many examples of this. Brian Kemp is like the one example of somebody that bucked Trump and survived. And I'm just telling you, the electorate in Georgia is different than the electorate in Louisiana.
And I just I don't see how somebody that voted to convict Donald Trump and ban him from running for office again is going to win a Republican primary in Louisiana. So politically speaking, doing this because he thinks it might help him win reelection to the Senate, I think is foolish. I think that there's potentially a political future for him if he wants it to try to run for governor here.
He thought about doing that in 2023. He considered that. I haven't heard anybody speculate that he might run in 2027, but who knows? Governor's races here are different. It's not a closed Republican primary. Everybody votes. It's an open, it's called jungle primary. Everybody votes in the first round. The top two go to a runoff.
So in theory, two Republicans could get to a runoff and the more normal Republican could win with votes from Republicans and Democrats and independents. It's possible. It's, it's, It's an outside chance. But if you're Bill Cassidy, that is a more conceivable path to me than running for reelection to the Senate for him.
And doing that, I think it would benefit him to have a more of an independent reputation. And then there's the legacy. This is a person that's been a conservative senator. He could leave and retire and be proud of his career as a doctor and as a conservative senator who was somebody that represented the interests of Louisiana and only bucked the party line two times.
One time when Donald Trump attempted a coup. And one time when Donald Trump tried to put an insane person in charge of the health agency in this country. And that is the type of resume that eventually, when the dust settles on all this, gets you a statue or an airport name or something. That is the kind of thing that is in the top of your obituary.
So if you're Bill Cassidy, you have the chance to do what you know is right, to do what is right politically, to do what is right for your legacy if you oppose the nomination of RFK to be the head of HHS. So I hope you do that, Bill Cassidy. I hope you do the right thing. And if you're listening and you do not live in Louisiana, I asked my husband, the lobbyist, about this.
If you do not live in Louisiana, do not call Bill Cassidy's office. If you live in California, do not call Bill Cassidy's office. That is not helpful. If you live in Louisiana... If you live here or if you have family that live here, tell them to do this. Call his office. Email him.
If you happen to be a big money donor, maybe send a text message through that you'd love to support that governor's campaign. If you live in Louisiana. Do what you can to encourage Bill Cassidy to do the right thing, because the way that the math works, it becomes very challenging for RFK to get through if the committee chairman, the Republican committee chairman opposes him.
So not getting our hopes up. I'm not being loosey with the football. We're saying, come on, Bill, you can do this. You got it. Go Tigers. Big win for the women's basketball team last night. I'm going to be there on Sunday watching the game. Do it. Be proud. You got this. Bill Cassidy. Say no to RFK. All right. Up next, Andrew Weissman. All right.
I'm here with former FBI general counsel and former Justice Department prosecutor, also lead prosecutor in Bob Mueller's investigation of Russia interference in the 2016 election. He's now a professor of practice at NYU Law School, co-host of MSNBC's podcast, Main Justice. And he started a sub stack. Who hasn't? It's Behind the Headlines with Andrew Wiseman. Hey, Andrew. Hi. How are you?
What's happening? Oh, nothing. There's nothing. Keeps me up. It's such a slow news period. Yeah. You don't have much on your plate, you know? Just kind of hanging out, decorating the apartment.
Yeah. I was hoping this would be like, remember when Biden was elected? One of the great things about it was like, every day you didn't wake up and look at your phone and just be like, I don't want to wake up today. I just want to go back to sleep.
Yeah, that was nice. And then the inverse of it, like last night between, I don't know.
10 30 and 11 30 i was angry tweeting like that wasn't something i didn't do that really that much in 20 in 2022 i wouldn't say but such is life i have you here because we want to talk cash and the cash patel hearing yesterday and then the various other legal brouhahas but before we just kind of get into your wheelhouse can we just have a little amuse bouche can we just do one for kicks
Let's go for it. Okay. The Vice President of the United States, one of the most appalling people in the country. I want to play a little audio of him talking about... You're not a Catholic, I don't think, Weissman. I'm stereotyping. But as a cradle Catholic, sometimes we get a little... a little bent out of shape about the adult converts. I like that cradle convert. Yeah, we're the OG here.
And so I don't really like being lectured by people that decided that they were Catholic two seconds ago. But let's listen to J.D. Vance's understanding of Catholic doctrine.
But there's this old school, and I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
And then after that, that's very common.
