Epstein Saga Haunts DOJ Confirmation Clash

23:26John Flannery:Yeah. And that's why, I mean, again, John's right. There's many important issues here, certainly ICE, which we've covered a ton. But on Epstein, you have Blanche arrayed against the MAGA base. So it comes back tomorrow because they're reminded that this is the guy. and you literally could have promoted anyone else. Trump likes that he was a heat shield and secretive on the issue. Nobody else does. Molly, John, thanks to both of you. Tonight, we have a very special guest, Senator Cory Booker, who is, of course, on the committee questioning Blanche tomorrow. A busy time here, Confirmation Eve. He'll be with us later.

24:03John Flannery:Supreme Court justices making a rare trip to Capitol Hill today to testify. We have that for you. And the First Amendment under siege, while several newspapers, including The Times, fight back as their reporters are subpoenaed. I have that important story with Rich Benjamin coming up.

24:28John Flannery:One of the defining questions in this second Trump term is who fights and who doesn't. And those first few months of the second term, we saw a lot of caving, even from organizations that weren't magnified to begin with, law firms that literally are paid by clients to fight in court, caving in court. And yet there has been a slow but very clear shift as more groups figure out that even if you don't want to be in a big public battle with the most powerful person in the world, the sitting president, when you cave, it only gets worse, so you might as well fight. And then there are some organizations that have been fighting the whole time.

25:06John Flannery:And that's the context for Trump's attack on the free press tonight. The DOJ has issued new subpoenas to New York Times journalists over coverage that Donald Trump didn't like. This is pure anti-First Amendment autocratic moves. And so the question is, faced with those subpoenas, what do you do? Well, we are seeing the Times, like the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, fighting in court. As for the validity here, well, experts see this kind of abuse of government power, subpoenaing coverage you don't like, as dangerous, as brazen, even unprecedented. And these subpoenas target four different New York Times journalists who are reporting on very real security concerns over Trump taking that gift jet.

25:51John Flannery:And just to be clear, this would be helpful as part of the way we do governance in America, that if the government in this case was potentially not moving fast enough to protect the president, there will be honest and factual reporting about that to try to make sure that everyone understands what's going on. In this case, there was a lack of anti-missile capabilities that reportedly meant that Trump couldn't use the gift jet, which has raised all sorts of separate corruption questions, but as a safety matter that he couldn't use it to fly back from the NATO summit and they used the original Air Force One.

26:27John Flannery:everything i just said is pretty straightforward and as mentioned if it helps in any way publicize the need for safety for the president or anyone else involved in the u.s government well that would seem like a downright patriotic type of reporting and yet donald trump was enraged by the story according to reporting and he asked the fbi director to go after the leaks and this of course is a trend there have been other subpoenas to journalists also at the Times and at the Washington Post and as mentioned at the Wall Street Journal, which has been fighting Trump in court. There's the indictments of Don Lemon and Georgia Ford and the threats and attacks on comics exercising their First Amendment rights.

27:10John Flannery:On the flip side, we have the government involved in what looks like encouraging a reorganization of the independent press. MAGA allies on a fast track right now to take control of CNN. that's part of that big merger deal we've told you about. The purchase is facing other new legal hurdles, with states now suing to block the deal. But most of the smart money is on that being a final kind of test, but the deal probably going through, which means what happened at CBS from 60 Minutes to Colbert will be coming to CNN soon. So to look at both the new subpoenas and these larger issues, I want to bring in a special guest back to the beat.

27:49John Flannery:Rich Benjamin has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other outlets. He's an American cultural critic and an author. His new book, Talk to Me, Lessons from a Family Forged by History, won, or I should say was, a Lucas Book Prize finalist. Congratulations. Thank you, Ari. You look at these subpoenas, they follow a wider trend. What does it mean to be an independent voice or writer or journalist in America under these kind of threats? Well, Ari, take yourself back. Imagine yourself at a pitch meeting. You're in an editorial meeting with any of these outlets and you want to do any of the hard, serious investigative journalism that this administration demands, given all the shenanigans they're doing across the board.

