Breaking #news - No Lie podcast episode 258: Trump threatens the legal community, which has major implications for the rest of us.
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SPONSORS:
https://acorns.com/BTC
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NewsTranscript
00:00Today we're going to talk about Trump's threats to the legal community and the implications
00:03for the rest of us.
00:04And I've got two interviews, I speak with Congressman Jamie Raskin about Trump targeting
00:07him by trying to withdraw Biden's pardons for all members of the January 6th committee,
00:12and I sit down with Podsafe America's Jon Lovett to discuss Elon playing the victim
00:15over vandalism of Tesla's.
00:17I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're watching No Lie.
00:22So Trump is doing something right now that he knows is going to fly under the radar but
00:26will have massive, massive implications.
00:29He has begun extorting law firms, wherein he threatens lawyers' ability to do work
00:32with the government, intimidates their clientele, risks their reputation, unless those law firms
00:37decide to bend the knee and do what a firm called Paul Weiss opted to do, which is to
00:42offer him $40 million in legal services to conservative causes that Trump approves of.
00:47This is an extortion racket, and of course, because the cop on this beat is the DOJ, under
00:52Pam Bondi, it'll never be investigated, meaning that Trump basically just gets to get away
00:56with it.
00:57But Paul Weiss wasn't without options here.
01:00Donald Trump also attacked a firm called Perkins Coie, which opted not to bend the knee, and
01:04instead sued Trump in court.
01:06They decided to put their values ahead of a strongman's desire to force his opponents
01:10into submission.
01:11And I bring this up for a specific reason.
01:13It's not necessarily to pick on Paul Weiss.
01:15Paul Weiss doesn't care what some YouTuber thinks about them, and I'm sure that they've
01:18heard much worse from their own clients who actually pay their bills, and that probably
01:23stings a hell of a lot more than anything I can say.
01:25But I bring this up because this isn't about just one law firm.
01:29It is about the lesson that Trump learns when he gets one big law firm to capitulate, because
01:34then it makes it impossible for the rest of the law firms to put up a unified front and
01:38actually fight back and win.
01:40If Trump shows that he owns one law firm as big as Paul Weiss, then what hope do the rest
01:45of them have?
01:46The same way that if Trump can show that he owns Zuckerberg at Meta or Xu at TikTok, then
01:51the rest of the social media platforms know that there will be no unified front in tech
01:55companies against him.
01:57If Trump can show that he owns Bezos' Washington Post or the LA Times, there will be no unified
02:01front in newspapers against him.
02:03If Trump can show that he owns ABC News or CBS by getting them to settle frivolous lawsuits,
02:08then there will be no unified front in the media against him.
02:10There is a reason that Trump goes after the big fish in all of these sectors.
02:14It's because once he topples one or two, then it destroys this illusion that there will
02:18be collective action against him.
02:20It sends the message that it's no use standing up to him, because eventually these entities,
02:24these companies, these people will just be going up against the president of the United
02:27States and the rest of the US government, and they will be doing it, importantly, with
02:32no support.
02:33But this highlights the issue of our time, the thing that we need most and that we're
02:37in the shortest supply of.
02:38And it's not the usual question of do we have to tack left like Bernie Sanders or tack right
02:42like Marie Clausen Kampres?
02:43It's not about where you land on the ideological spectrum that people are focused on right
02:47now.
02:48It is whether you are willing to show some fight.
02:51We've watched big tech and big media and big law all bend the knee.
02:56None of them have figured out the advantage of standing tall side by side.
02:59None of them have prioritized their integrity over the whims of a despot.
03:03None of them has showed a willingness to actually fight.
03:05And we watched the Democrats last week, after months of promising to show up and fight and
03:09never back down, do exactly that with the continuing resolution.
03:13We are in desperate need of some courage, of some spine.
03:17And if the media won't do it, if the tech companies won't do it, if the lawyers won't
03:21do it, if the elected officials won't do it, then it's got to be incumbent on all of us,
03:25incumbent on regular people to take the lead.
03:28That means showing up at these town halls where there are town halls.
03:31It means showing up to elected officials' offices.
03:33It means calling.
03:34It means taking to the streets.
03:36I promise you that there is one thing that will move every single person that we've been
03:40talking about.
03:41That'll move the government, businesses, the media, and that is when populations rise up.
03:46They will operate with a sense of impunity until it becomes clear that there will be
03:50no impunity.
03:51So if there's an opportunity to show up, take advantage of it.
03:54If there are town halls or protests or marches, go to them.
03:57I know that with all this shit bearing down on all of us, the last thing that we feel
04:01is empowered, but I guarantee you that you all showing up en masse as soon as there's
04:05an opportunity is the single most important tool that we have.
04:09It has the power to topple dictatorships and autocracies, and it has.
04:13And that includes the burgeoning one right here in the United States.
04:16So if no one is going to come save us, recognize that we're going to have to do it ourselves.
04:21Next up are previews of my interviews with Jamie Raskin and Jon Lovett.
04:24Just a quick reminder, on one video per week, my video podcast, this show right here, No
04:28Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen, I have sponsors.
04:30So here's a quick word from some sponsors and then my interviews with Jamie Raskin and
04:34Jon Lovett.
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06:17Obviously some big news that was just revealed by Donald Trump is this idea that he is making
06:22null and void any pardons that were granted by Joe Biden to members of the January 6th
06:26committee.
06:27Obviously you sit on this committee.
06:28So can I have your reaction to both the legality and just in general him deciding to try and
06:33attack attack members of the January 6th committee?
06:37One president cannot revoke or veto another president's pardon.
06:43So that simply doesn't exist.
06:47He's complaining that Biden used an auto pen, although there's no evidence for the fact
06:51that he used an auto pen.
