Obama Breaks Silence, Trump's DOJ Buries Investigation to Protect MAGA Congressman

0:04Jennifer:All right, back by popular demand. It's the one, the only Josh Welch. And we have to talk. Obama is speaking out against Trump's use of the DOJ to go after his political enemies. Let's play the clip. What powers do you believe the president should not have? Well, there are a couple that I followed, even though they weren't law. and I want us, we're going to have to do some work to return to this basic norm and we probably now have to codify it. The White House shouldn't be able to direct the Attorney General to go around prosecuting whoever the President wants to prosecute. Right, because technically it's under the executive branch.

0:47Jennifer:The norm is that it's independent. The norm, the idea is that the Attorney General is the people's lawyer, it's not the President's consigliere. Josh. I think he puts his finger right on it up close when you see what the Department of Justice has done to weaponize the rule of law against political opponents of President Trump. It's reminiscent of any sort of authoritarian regime where you see a leader going after his political opponents. We've never seen the Department of Justice used to this extent as a political or police basically watchdog for the president. Right. And I believe they always accused the weaponization of the government.

1:32Jennifer:They accused Obama of weaponization. They accused Joe Biden of weaponization. And I just want to say, I wish Biden would have weaponized the DOJ. I wish they would have done their fucking job and said, go get these fascists that tried to overturn the election results. And that's what all of the MAGA crowd says. Well, look at what Biden or look at what Garland did. They didn't do jack shit. Exactly. And let's not skip past the fact that President Trump is an actual criminal. He was convicted in a state court, not a federal court. He was convicted in a state court of 30-something counts. Didn't have anything to do with Merrick Garland with what happened to President Trump.

2:11Jennifer:Well, and speaking of those 34 felonies that he was convicted of, an attorney took 34 L's. And that guy's name is Todd Blanche. The loser who got Trump convicted of 34 felonies is now the acting attorney general of the DOJ. And he has responded to former President Obama. Play the clip. That myself or President Trump or lawyers who work with me are being accused of some sort of political retribution. It is simply not true. It is absolutely not true. And how do I prove it's not true. Well, if you look at the recent indictment you asked me about a few minutes ago, you have local prosecutors, you have local agents, I don't even know their names.

2:59Jennifer:I don't know their names who are bringing these charges. That's one way. And the next thing I'll say is it is extraordinarily hypocritical and extraordinarily rich for these critics, as you call them, to focus on what this administration is doing when almost to a person they remain dead silent for four years while we saw what happened during the Biden administration with President Trump. I mean, okay. He's referencing, Josh, this indictment of James Comey for doing at seashells that say 8647. And he's saying that Trump didn't direct him to pursue the investigation because he doesn't know the particular agent's names.

3:45Jennifer:This is just, he's sitting there talking about something being rich and this is just more than I can take. Let me give you a little bit of context as a criminal defense lawyer. Anytime you hear a criminal defense lawyer use words like Todd Blanche just used simply false just not true. When they give this quote about their client then that means that they're 100 % guilty. Those are the kind of things that you say when you have nothing else to say. You say, and I quote him here, that is simply not true. That is just not true. That's simply false. He said all of those things in that clip. You say those things from where I'm sitting when your client is guilty as fuck.

4:26Jennifer:Okay. The same day that Blanche gave this interview, the DOJ made this announcement, pop this up, per Bloomberg, the U.S. Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to let it intervene in President Donald Trump's appeal of the 83.3 million jury verdict against him in a defamation suit brought by former Elle Magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. The DOJ filed to ask the Supreme Court to allow it to step in on Trump's appeal using the Westfall Act to swap Trump for the United States government as the defendant in the lawsuit, a move that would doom Carroll's case entirely because the federal government cannot be sued for defamation.

5:16Jennifer:Dumb this down in layman terms for me and the listener so we understand what Trump is doing with the DOJ and how he is, in fact, weaponizing it. Well, so to begin with, the Second Circuit has already decided this issue, and they decided against Trump, and this was during Biden's administration. And just recently, DOJ requested an en banc hearing. That's where you get all of the judges to rule on this. I think there's eight or nine circuit judges, and all of them would collectively hear this and rule it. And typically, you only see that if it's a very important issue and the court decides upon a request to actually do that.

5:54Here DOJ did that and the Second Circuit refused the en banc decision or to sit en banc and listen to this and give them a second shot at it. So what you see here now is they're going to go past the Second Circuit and where are they going to go? They're going to go to our good friends at the Supreme Court and what are they going to ask for? They're going to ask for Donald Trump's name to be substituted with the United States because under the Federal Tort Claims Act, you cannot sue the United States for defamation, period. So it's a kill shot. If you make the substitution, then the judgment is null and void.