Jesus was talking about this all the time. It's really funny. I saw that in the Bible. There was a whole sort of like hit list of where, you know, with charity, there's a whole sort of waterfall.
Jesus was like Bethlehem first. Immigrants come last. Bethlehem first, Egypt last. It was a very common thing. So he got made fun of on the internet for this. And our vice president was tweeting a lot yesterday. He was tweeting this. Yeah, absolutely. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years. Who the fuck even knows what IQ numbers are?
And then just as a little bonus for him on his tweet storm, he also started weighing in on taking down of the Mark Milley picture from the Pentagon in favor, obviously. And he writes this, the vice president again. Imagine having lived through the last 10 years, the desecration of Washington, Jefferson, Lee, Roosevelt, and even Lincoln, and then drawing the line at Mark Milley.
I'm going to read that list one more time in case you missed it. The desecration of Washington, Jefferson, Lee, Roosevelt, and even Lincoln. He just snuck Lee in there, you know, just like right in the middle of the list. Just those little, just those little winky wink to the Confederates.
Which one of these things is not like the other? Yeah. Don't you think, though, Tim, I mean, you're the political guy, I'm the legal guy. So don't you think this is J.D. Vance is so irrelevant to the administration in terms of, I mean, he's there for a reason, like the tech by reason, that's sort of hit the play there. But I mean,
He just seems like that is not where the action is in terms of, I think he's going to be a much more traditional vice president, which is like out of sight, out of mind. And this is his effort to somehow be relevant. But it reminds me, he famously was said, the J6 defendants, we obviously need to separate out the violent ones from the nonviolent ones.
And about a New York minute later, the president pardoned everybody. Right. So he's just clearly out of the loop and not being sort of respected as part of the team.
Yeah. I mean, he's third at best because we've got the shadow president that we'll get to in a little bit. That's true. I hear everything that you said except for more traditional vice president. Traditionally, vice presidents aren't really shit posting. Honestly, if you told me... If the New York Times Maggie Haberman dropped a story tomorrow and she was like, I've got this big exclusive.
And she gave me a little tip. And it was like, J.D. Vance is actually behind the Twitter feed and wokeness. He's like tweeting from the vice president's office and wokeness. I'd be like, okay, that sounds right to me. And he is indistinguishable from like a random MAGA troll. Fair enough. Which is a little unusual, I guess, for the vice president. Fair enough. Sorry to nitpick, Andrew.
Sorry to nitpick. Words matter. And as some evidence for that, I want to start with one clip from the Kash Patel hearing that really tickled me. And then we'll get into the more serious matters from the Kash Patel confirmation. Let's listen to him and Adam Schiff kind of having a little linguistic battle over the word we.
I did not have anything to do with the recording. I did not have anything to do with the recording. Do you stand by that testimony, Mr. Patel?
Senator, what I said was I didn't do the recording.
You said you didn't have anything to do with the recording, which is interesting because here's what you told Steve Bannon on his podcast. So what we thought would be cool is if we captured that audio and then, of course, had the greatest president, President Donald J. Trump, recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Then we went to a studio and recorded it, mastered it, digitized it, and put it out as a song now releasing exclusively on the War Room. We, we, we. If you had nothing to do with it, Mr. Patel, why did you tell Steve Bannon and all his listeners that you did?
That's why it says we, as you highlighted.
Yeah, and you're part of the we, right? When you say we, that includes you, doesn't it, Mr. Patel? Not in every instance.
It goes on for another minute. Obviously, we're talking about the J6 choir there that Cash was a producer of. And we found out that Bulwark reporting actually found out that some of the singers in the choir were among the violent insurrectionists, not just the insurrectionists that were wandering around. So I don't know. You are a prosecutor, not me. Would that really work for you?
You know, if somebody was talking about how like we robbed a bank and then he's like, I was talking about the editorial, the royal we, not me.
It's kind of my people. I used to when I was a prosecutor and defense lawyers would come in and say and make presentations. There's a certain point where you'd say, you know what? Good luck to you with the jury. Like, make that argument to the jury. You want to say that we does not include me. Go for it.
