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The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 5 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.As you’ve heard by now, Donald Trump’s effort to prosecute people for vandalizing his Reflecting Pool renovation crashed and burned when the facts showed the charges were bogus. Then it got weirder as Trump raged for days at prosecutors for refusing to bring the prosecution he had ordered up. Now, new leaks to reporters show Trump’s conduct here to be even more corrupt than we thought. How much worse might this get, and can a Democratic Congress rein it in?We’re asking former federal prosecutor Barb McQuade to walk us through just how irregular all this really is and what can be done about it. Barb, good to have you back on.Barb McQuade: Thanks, Greg. Good to be with you.Sargent: So a former Olympian, David Hearn, and several others had been facing vandalism charges for supposedly ripping up the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, because Trump was badly embarrassed by the failure of his renovation of it. But then Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., dropped the case, admitting the problem was shoddy construction. Barb, can you just sum up how we got to this point?McQuade: Well, it’s pretty shocking that these charges were ever filed in the first place. I looked at the charging document when it first came down, to try to understand what facts they were alleging. And it was the most bare-bones of an indictment you’ve ever seen. It was one sentence. And there are two parts of it that struck me as very difficult to prove. One is that you have to prove that the person acted knowingly and willfully. That is, that they intended to do damage, that they acted maliciously. And the one that I always thought they would have problems proving is that they caused damage exceeding $1,000 in value.Now remember the timing of this. This all happened long after the public became aware of the failures to the Reflecting Pool. I mean, the reason he said he went over there to check it out after a long bike ride is he wanted to see what the fuss was all about. And he saw all kinds of floating pieces of paint. And so now, whether he picked one up or he grabbed it or he pulled on it, you were never going to establish that he caused a thousand dollars’ worth of damage by what he had done. And so it struck me as really doomed from the start. Nonetheless, Jeanine Pirro indicted this case, in my opinion, because it advanced Donald Trump’s false narrative that the reason his renovations to the Reflecting Pool failed were not because of his own mismanagement, but because of vandals. And so Mr. Hearn provided a convenient scapegoat, even though it meant perhaps ruining his life.Sargent: So just to give you a sense of how angry Trump got when Pirro dropped the charges, listen to him raging over it to reporters. Here he’s talking about Pirro and then goes on to abuse a reporter who asks him a question. Listen.Donald Trump (voiceover): I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department. And I guess she choked. I don’t know what the hell happened.Reporter (voiceover): Are you reconsidering her role here?Trump (voiceover): I don’t know what you—you don’t—you’re fake news. Don’t ever talk again. You’re fake news. One of the worst of the business.Sargent: Barb, note how Trump says there, “they did it.” He really doesn’t understand that he doesn’t get to make that true by decree. I mean, there’s like a long history of presidents trying to corrupt DOJ in various ways, but here it’s just stated baldly that this one man gets to decide by fiat who’s guilty and who’s innocent, and the system’s supposed to just bend itself around that. Can you talk about this?McQuade: Yes, it does seem that President Trump wants to call the shots, as we’ve seen with cases being filed against Jim Comey for seashells and Letitia James for mortgage fraud—cases that have fallen apart. He really seems to think that he can just demand that lawyers file indictments against his enemies and it will be so. And maybe if they follow his orders, they can file indictments, but they’re never going to get convictions unless they have evidence to prove each and every element of a crime. That is, what the person did, what they were thinking, and any causation that the statute might require, as we saw here. I don’t know if President Trump doesn’t understand that, or if he doesn’t care, because you can really wreck somebody’s life just by charging them, even if ultimately the charges don’t stick.And that’s why one of the principles of federal prosecution that was promulgated after Watergate is that prosecutors should bring indictments only if they believe the evidence is sufficient to convict a defendant at trial, and that that conviction can be sustained on appeal. You’re not supposed to just take a flyer, or let’s see what we can make stick. You have to believe you have the evidence. Now, certainly no case is a slam dunk. Sometimes witnesses go sideways, or juries disbelieve, or juries nullify, but you have to believe you have the goods. It’s just impossible to imagine anybody ever thought they had the goods in this case. And Donald Trump, it seems, does either not understand it or, more likely, not care.Sargent: Right. And then Donald Trump got so angry at her that she decided she had to go to the White House to talk him out of his fury. Sources have now leaked to CBS News that Pirro went to the White House this week with a box full of physical evidence that exculpated all those people of vandalism, in order to persuade Trump that the culprit was in fact bad construction. The meeting got heated, according to CBS. Barb, can we talk about how crazy that is on just a lot of levels? First, the level of presidential interference, then Trump refusing to accept the facts, and then Trump apparently raging at her, despite being presented by his own prosecutors