06:53In any event, the Constitution doesn't say you can't use an auto pen.
06:57The president has the power to pardon and commute sentences.
07:01So let's hope that this is a passing fancy and just a little drizzle in the summertime
07:09and that he doesn't press it too hard.
07:11Look, we know he was running around threatening to prosecute Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson,
07:16the chair of our committee and the vice chair of our committee.
07:19And that's why this general pardon was issued to members of the committee.
07:25But for all intents and purposes, it's a valid legal pardon.
07:30And that is within the unilateral power of the president.
07:33If not, a lot of people would be challenging the idea that he could pardon actual insurrectionists
07:38who he incited to try to overthrow an election to keep him in office.
07:44Does the fact that he's trying to do this, the legality notwithstanding, signal that
07:48it is indeed his his desire to go after his political opponents who sat on the January
07:546th committee?
07:55Oh, well, there's no doubt about that.
07:57I mean, he's been tweeting against us and vilifying us, you know, ever since the bipartisan
08:03January 6th select committee, which he calls the unselect committee, has been in business.
08:08But here's the thing, Brian, they haven't laid a glove on a single factual finding or
08:14determination that we made in the report of the bipartisan select committee.
08:20They set up a whole subcommittee on the House Administration Committee under Congressman
08:25Loudermilk to try to go after Liz Cheney and to try to find stuff wrong.
08:29They couldn't find anything.
08:30They literally have not contradicted a single factual statement.
08:34Now, they would like to come up with some alternative story that, oh, it wasn't really
08:39the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the mobs that were incited by Donald Trump.
08:45It was Antifa.
08:46They would love to be able to say it was really the FBI that did it.
08:49But all of that is nonsense and it's been debunked by the factual record.
08:53And we interviewed more than a thousand people and we looked at, you know, more than a million
08:58pages worth of documents.
09:00And we had all of these interviews and everything is scrupulously documented in the report.
09:07And they just haven't touched any of the facts of it because we were looking for the truth
09:11on a bipartisan basis.
09:13And that's what we did.
09:14You know, there's been a lot of debate lately about whether or not we're in a constitutional
09:19crisis.
09:20And a lot of legal experts are pointing to the fact that, OK, we're not technically in
09:23a constitutional crisis until there has been a court order that wasn't followed.
09:27It was appealed up to an appeals court.
09:29It was appealed up to the Supreme Court.
09:31And then if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that runs counter to what the administration
09:35wants to do and yet the administration barrels ahead anyway, that's technically a constitutional
09:39crisis.
09:40And then you have, you know, a broad swath of the rest of the base of which I would probably
09:45include myself, where what we're seeing right now is so obviously counter to everything
09:51the Constitution says and so clearly a crisis.
09:55And I'm curious what your thoughts are on this as this, you know, parsing of words and
09:59definitions kind of plays itself out.
10:01I think it's so fucking stupid as you recoil.
10:05I felt this long before.
10:07I feel like the question, are we in a constitutional crisis, is the wrong question to be asking.
10:14First of all, I think it's a distinction without a difference, like we're in a big
10:18crisis.
10:19Yeah.
10:20I think you can just take the word constitutional and make it that mean big.
10:23Are we in a big crisis?
10:24Absolutely.
10:25There's no moment at which Donald like first of all, Donald Trump and the people around
10:30him are smart enough to know that you don't just on a random day decide to stop following
10:37brazenly a constitutionally valid order from a judge.
10:43You slowly erode those protections already.
10:47We have Donald Trump deporting people to El Salvador without so much as a hearing.
10:53A judge says, hold on a second.
10:55The Trump administration says too late.
10:57The plane was already over international waters.
11:00The president of El Salvador says, oopsie, the secretary of state doesn't defend an American
11:06judge, doesn't offend the American system, but just simply repost it.
11:08He's on the side of El Salvador's president.
11:12You have other examples of the administration claiming, oh, we just did it.
11:16You said it in court, but we didn't see it in writing or it happened too late there.
11:20There in some cases saying that they don't have to follow rulings and other cases saying
11:25they are following them, but it was just too late in other saying that the judges have
11:30no right to rule on these issues.
11:33There's not going to be a day, a bright line that we cross and we say now we're in the
11:37constitutional crisis.
11:38We are slowly getting into a deeper and deeper crisis in which the president states who is
11:44at root instinctively and authoritarian is slowly and deliberately eroding the guardrails
11:49that protect us from those abuses.
11:52Does that mean we're in a constitutional crisis or just a big fucking crisis?
11:56I don't know.
11:57I don't care.
11:58And I think that's such, that's such a good point that I think everybody's waiting for
12:01the day that like we switch from a democracy into an autocracy.
12:06But like it is inherently the fact that they are, they are normalizing a lot of what we're
12:11seeing right now that the Overton window is shifting day by day that, that expressly gets
12:16us to the point where, where we won't even notice that switch as it's happening.
12:21Like we've seen it even, even with, with Elon has been peppering this idea of impeaching
12:25judges whose rulings don't comport with his political ideology.
12:29And so rather than just, you know, abide by the law rather than just follow the regular
12:34judicial process, maybe appeal a ruling that you don't like.
12:38He's like, get rid of the judges.
12:39Just go right to the root and just eliminate people who exist in positions of power that
12:45don't redound to my political, financial, or personal benefit.
12:49To watch the full interviews with Jamie Raskin and Jon Lovett, click the thumbnails right
12:52here on the screen or check out the interviews playlist on my YouTube channel.
12:56You can also click the link on the screen to listen to the audio version of this episode.
12:58And I would highly recommend you subscribe.
13:01And of course, to see more of my content, the subscribe button's on the screen as well.