The problem for Kash Patel is he tried to, every time he was confronted with his own prior words, he would do this kind of dance, or he would say it's out of context when the senators were actually reading his exact words. And it also misses the entire import. I mean, the import of everything he was doing for the last few years was to say, I am fully embracing, along with Donald Trump,
The politically oppressed January 6th defendants, they are political prisoners. And then he turns around in his confirmation hearing and says, no, but I didn't mean the violent ones. And also, I'm not really aware of everything everybody did. So when you're showing me bad people, well, maybe I wasn't including those. I mean, it's just a completely different story.
than what he was saying and has been saying and is in his book in writing. I found the whole thing sort of appalling when you looked at what he was saying now versus what he was saying a minute and 32 seconds ago.
Also, there's one exception to the Wii situation for sports fans out there. I do sometimes call the Denver Nuggets Wii, and I'm not playing for the team. But I think this is maybe a little bit different. But maybe that's cashes out. The problem, though, as you mentioned, is the whole testimony was not convinced. He was just obviously lying throughout the entire testimony.
And there was how he's like, oh, I don't believe in QAnon anymore. And, oh, I wasn't even involved in conversations about who to pardon anymore. And I had no idea what Trump would do about that. And the testimony was like, I just need to lie enough to give the handful of Republicans who are pretending like they're still normal and care about the rule of law, a fig leaf to be able to confirm me.
Like that was just the whole thing. I totally agree here. Let me give you an example of sort of very specific, which is he was asked a lot about having been in the grand jury and, in connection with the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Why was he put in the grand jury? Well, presumably it's because he was on a podcast on May 5th, 2022, where he said, I know that Donald Trump
issued an order to declassify documents that are at Mar-a-Lago. I was there when he ordered the declassification of those documents. So he's there to sort of provide some kind of defense. And so the government puts him in the grand jury.
He asserts the Fifth Amendment, which, as Adam Schiff pointed out, must be the very first time that somebody who's being proposed to be the director of the FBI has taken the Fifth Amendment. Fifth Amendment means that you have a good faith belief that a truthful answer to the questions would incriminate you in a crime. He is then immunized and forced to testify.
And he's asked sort of over and over again about that and dodges and weaves and he gets the law wrong about whether he can speak. But ultimately, he says no. I have no idea what documents are at Mar-a-Lago. So I wasn't there. I don't know what documents are there in Mar-a-Lago.
How do you square that with, I know that Donald Trump declassified the documents at Mar-a-Lago with a statement that I don't know what's at Mar-a-Lago? I mean, completely inconsistent. That's again, as a former prosecutor, that's exactly what you look for. You look to defend and you're like, I can't wait for this cross-examination.
There's no way that you can say, I know he declassified documents at Mar-a-Lago when you simultaneously under oath say, I have no idea what's at Mar-a-Lago.
So you taped yesterday after the hearing had started. So we played the one clip about him being asked by Durbin about Stu Peters. You know, have you heard of Stu Peters? No, I don't know. That doesn't ring a bell. And it's like, well, you did his podcast eight times. And who is Stu Peters? It was a far right podcaster that spoke at Nick Fuentes' anti-Semitic Hitler youth group that he has.
The lies were just so obvious and blatant. They were reminiscent of a child's lies. Yes. They weren't like high quality, like little lies where it's like trying to shade language one way or the other. It's just like the word we doesn't mean what it means. Or I've never heard of this person that I've talked to eight times on camera or whatever.
I said clearly that Donald Trump declassified the documents. Now I don't even know what the documents are.
How about Grassley saying, you know, we're looking forward to you restoring the reputation and integrity of the FBI, which is, you know, has its reputation right now is at historic lows. And thank God we have this white knight coming in to save it, which is.
So Alice in Wonderland, when the reason it is in that shape in a large part is because Kash Patel for the last four years has been denigrating the FBI and making up a false story that they were the ones behind January 6th. And so you're sitting in a hearing where it's just as people in MSNBC say, it's Earth 2. It's just divorced from reality.
It seems to me like he's going to get through him. I talked about at the top, I think that there's a Cassidy situation. It's kind of interesting with RFK. The buzz from Tulsi is not that great. I kind of will believe it when I see it as far as these guys actually opposing, these guys being the Republican senators, actually opposing any of Trump's nominees when the rubber meets the road.
But the buzz on Cash is not that. It seems like we're in a Hegseth type situation where they're going to jam him through. As somebody that was there in the building, what worries you most about a Kash Patel bureau?
Well, one, there's already reporting that senior officials at the FBI are being told to either resign. If they don't resign, they will either be fired or they'll be demoted.