with direct physical evidence. Your thoughts on that?McQuade: Yeah, it’s really a complete change from the way the Justice Department has operated in the post-Watergate era. In fact, most administrations, including Trump’s first administration, have issued memos reminding prosecutors that they are not to have contact about case decisions with the White House. That is both to prevent actual interference or even the appearance of interference with charging decisions on the basis of partisan politics. Now, a president might direct priorities. They might say, I would like to prioritize immigration enforcement, or fraud enforcement. That’s fine. But when they’re talking about giving directives on specific cases, that is where it violates those norms of the past fifty years.And the idea that Jeanine Pirro has to come over and say, look at this evidence, Mr. President, here are my receipts, I really did make the right decision—I mean, even William Barr, when he took the job as attorney general, said he did so only on the condition that President Trump not interfere with his decisions about charging cases, that he would base decisions on the facts, on the law, and the fair administration of justice, and Donald Trump would butt out. According to Barr, Trump agreed to that during that first term. But this term he seems to have completely abandoned any pretense of that. And in fact, Todd Blanche has embraced it. He’s even said the American people should be grateful that the president is taking charge and very involved in these cases and is making sure his Cabinet is working hard. That’s not what he’s doing. He is injecting partisan politics into the rule of law.Sargent: Well, The Washington Post reports on more leaks—that this whole thing has sparked tirades inside the White House. Barb, what’s funny about Pirro going over to Trump with physical facts is she thinks those will persuade him to come to his senses and stop raging at her. But this is the essence of it, Barb. Trump is angry at Pirro for refusing to throw out considerations of fact. Trump is angry at Pirro for refusing his command to prosecute innocent people despite what the facts and the law dictate. So, like, evidence can’t change Trump’s mind by definition, right?McQuade: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, and it really goes back to, I think, a couple of data points that provide real insight into his strategy. Remember when there was an effort to declare that the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud? And he was trying to convince Justice Department leaders to go along with that and make an announcement. And remember what he said is, just say there was fraud in the election and leave the rest to me. Because what he really wants is some independent, objective, respected third party to validate his claims. He said the same thing to Volodymyr Zelensky. Remember when he wanted him to announce that there was an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden over, you know, energy sector election interference in Ukraine.Sargent: I want to bring up something that Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said about this thing, because I think it really gets at the corrupt nature of it. After Pirro dropped this case, Burgum went out on Twitter and contested her dropping it. He said the evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. We provided the U.S. Attorney’s office with expert and eyewitness testimony, et cetera, et cetera, right? What drives me crazy about that is Burgum, who is not Trump and presumably not crazy the way Trump is, is willing to attack Pirro for the act of following the facts and the law, and willing to attack Pirro for not putting Trump above those considerations of facts and law. Trump’s lackeys will, like, sell each other out for a tiny bit of good favor from the despot. And of course that’s always, like, fleeting, and it’ll be followed by him turning on them at some point anyway. You can kind of see how the corruption seeps down from the top in that one Doug Burgum tweet.McQuade: Yeah. Yeah, and the lack of integrity is appalling. And we know he’s wrong, because we’ve seen it. In the motion to dismiss this case, Jeanine Pirro’s crew didn’t just say we don’t have the evidence. They documented over 20 pages the evidence that they had received that demonstrated this failure. They talked about the company that was hired. They talked about their efforts. They talked about their failure. They talked about how it was overpainted, and why, and the dates and the problems and the peeling of the paint. So it isn’t just, you know, a one-sentence decision or motion. It is detailed facts over 20 pages.And so it is really disturbing that someone like Doug Burgum, a Cabinet secretary, would be willing to make these statements really just to indulge Donald Trump in his fantasies. Everybody involved in this knows that these claims are false. But I suppose this is the way one stays in good stead. I mean, earlier today we had the Senate Judiciary Committee voting on Todd Blanche, and Thom Tillis, for all of the good things he’s done to sort of put some obstacles in the way and answer some questions by the candidates—even he reverted to whataboutism, and talking about the weaponization of the Biden DOJ and the Russia investigation and all of that, Crossfire Hurricane, like, my gosh. And so I don’t know whether they really believe it or they are just catering toward the MAGA right.Sargent: Yeah, it’s really hard to know what goes through the head of someone like Thom Tillis, who shows a lot of integrity and courage and then at the last second just throws it all away for nothing.McQuade: For nothing. For nothing.Sargent: This whole Reflecting Pool fiasco is completely buffoonish and a total embarrassment for Trump and so forth. And yet at the same time it’s deadly serious, right? It’s an indicator that Trump is getting worse with his willingness to just use DOJ as