28:31And so you have this history of them using subpoenas, all kinds of forces at their command, regulators, the courts, federal prosecutors, to intimidate you. It would be a lie to say that none of these forces kind of might persuade you one way or the other, not necessarily to stop your investigation, but how it's conducted, how it's released.

28:55John Flannery:It chills it. It adds costs. It has people looking over their shoulder like we're in, as they like to say, a different country. We're in a different country. And so some really well-funded institutions like the New York Times are lawyered up to be able to do this. But in the murkier cases, when you have independent journalists working for, let's say, the New Yorker working for ProPublica doing really good journalism, and they're not necessarily staff members, that's a different equation. So this is chilling and people should fight it. And we're glad that the New York Times is fighting these subpoenas.

29:28John Flannery:Yeah. I mean, you kind of get a clarity when there's this kind of pressure on and you realize even groups that are sometimes seen as rivals, the Times might be a competitor with the Journal. This TV network might be a competitor with another. And then you pull back and say, well, all free press needs to be clear and united in supporting our constitutional rights because they are under attack. And CNN, if it goes by the way of CBS, will be a very different outlet. Maggie Haberman, who I think a lot of our viewers know at The Times, was speaking about these new subpoenas. She has done a lot of this reporting as well.

30:04John Flannery:It's a different set of her colleagues who are facing this current round. But let's take a look at what she just said. The mood inside The Times is that the president has gone after The New York Times as long as he has been in public life, literally. I mean, long before he became president, through a series of escalating threats, lawsuits in his private capacity, now as president. What we have seen is a continuation, and Jonathan and I write about this in the book, of a bullying campaign across every aspect of civil society since he came back into office. It is a use of presidential power that we just have not seen on such a global scale across the country and across industries.

30:44John Flannery:Since you write books, you know the idea of it can't happen here. It is happening here. What else do you think people can do to fight back, to not give into cynicism or hopelessness? It speaks to your other point, and that is as people perceive the economy of the media to be shrinking, fair or not, they might feel themselves to be able to be picked off like a pack of sheaves straying, you know, but they have to stick together. They have to realize that even though they might be corporate competitors, they are not competitors in terms of this. Because that's part of the strategy is to make each independent organization, each independent journalist feel isolated as though this is unique or singular to them.

31:28But it's part of a strategy and it can feel that way. If you're on the other end of a lawsuit, it can feel singular. But part of the strategy of not caving in is for these people to stick together on First Amendment issues through their union and through various legal mechanisms and organizations. They're very much, we're all in this together.

31:50John Flannery:Yeah, and it is striking. I mean, they have a real method to it. And in the case with the New York Times, they're testing, they understand to some degree that at least as of today, they've decided not to try to illegally indict New York Times reporters, although they did illegally indict, according to at least many experts, we haven't seen a conviction, Don Lemon. And the big difference is what you just pointed out. Mr. Lemon, while he might be prominent, well-known, is an independent journalist right now. He's got to fire his own lawyers and this and that. At the New York Times, they're kind of seeing, well, can they get away with these subpoenas?

32:24John Flannery:A national security story is important, but barring some other crime that we haven't yet seen them present evidence of, I don't think these subpoenas will hold up in court. We will see. Rich, good to have you. Great to be here. Appreciate it. Coming up, we have two Supreme Court justices facing Congress today. You rarely see that. This was the dramatic footage of them walking in. We'll explain what they had to say. And as promised, one of the top Democrats will be questioning Mr. Blanche tomorrow on that committee. Cory Booker's here next.

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35:00I love working for President Trump. It's an honor to be part of this administration. We have a man who's doing a great job. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. He kept me out of jail. They would indict me left and right. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say thank you very much. I love you, sir.

35:19John Flannery:That is Todd Blanche up for a big promotion. Confirmation hearings tomorrow over whether he should run the DOJ permanently as the new attorney general. We're joined as promised now by an important person in that process, Senator Cory Booker, New Jersey Democrat, will be questioning Blanche tomorrow in these high stakes confirmation hearings. We should note that today, Senator Booker stood with some Epstein survivors discussing a new bill to try to protect their information, including information that was released pursuant to Mr. Blanche's operations as then Deputy Attorney General in the Trump administration.