And he was just as a quick aside, Cash was asked about this by Cory Booker yesterday because the report leaked out before the hearing was over. Yes. And Booker said, are you aware of these plans to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations? And again, another like obvious lie.
I'm not aware of that, Senator, which is just, you know, kind of.
beggar's belief. And also, did you see the Grassley said, you know, if you want to answer, because if not, we can just move on. I mean, what the hell is that? I mean, it's like, let me just step in and protect you from a hard question. I mean, it was just shocking. I mean, there either is going to be a true hearing or not. But I want to make sure people understand that
That does not happen at the Bureau. These are career people. They're protected by all sorts of civil service requirements. Obviously, if somebody is not doing a good job, then they can be demoted. But the idea that You just get rid of your senior leadership that have been there for years and years, have tons of experience.
They're in those positions because of that longevity of knowing what they're doing. And the so-called seventh floor is typically filled with the best at the bureau. And you need them. For a whole host of reasons. You know, you think that there are mistakes that the FBI makes. Well, you know what? If those people on the seventh floor weren't there, there'd be a whole lot more.
And so this is really unheard of. Institutional knowledge. Exactly. And just judgment. Good judgment is so important, and a lot of that comes from the experience of having lived through lots of cases, also just how to be effective. I mean, people, I don't think, understand when this whole idea of anti-experience, that anybody can do the job. No, that's not true.
The judgment and ability to be able to sift through what is noise and what is real is critical in all sorts of ways, but particularly in national security, where there's tons of noise. And the art, I remember Robert Mueller saying this, the art is knowing noise. What is the thing to focus on? What is the thing that causes the most concern? And that is what we count on to prevent bombs going off.
I mean, there's not a single person at the hearing and Kash Patel's hearing who had the audacity, no Republican had the audacity to say, no, this man is the best person for the job. Of all of the people in the entire country, this is the guy. But you know what? That's supposed to be the standard.
Right.
Who is the best person?
Well, I mean, I don't know. It's a meritocracy now. We've gotten rid of all the DEI and everything. So you would think that maybe this is, maybe it is cash. Maybe they've looked at everything. They've made decisions just on merit. Is it megatocracy? Just merit only. It's all they're looking at. I'm just such a neophyte in this. I don't really know how these investigations work.
I don't know how the building works. What are some negative consequences of having senior officials fired, having a total clown be in charge of the bureau, putting in Trump's sycophants? What are some things that worry you?
Big picture and small picture. So obviously, big picture is you need a director and a bureau that's going to be governed by facts and law. So if you believe that the FBI is the one that fomented January 6th, that's just not true. And so not being governed by facts, that's how you do an investigation. You're ultimately going to need to go to court and prove things.
So you need to know what the facts are and be able to establish it. It's all good and well to spout off things at a hearing, to write whatever you want in a book. That's not the way the FBI works and it's not where the courts work. at least so far.
In terms of specifics, so this idea that we can just take everybody from headquarters and move them to the field, having been in both situations, been in the field and been at headquarters, I mean, obviously there's great work that happens in the field, but again, from a national security perspective and the intelligence community, it's That really has to be coordinated through headquarters.
Let me just give one quick example. Do you want the field offices, of which there are scores and scores of field offices, to be independently and separately interacting with our foreign counterparts? So we have an enormously tight relationship with what's called the five I's. So England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. There's an enormous amount of sharing of intelligence.
There's also sharing of intelligence with other countries. That has to be centrally coordinated, just so people aren't thinking that's to make other countries safe. No, that's to make our country safe. And that has to be coordinated at a national level. That's why you need people like that. Also, you really need to make sure people are taking consistent positions and know what they're doing.
And a lot of the offices around the country have never done a terrorism case. Thank God. And when they get their first one, are they supposed to learn on the job? Or are you supposed to have people at headquarters helping them? The idea of decentralizing all of the FBI, which was Cash Fatale's sort of famous statement coming in, is another way of saying, I'm just going to eradicate it.
And just for people, because sometimes it's hard unless you're really watching a lot of spy movies or are deep into the news, the FBI's remit as opposed to the other agencies when it comes to terrorist threats?
So it is in charge of... Any and all prosecutions of terrorists in the United States, even if the terrorism is happening overseas, but it affects, let's say, an American, like a bomb goes off and an American is killed, we have jurisdiction.
If there is going to be a criminal case against that person, if they're going to be detained here under law enforcement authorities, the FBI has to be involved and takes the lead in that.