a weapon in whatever way he decides at any given moment. And so what’s the worst-case scenario here going forward? We’ve got two more years at least of Donald Trump, presuming he serves the rest of his term, and potentially a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate—or just a Democratic House. What’s the worst thing that you anticipate happening with DOJ in the next two years? How bad could it get?McQuade: Well, I mean, we could see more of these weaponized prosecutions. The seashell case against Jim Comey, the effort to investigate what they’re calling the grand conspiracy out of Florida. I mean, imagine charges against people like John Brennan or other members of the intelligence community who are simply serving their country, charges against Anthony Fauci. I mean, I think we could see charges on any of these fronts. I also worry about how the Justice Department might try to interfere in the midterm elections. With, you know, they’ve tried all kinds of things already to obtain voter rolls. The president is trying to use the Postal Service to prevent it from providing absentee and mail-in ballots to voters. So I worry about that.Sargent: There’s a lot to worry about. It sounds like you’re basically saying we can’t rule out the possibility that Trump will put innocent people in jail.McQuade: Yeah, I think that’s right. I like to think that the system will work, and that ultimately, because of the rights that people have at trial—to a jury, to counsel, to cross-examination, to a fair and impartial judge, to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as a legal standard, to appellate processes—that people will not go to jail as a result of unjust prosecutions. But I think their lives could be made into a living hell before that.Sargent: Absolutely. You wrote this book. It’s called The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government. Great title, that very much applies right here, unfortunately. What can a Democratic House, or a Democratic House and Senate, do to stop DOJ from bringing corrupt prosecutions against Trump critics, and against whoever the despot orders them to? What can be done?McQuade: I think some very important things can be done to serve as a check on this administration. One is conducting oversight. And so they can have hearings to expose to the public some of what’s going on at the Justice Department. That’s incredibly important. They also have the power of the purse. They have the ability to defund programs if they think the funds are not being spent in a responsible way. That includes the judgment fund. And this one has become—was once kind of a sleepy financial problem, but now I think has come in the news. What Congress does is it funds this huge pot of money called the judgment fund. And then it trusts the Justice Department to use its discretion and best judgment to dole out settlements, or to make judgments when there are verdicts in court.But we rely on the Justice Department to act in good faith to serve the best interests of the United States of America. So if somebody gets hit with a postal truck and they break a leg, they assess the fair market value of that, lost wages, pain and suffering, injuries, medical bills, and the like, and they say, that was worth $100,000, here you go. Now what we see is the use of the judgment fund to pay people like Michael Flynn and Carter Page. I think one of the things they could do is what they used to do, and that is to fund judgments on an individual basis. And if they find that the Justice Department is acting in bad faith, they could decline to provide those funds. So I think between oversight and the power of the purse, they have a lot of power there to rein in the Department of Justice. And of course, they also have the power of impeachment, which includes the power to impeach the attorney general.Sargent: One last thought. A Democratic House and Senate—if Democrats win both, which is hard but not impossible—couldn’t a Democratic House and Senate essentially pass legislation that does things like the bills that Democrats passed during the first Trump administration, though they didn’t get anywhere, of course, because Trump was president? Some of these bills did things like really build a real firewall between DOJ and the White House. Presumably a Democratic House and Senate could pass that kind of thing, challenge Trump to veto it, and then have a big political fight over these reforms, which I think would poll very well. What do you think of that idea?McQuade: I do. After Watergate, there was a whole slew of reforms that came into play. Some was legislation, some was norms at the Justice Department. And I think there is great public appetite for that once again. And so it may be a different landscape now, after the Supreme Court has shown interest and support for this idea of the unitary executive, about what separation-of-powers legislation will be permitted. But I think it’s worth the fight to really test those boundaries. I mean, Donald Trump has certainly pushed the boundaries of executive power. I think we need Congress to do the same, assert its own power, its own legislative power, so that we don’t have this failure of equilibrium that we seem to be in right now.Sargent: And let’s remember, Donald Trump, if he loses one or both houses of Congress, he’s going to be even weaker next year. And so there would be a real chance to take on these fights and maybe win some of them.Barb McQuade, always awesome to talk to you. Thank you so much for all that.McQuade: Thank you, Greg.

As Elon Musk defends nude deepfakes, the FTC is moving to censor AI models trained to recognize historical injustices. By Mike Ludwig This article was originally published by Truthout As Elon Musk defends nude deepfakes, the FTC is moving to censor AI models trained to recognize historical injustices. To understand the stakes of the debate […]

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