35:52John Flannery:Welcome. Thank you very much. It's good to be on, on the eve of what is going to be one of the more important confirmation hearings in the Senate. This is a big one. How are you approaching tomorrow? And do you think there is a set of topics or questions that actually could imperil Blanche getting this promotion? Well, you know, my staff put out 14 different issues that should be disqualifying, that conservatives even have come out. You just talk about the Epstein files, his horrific handling of them, him re-traumatizing the survivors because of releasing their personal information, opening them up to hate.

36:31Even on the far right, you have people coming out and saying that was horrible and disqualifying. You have former DOJ officials, over 1 ,200 of them, coming out in an unprecedented way we've never seen before in the Senate. People appointed by Republicans and Democrats, alumni from the DOJ, saying, do not let this person have this position permanently. They are a danger to the United States and our public safety. So you can go through over and over again, even my partnering with Senator Cassidy on the Republican side about the slush fund that he was presiding over, hoping to get people who beat viciously police officers on January 7th, helping to get them resources, taxpayer money.

37:13So there's numerous things that should bury this confirmation. But unfortunately, we're living in a period in which so many of my Republican Senate colleagues are willing to close their eyes, put their fingers in their ears and ignore the evidence before them in order that Donald Trump can do whatever he wants and get whatever he wants. But in this case, what he gets, what we get is the potential of having the highest law enforcement officer in the land being one of the most corrupt ever.

37:40John Flannery:And that's, as mentioned, a couple issues, including Epstein. We're talking amid ongoing questions facing how ICE, which is part of the larger law enforcement system, how it operates, allegations of excessive force, these fatal incidents. Where does that figure into what you want to know tomorrow? Well, I mean, you say allegations. We all have seen what happened with Rene Good and Alex Preddy and now these two most recent murders. Fathers going to work with American children, been in this country for years and years and years, being so systematically murdered. And where is the accountability? Where is the investigation?

38:21This DOJ has unraveled our investigatory powers into things like this in order to focus on doing Donald Trump's willingness and have shown their willingness to sell their authority. For example, there's a whole area that I'm focused on with too much corporate concentration, no oversight for these mergers. The DOJ was actively investigating a merger. He goes out to dinner with some of the parties. That's stunning. And then comes back and countermands recommendations he was getting to not allow the merger. And now they're merged. It is part and parcel of what this president stands for, which is the White House is for sale.

38:55I'm going to get rich and I'm going to hire people that are going to protect me, whether it's from things I've done wrong that are illegal or for things that I intend to do while I'm still in this office.

39:05John Flannery:And what do you want to know tomorrow about his view or oversight of all of these very shoddy, baseless revenge prosecutions? I know that some of your Republican colleagues seem to care when it involved, I guess, a moderate or conservative friendly Fed chair, but they care less when it's other people. It would seem that we need one rule of law for everyone, although I suppose in politics, you take what you can get. So any view on why Republicans were more concerned about that with the Fed? And how do you press him as a nominee on this tomorrow? Well, a couple of things. First of all, this hits home with me more than ever because I have LaMonica MacGyver, a congresswoman that represents the city of Newark.

39:44She's going to trial soon on, again, a case that should have never been brought for her doing her job at Delaney Hall, something you've covered a lot. They brought charges against my mayor of my city, Raz Baraka. And thank God a judge laughed it out. So this is what my colleagues need to understand. First, they're coming for people on the left. But once you are willing to break laws, once you're willing to weaponize the Justice Department, to think that you in some way, and we know this with what we saw with the Fed, they have no bounds whatsoever. This is not about left or right. This is about what's right and what's wrong.

40:19And he is a danger to our democracy. He's a danger to our elections. He is a danger to anyone who's abiding by the rule of law and standing up for principle if Donald Trump finds that principle in any way offensive to him or an attack on him.

40:33John Flannery:So to broaden out a little bit, you've sort of tried to stand up in the opposition in various ways. People saw you when you were doing the big speech. You have a background of trying activism. You were early adopter digitally. So that's sort of what people think of with, you know, Cory Booker to some degree. Do you have a theory of change here in the second term? Because we see these certain things like the MAGA fund running into Republican opposition, like Bill Pulte running into opposition. Do you have a theory of why certain things are too much, even as many Americans are aghast at how much it seems that Trump is getting away with?