It is true that with respect to just intelligence operations, if you're trying to look for just what's happening in country X overseas, there are other agencies that have significant responsibilities, including the CIA and the NSA, the sort of alphabet soup of Washington, D.C.
Talk to me about the morale inside and your thoughts on that, because that's the other thing that's kind of hard for me to give a sense for. Because, I don't know, there's a part of me that says...
Like, if I am a career FBI official who's been nonpartisan, investigating domestic terrorists, investigating big drug ginkg pins, you know, investigating whatever, murders, and, you know, I've moved up the ranks. And now this clown is in charge. Part of me is like, I don't know. I wonder how much I could get paid to go do some private security for some famous people. Because this seems awful.
But maybe that's wrong. I don't know. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe there's a lot of MAGA people in there that are excited about cash. Or maybe their mindset is so much different than mine that they're just like, whatever. It doesn't matter who's in charge. What do you think about the morale?
The first thing I just want to make sure people understand is when I first got to the FBI, I was the general counsel. One of the most palpable things about the FBI at that time was how apolitical that institution is. Unlike most agencies in Washington, there is one and only one political appointee, which is the director. That's really dissimilar to a whole range of other agencies.
agencies and the reason for that is it's not supposed to be a political agency it's supposed to just be based on facts and law and that really was felt within the building that it's just like wherever the facts are we don't care you know what the political consequences are
So I think within the building, this development has got to be sending shockwaves, but not in a good way of people thinking, oh, change is good. I think there probably are people who have been politicized, which is really unfortunate, and who... are going to be sort of mega loyalists. But I think there are other people who are just going to be like, I don't need this.
And there's another acronym that is a FBI acronym, which is the people who've put in their 20 years. I remember a friend of mine who was there and she said, you know, I'm KMA. And I'm like, I'm sorry, what is that? And she's like... kiss my ass. And I said, well, what does that mean? And she said, it means that I've done my 20 years.
And so I'm here for the mission, but any day I don't like it, I can retire with full benefits because I'm at that point. And I'm only here because I believe in the FBI and the mission. And I think for those people, the KMA people, they're going to be, I'm out the door.
A lot of KMAs probably. The other thing that I wanted to ask about Cash and just sort of his remit and the scariest thing. And I guess we'll do a little macabre humor to start this question. But obviously, there is the enemies list. He pretends like he didn't have an enemies list. But I mean, he literally had one. And it was an appendix in the book.
And he talked about it all the time on all the various podcasts that he forgets that he was on now, apparently. I interviewed Steve Bannon about this about two months ago. And asked him, I was like, Are you guys serious about this? Like, who do you want cash to target if he's in there? And then, you know, it's like, Yeah, I'm serious.
And I was like, Okay, well, who do you think should be targeted? He starts listing names. And he lists you. Andrew Weissman was right there on the list. Andy McCabe. These guys watch a lot of cable. So the cable news lawyers were the top of the list. Those are the real guys you need to go after. And then we'll figure out who else is in the shadows in the deep state to figure them out later.
But we're coming for the cable news lawyers first. That's a great motto. Go for the cable news lawyers. So this next question might have some implications for you. But the thing that worries me about cash is the FBI has a pretty broad remit to make people's lives miserable before you get to a lot of checks.
And so I'm curious what you kind of think about that, like what your worries are about the investigations and whoever has the old Andrew Weissman job as the general counsel, what kind of oversight they'll have over, you know, just sort of opening up the book on people's lives and making things hard for them.
I think the way I think about that, which is maybe sort of a pipe dream at this point, is I'm an institutionalist. I still think facts and law matter. I hear you that those checks with respect to judges and juries doesn't come until... later, in most instances, unless you're Donald Trump. So I sort of count on that in that if there's nothing there, then a lot of this will be wasted time.
I mean, it's not a crime to be on cable news. Last time I checked, even though Kash Patel famously has said he's going after the media, whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll deal with that later. Interesting thing for the head of the FBI to say. I
Of course, capitol is a huge concern, but I actually think one of the bigger concerns is watching these hearings and watching the complicity of various senators and congresspeople in the lies. It's just appalling. And that, to me, is a concern that when you're thinking about the checks and balances, you're like, oh, well, there's no check there.
they're perfectly happy to go along with things that they have to know are not true.