6:32The government doesn't have to pay. So let's see what the good folks at the Supreme Court have to say about this once it gets there.

6:39Jennifer:I think we all know what the good folks at the Supreme Court are going to do. And I just want to remind you guys that Carol won two civil cases against Trump. A jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carol in 1996 and defaming her, awarding$5 million. And a separate jury awarded$83.3 million in the defamation damages. And so Trump has Todd Blanche viciously working on this because he wants to get out of everything. He avoids accountability at all costs. And the DO, go ahead. No, I want to add something about that. So what we saw previously on Todd Blanche's clip is you see him auditioning.

7:25That's his audition to be the next attorney general with the soundbites that he just gave. What we don't see or what we haven't talked about are all these pardons and this bribery for pardon scandal. And what you certainly don't hear about is the fact that when Trump has granted all these pardons for all these defendants, all these white collar defendants, what you don't know is in the Washington Post reported this, I think, last year, that he's also waived a total of close to$1 billion in restitution to victims of those crimes. And so when you see Todd Blanch give that interview about, in the full context of that interview, he says, we file thousands of cases against righteous criminals.

8:08And what he's not saying is we've also got a president that I work for, that I'm auditioning for, that has granted pardons where restitution given to victims of crimes have totaled close to$1 billion. And that has just been waived based on this pay for a pardon scheme that the president has running.

8:27Jennifer:It's just that is so sad because the one thing that we have are the courts where we can right wrongs. And a lot of these people that Trump pardoned are swindlers, have swindled people out of money and he has pardoned them. And they're never going to be made made whole. Imagine being an investor in some white colored case and the defendant gets convicted. The judge orders that restitution be paid. It should be some of these exceed 60, 70 million dollars. Some are in the hundreds of million dollars. I think I've got a short list of them. This guy named Trevor Milton,$680 million. He was ordered to pay in restitution to victims of crime.

9:08And based on the pardon, that restitution is marked off.

9:13Jennifer:And that pardon is final. Final. There's nothing, nowhere to appeal it, nothing that anybody can do. I think that if another administration conducted an investigation, you could possibly set these aside, but we're veering into uncharted waters. That's never been done before. And you say this a lot, and if you'll explain it to the listener, that from a criminal defense lawyer that works with federal attorneys in the DOJ, what you see this administration doing is taking the rule of law, which basically stabilizes democracy, business, the economy, everything, and he's turning it upside down. Upside down.

9:49And I think the Department of Justice at one point had close to a 90 % conviction rate because their lawyers are smart. They prepare for those cases. They don't file cases that they can't prove. And that number has dipped significantly in the past 18 months with the quality of lawyers. I think some guy was putting ads out on Twitter seeking new U.S. attorneys. If interested, apply. Send me a DM. I mean, when you hear shit like that and you think about the Department of Justice.

10:17Jennifer:You don't think Lindsey Halligan is the nation's best? That insurance lawyer that went down to Virginia? No, I don't think she's probably, but that's what we're dealing with now. All right. And the DOJ dropped charges in cases against a Republican in Congress. Let's pop this up. Kyle Chaney reports, DOJ appears to be abandoning whatever remained of a review of materials seized from Representative Andy Ogle's phone. The case froze soon after Trump took office and initial prosecutors on the case withdrew. Ogles was being investigated for fabricating a$320 ,000 loan to his own campaign. The Trump DOJ just destroyed the evidence before investigators could even look at it.

11:07Jennifer:Ogles also raised nearly$25 ,000 in donations for a children's burial garden in memory of his stillborn child, a garden that was never built. That's pretty breathtaking. And he has refused to say what happened to the money. So not only is this guy a con man and a grifter, his stillborn baby he used, my God, it's perfect for MAGA. Perfect. And I think the part that catches me here is that they dismiss this. They end this inquiry before the FBI ever has a chance to even see what's on the phone. That's what this was about. They had seized his cell phone and they're investigating him for campaign finance violations.

11:51And they don't even get that far. They don't even care. We don't care what's on it. We don't care if this guy did it or not. He's MAGA. He's one of us. Let's get rid of it. That's the kind of shit that we're dealing with day in, day out with MAGA.

12:04Jennifer:All right. That's how we have. Thank you, Josh. Drop Josh a comment in the comment section. Subscribe to our channel or pre-order my book, Not Today Fascist. Josh, have you pre-ordered yours? I have not, but I'm going to order four or five of them. Thanks for having me back. It's good to be back. All right. Like and subscribe.