41:08Well, a lot of it is about the psychology of my colleagues, right? Until the November elections, which are coming closer and closer, and we can get back to House or the Senate and really start to perform our constitutional duty of checking and balancing an out-of-control president, providing oversight and accountability. Right now, we are on a narrow, thin margin, which can we change the minds of some Republicans? And that is really the question. And is it fear? Is that the reason why they're not doing anything? We've seen Republicans that are suddenly not coming back to the Senate find a lot more voice in criticizing Donald Trump.

41:41So maybe it's their fear of retribution. But we know that Thomas Jefferson said something profound that still applies today. When the people are afraid of their government, there's tyranny. When the government is afraid of people, there is liberty. And so right now we have a government of senators that are more afraid of Donald Trump than they are of the people that have elected them. We've got to flip that on them and make them.

42:04John Flannery:I'm running over on time. But again, since we have a little what you would call a colloquy, what we call a conversation, you know, do you do you have a view of of that? when we see these Republicans who, oh, they lose their primary, they got a few months left, and now suddenly we get a different version of them. Do you find that's revealing? Do you find it's kind of pathetic? These are grown men, sometimes past retirement age, who suddenly go, well, now I'm going to give them a hard time for a couple months. But you're closer to it than most of us. What do you think? Well, look, I have very strong feelings on this.

42:37But I am here not to, for my anguish and my anger. I'm here to deliver things, to protect people in the state of New Jersey and around our nation. So I'll take whatever I can get, but I'm telling you right now, I'm standing here because civil rights legislation that was blocked by obstinate senators were moved, not by other senators, they were moved by people protesting, standing up, speaking up. This is really a time where every American has got to decide whether they want a corrupt government that's being sold to the highest bidder. It's why Donald Trump made$2 billion. Or do they want the rule of law, which we all swore an oath to?

43:12And if you want the rule of law, you cannot be silent as our democracy gets eroded. The speech he's going to give Thursday night is already showing me that our democracy could be really in peril right now. But it cannot end if we stand up and fight for it. And that's what everyone has an obligation. Obviously, I'll be doing that tomorrow. Yeah.

43:33John Flannery:Well, we're on the eve of these hearings. Busy time for you, Senator. Thanks for joining us. We will be right back. Thank you.

43:42John Flannery:We have three branches of government. We know that. You got the executive and the legislative and they're always going back and forth, Congress and the presidency. Right. But the judicial branch is usually off on its own for good reason, which makes this site today pretty rare. Supreme Court justices Kagan and Barrett going in and testifying to Congress. If you're checking, well, this hasn't happened since 2019, and it was the first time any justices did this occasional ritual since there have been very big questions about ethics and corruption issues by some of the Republican appointees on the court, including Thomas and Alito.

44:17John Flannery:Kagan asked directly about whether the court's ethics are working. We, the nine justices, all agreed to a code of conduct. It's specifically geared towards the Supreme Court. Right now, the mechanism has no enforceability system. One idea that has been suggested by some people is to use respected retired judges. That has, you know, some pros, some cons. I think that this remains an open question, a question of discussion. but so far we have not resolved anything. They haven't resolved it and they have Republican appointees who have been caught taking things of value that sometimes dwarf their entire annual salary and as it happens, that's just the Republican appointees, some of them.

45:12John Flannery:So Kagan was in the uncomfortable position of trying to be respectful to her colleagues while saying, yeah, no, we haven't fixed this. There was also important testimony about safety considerations.

45:24I didn't expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one.

45:34John Flannery:That speaks to the country we live in, the availability of guns, something that's also a jurisprudential legal issue. And of course, we wish safety for all members of the court. They, like public officials, like the president, are operating an environment of these increased threat levels. So that's part of one of the topics that they discuss here in this testimony. Then there was a lighter discussion about cameras in the courtroom. There's always the view out there of what about cameras in the court, you know, so we have them everywhere here. But as members of Congress— Is that good or bad? Okay, I'll take a breath on that.

46:18No, it's— I'm sorry, I didn't mean to turn it around. No, no, it's very good. It's very good. It's called transparency.

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