So you're not changing your day-to-day life thinking about the Kash Patel FBI. I'm still here doing my thing with the bulwark. All right. Have you done any Googling of expatriate laws just in like your darker moments? I have not. Okay. Keep me posted. The first time you do that, Google, because I think you're kind of higher up the list than me.
So, you know, the first time you start thinking you got to start Googling about it, then just give me a heads up so I can... Are you jealous, Tim? I'm with you. I'm joking about it. I know this is a joke, but I'm with you. I am way more worried about incompetent people being in charge of our security and what the impact could be. On that, I'm way more worried about many of these other stories.
One of the things I was rage posting about last night was a story about a guy who is undocumented immigrant, but he's married to an American citizen. So he's in the green card process. He has kids that are American citizens. They were going to buy formula products.
For their baby, for one of the kids, the husband and the wife, they got pulled over allegedly for speeding or running a stop sign or something. And the guy's in ICE detention now. The cop called ICE. You know, I'm way more worried about people like that than the cable news lawyers.
Right. And the thing I'm worried about, and I think it's because I've been on the inside in the intelligence community, is I keep on sort of saying this word is Katrina. Right. I mean, do you remember when that happened that there was rightful sort of outrage and pushback because the head of FEMA was not ready for the job? He was learning on the job.
And you cannot put in people who are the kind of nominees that we're seeing and think there isn't going to be a crisis. I mean, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the head of intelligence, HHS, and these are the people who are going to be handling a crisis involving our security, whether it's health security, whether it's
physical security, the idea that there isn't more outrage at this and a sense of like, can you please find some more competent people? And a real misunderstanding of what these organizations do. I have to say, if I had to go back and say, what do I think was like a Biden administration flaw.
And I know there's like a ton of, there could be a big list, but I just think there needs to be a lot more public speaking. And it couldn't just be business as normal, which is that we don't speak. We only do stuff through public filings. There just needs to be a greater education of the public that institutions with all of their flaws do really good things for us.
Yeah, if you think there was a lot of elite failure the last few decades, just wait. Just wait until the idiocracy comes forth, and then you'll really see the new elite failure. I want to also ask you about the DOJ firings, because it's related. you know, some of these 74 FBI officials, like you said, are going to be pushed out.
The people that are investigating Trump as part of Jack Smith, et cetera. I guess there's some questions about whether this is even legal. So it's a two part question for you is just like, what's your sense for what's happening and, and whether they're going to get away with it.
The actual firing of people who worked on the Trump cases is, completely violates the civil service rules. So that's illegal. That's the kind of thing that if these people sue, it goes to something called the Merit System Protection Board.
The Merit System, that's interesting. Merit System Protection.
Meritocracy, that's interesting. So Tim, these are people who are protected. They're not at-will employees. You have to have a reason, a good cause reason to fire them. Why is that? Why do we not want, and we want a sort of civil service protection? Precisely so that every four years with a change of administration,
You don't just put in a bunch of loyalists because the idea is the facts and the law don't change. And people are just going to be there doing their job based on the facts and the law and not based on being a political crony of what the next administration wants. That's the ethos. That is why this all came to exist in sort of post-Tammany Hall. So to fire those people, you have to have good cause.
So if they bring a lawsuit, I think they win. But the damage is done. But to me, one of the first things the acting attorney general did was fire these people. This is the head of our law enforcement agency. As a first step is just saying, you know what, I don't believe in civil service.
I'm getting old, so I can kind of remember things. I know you can remember things now. I wouldn't love to remember Alberto Gonzalez getting run out of town.
Exactly right. That's exactly right. And there was more grounds legally for what they did. It was more sort of politically legal. One of the things that was part of that scandal was with respect to removal of U.S. attorneys, the sort of heads of various prosecuting offices around the country.
But there also was somebody on staff who was stripping out, at least this is the accusation, stripping out from the honors program people who were identified as sort of liberal or Democrats. That's totally improper to do that. And here, one of the things that's happened, and I know this because I'm now teaching a law school, is summer positions all on hold. People told the offers are rescinded.
The honors program, which is new attorneys, it's a huge, wonderful way for DOJ to get us as a pipeline, the very best and brightest from clerkships. There's going to be somebody close to me that just got frozen on this exact thing. Exactly. Done. Employees who are still in their first year probationary period all put on a list to see who's going to be fired.
The idea then is to really strip out as much as they can the civil service protections to create room for, in my view, it's like a bunch of loyalists.
It is wild just when you think about that trajectory, though. Yeah. Alberto Gonzalez was forced to resign over something that was the first act, like basically the same exact, actually a worse version of that was the first act of the incoming Trump attorney general. So this is happening across the board, you know, and just stuff keeps leaking out.
There's a Post story this morning about someone, a senior official at Treasury, who I guess was in charge of Payment systems that, you know, how people get their Social Security checks, etc. And Elon, our shadow president, wanted control of the payment system. I don't know if he's going to pay people in Dogecoin.
I don't know exactly why he wanted the system that the guy is saying that he's going to quit. Right.
This is sharing government information with private companies. The reporting on that is particularly shocking. I mean, that is this is akin to saying, oh, you know what? Elon Musk wants all of our health care records. I mean, it's like, I mean, I'm sorry. He wants all of our financial records. Like, I mean, talk about big brother.
What is your sense for SCOTUS? I ask every actual lawyer, actual SCOTUS watcher that comes on here what they think because there's just a range of views. When it comes to all these sorts of challenges, I don't know. To me, it's like birthright citizenship. I feel pretty good SCOTUS will uphold the just plain text of the Constitution.
But on all this kind of stuff, impoundment, firing of career civil servants, because that's where this is all going, right? Isn't this all going to the Supreme Court eventually? Yeah.
Yes, a lot of this is going to end up there. You know, at some point you wonder just how much the Supreme Court's going to try to keep their head down. And, you know, if for some reason, let's say in birthright citizenship, if the appellate courts are all sort of uniform, then they may not need to step in on it because they're going to be sort of front and center.
But essentially their decision last year in the presidential immunity case, where they basically had this vision that,
of an all powerful executive branch is one that Donald Trump is taking to the extreme, not just saying there's a unitary executive, meaning that he's in charge of everything that happens within the executive branch, but he seems to have a view, which is I'm in charge of everything that happens in every branch.
So, you know, I can do things and I can actually say things that violate a congressional statute because it violates my presidential powers. So he is sort of this really beyond maximalist view, and it's been analogized as just a dictatorial view. I don't think at that maximal level, I'm not sure he's going to have five votes on that.
I think Roberts, for instance, as much as he has this view of an extremely broad executive power position, I think that's a bridge too far. And so... That's just four, though. Yeah, well, it's four. I think he's four and Amy Coney Barrett, I think, is five.
You know, on the presidential... Again, this is all speculation, but on the presidential immunity decision, I actually think her concurrence was a very rational... way to try and deal with the issues. And if that had been the majority opinion, I think we all would have been like that made a lot of sense. I mean, I really do think she's somebody to keep an eye on.
And just one more data point for her. You may remember there was a case called Fisher, which had to do with the obstruction statute that was charged with respect to many, many, many January 6th defendants. She wrote the dissent in that case. She actually authored the dissent saying that the statute as written completely supports what the government did here and the charges here.
That was the charge about like interfering with a proceeding, a formal proceeding. Exactly. Whether you're obstructing sort of the congressional effort, whether it was enough to sort of be physically attacking it and physically disrupting what Congress was doing, or whether there had to be some effect on papers or records.
The majority sort of narrowed the statute, and she was like, that's not what the statute says, and it makes no sense. And she wrote a very cogent dissent. My big point is not whether you agree or disagree with her on that decision, is it was interesting that she was writing the dissent.
All right, just two other legal stories related to the media, since you're, you know, A lawyer in the media. A rage over the possible paramount CBS settlement over 60 Minutes is unbounded. For people who have not followed this, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Kamala Harris where they had a preview of the show that showed an exchange with her and Bill Whitaker that looked one way.
And then in the actual program, the exchange was different. And the reason for this is because previews of shows are very short and people that are making commercials are trying to cut up very long interviews in ways that make it coherent and make it enticing for a viewer to come watch.
It's something that is just totally standard procedure in every interview, particularly in a long magazine show like 60 Minutes. Like what 60 Minutes did was totally pro forma, If it's happened one time, it's happened a million times. Donald Trump sued over this because who knows why?
Sued for $10 billion, saying that CBS was biasing in favor of Kamala because they made her answer more coherent than it really was. That was the claim. It is a preposterous lawsuit.
And a report out yesterday says that many executives at CBS's parent company, Paramount, believe that settling this lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multi-billion dollar merger. If they fucking settle this suit and you are a Paramount Plus subscriber, unsubscribe. Maybe unsubscribe now and start sending them a message.
I don't care if you like Yellowstone or whatever's on there. This is fucking outrageous. So I don't know if you have additional thoughts about that.
Well, it's Russia. This is the patronage oligarchy. This is why Putin's fabulously wealthy. It's like he's got the levers of power and he's got the ability to decide how difficult your life's going to be. And you have Paramount saying, well, I'm concerned about a merger, so we're basically going to pay a bribe. That is the way it reads.
And you have other examples of that, whether it's CNN settling its lawsuit, whether you have sort of capitulation issues with Jeff Bezos saying, you know, we're not going to take a position on endorsing a presidential candidate because we don't like the fact that it would make us appear to be biased one way or the other.
But at the same time, he then goes to the inauguration and is in the front row, which, of course, that would have no appearance whatsoever. So you're seeing over and over in these kinds of examples, but the idea of the lawsuits is really an example of just a patronage system that is exactly what happens when you have oligarchs, where you're just paying off that money.
And let me just give you one other scary piece on this, which is during the campaign, the president gave notice to the Department of Justice that he was going to bring a lawsuit for $100 million in connection with the search at Mar-a-Lago. So he can bring that lawsuit. And since the Department of Justice is now under his thumb, he can order them to settle it, his own lawsuit.
And so there's nothing wrong with the search. The search has been a court ordered and authorized. Even Judge Cannon said that that was an appropriate search. So there's more to come on that. I don't know. We'll watch it.
The ABC, the Stephanopoulos suit was at least kind of an in the eye of the beholder type lawsuit about whether somebody was slandered. I think that ABC and Disney would have won that suit. But the 60-minute suit is a category difference from that. The 60-minute lawsuit was written in crayon or smeared with poop onto a piece of paper. And it is the stupidest fucking thing that I've ever seen.
And the idea that they would settle something.
Tim, what do you really think?
I'm having trouble understanding your argument. Again, I didn't know that much about the FBI thing, so I couldn't be quite as outraged as you about the Kash Patel lawsuit. I've worked on 60-minute stories. I know how this works. This is a $10 billion lawsuit because they cut a preview of an interview that didn't include the full context. It is just...
idiotic we can say the r word again i don't but that that is really what it is anyway i don't know if you have anything else on that but no i don't i'm done i'm feeling your pain though all right you never know because you might get targeted who the hell knows you might get sued now over and and maybe so i think civil suits are definitely going to be a way forward for this administration no oh yeah question bullying people i mean because it works because all these gazillionaires are folding
Because they want their merger to happen. They don't want Mr. Trump to be mean to them about their merger. these paramount executives, you better, you better not settle this suit. FCC is also opening investigation into the NPR and PBS.
Brendan Carr, the new chairman, uh, sent a letter this week to the heads of NPR and PBS announcing an investigation into the public outlets for airing sponsorships, a long time practice. Trump had bleeded in April and all caps, no more funding for NPR, a total scam. Editor said they have no Republicans. I don't know if that is, uh, That's related. But I don't know.
Kash Patel yesterday during the hearing was saying that they were not going to politicize anything. There are not going to be any more political investigations. What do you think? You think that this is on the up and up here, this FCC investigation?
Well, of course not. I mean, it's just happening now that this is some horrible wrong, which is that instead of commercials, they've got sponsorships. And even if you thought that was a practice that shouldn't be engaged in, by public news outlets. I mean, the fact that it's happening right now and it's targeting just them.
All of this is what we've been talking about is just, this is the hungry playbook, hungry with the country. This isn't subtle. And this is one where for a while, people like you and me have been saying, this is what's going to happen, folks. This is what's going to happen, folks. Well, it's happening.
That's an uplifting place for us to close for the weekend pod. Andrew Weissman.
Have a good weekend.
Welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. Thank you so much for doing it. Let's do it again sometime. Remember his podcast, Main Justice. You can check that out if you want to nerd out with Andrew Weissman and his subtext behind the headlines with Andrew Weissman. We'll be talking to you soon. Thanks, Tim. Everybody else, we'll be back Monday.
Bill's on a little holiday, so I got Will Salatin Mondays are back. We'll see you all then. Peace.
you toss your side like a pile of leaves i've got to find some better ways for five me to run around the bend when the government may just surround you again if dying young won't change your mind baby baby baby baby or you won't forfeit. Dying young won't change your mind. Baby, baby, baby, baby, right on time.
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.