Melber’s Bombshell Special Report on Trump’s Lawless Year

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0:59DOJ abusing powers against his enemies list as Trump pockets hundreds of millions stoking questions about whether he's acting for the public himself or some purchased foreign agenda. This is the state of the union as the U.S. marks over one year since Trump was sworn back in. This is a time to assess the president's policies in a typical era. But this is no typical era. So tonight, our special report is on how America's bedrock guardrails are holding up, first in government and among the wider public, how the government checks are doing and how the American people are meeting the challenge. Now, Trump's rushed rule-busting governing can actually overwhelm the system, making it harder to even see what's happening over this past year or where his plots worked or failed.

1:55So this new report tracks each key guardrail. And I'm going to walk you through this. Some guardrails are holding up, marked green, like lawsuits. Some are a mixed bag, a mixed record, like how we can measure the police military complex trying to patrol us at home. That's yellow, for example, and others are failing, like the DOJ, clearly marked red. Now, for our democracy, if you see the glass half empty, you'll notice some of the red. Others may find encouragement in the green. But I want to share one more truth before we dig into this special report tonight. Donald Trump tries to scramble any limits on power with spectacle, shock, and awe.

2:35A playbook to instill fear or hopelessness or both. So that giving in is pitched as some sort of inevitable next step. Reality actually shows the opposite. People standing up, fighting, and winning even against lying, cheating, violence, and that convicted sedition. and against a political figure who, remember, got fewer votes in two of his three elections, lost the midterms last time, loses in the courts a lot, and was the first president ever indicted, along with eight of his aides getting convicted. President Trump acknowledging that Joe Biden will be president. For the first time in U.S. history, a former president is facing federal criminal charges.

3:18But did not take responsibility for the mob of his supporters who breached the Capitol. President Trump taking the oath of office for the second time in the Capitol Rotunda. More than 1 ,500 pardons or commutations in all for the people who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol. President Trump says nearly every federal agency in the U.S. government could fall under the scrutiny of Elon Musk. Jimmy Kimmel back on air overnight. The hard work of improving New Yorkers' lives starts now. This is the most American thing that you can do. Protest and speak for what you believe in. Those are the stakes.

3:52Our report now begins with government guardrails. The founders were most concerned that the new democracy could be hijacked by a wannabe king. And they made checks inside the executive staff bound by the Constitution, not a politician's whims. Officials must resist orders that break the law. and the epicenter for that is DOJ, which did patrol Trump in his first term, even appointing special counsel Mueller because Trump's team could not investigate itself. Now the DOJ is failing that independence this term. Some officials have resisted orders to lie in court or abuse power against Trump's enemies, even resigning, but the line hasn't held.

4:34Trump's former personal lawyers, Bondi and Blanche, run the DOJ like Trump's political machine, probing rivals in cases so weak several dropped long before trial. New plots against the Fed chair this month, new probes of Minnesota Democrats added to this chart breaking today. And even one or two questionable cases of illegal selective prosecution, that's bad. Right now, it's 14 such cases. The very enemies list Bondi disclaimed under oath. So our reporting finds the DOJ's internal guardrail is failing. The red you see here. Trump doing in one year this term what he never did in his first four years, breaking the DOJ into an unlawful arm of his agenda.

5:20And as Russia and countless autocracies show, if the government can get away with indicting anyone for nothing, then you don't have a full opposition or a full democracy. Then there's the use of soldiers and militarized policing on American soil. Trump seizing National Guards without their governors, deploying ICE agents in places that voted against him, leading to escalation to violence and the ICE agent killing Rene Good. Now, judges have slowly trimmed some of those deployments. But remember, the founders devoted the Third Amendment to stop soldiers from being forced onto citizens. Federal law bars the military from policing at home.

5:59and yet the military has been deployed in six cities and counting. This guardrail is clearly faltering and Trump's floating even broader emergency powers or the Insurrection Act. Now the courts are the ultimate authority in our system. They limit politicians' power. They resolve what the law says. They're the last word on elections. And I want to show you if you really measure it, the court's record this past year is mixed. They've tangled with DOJ lawyers. They've clearly ruled against some of Trump's lawless moves. We count about 13 major rulings against him. But the Supreme Court has also allowed even rewarded Trump ploys to evade the law or run out the clock.

6:40And so that's a measure there. Then you have something we all remember. Judges are just on the receiving end. But the doors of the courthouse right now are still open and working. There's been a flood of lawsuits against Trump actions in year one. And if you count up and actually look at this, something he may want to distract you from, about half have won steps to slow or block unlawful acts, with many still pending. Those 358 major suits are seen across the country, part of the many losses Trump has been dealt this first year. In fact, so many losses, it's hard to remember them all. We removed the public safety threat, gang member designated terrorists.

7:25The Supreme Court says the Trump administration must facilitate the return of a Maryland man deported to a Salvadorian prison. The government admitted it mistakenly deported him. Elon Musk's time in the White House has officially come to an end. This feels like a reality show character being kind of slowly written off. I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Jimmy Kimmel back on air overnight.

7:52Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted. This is not partisan. We're asking for you to stand with us now to release all of the files. It's never been political for us. Two thirds being in the affirmative. The rules are suspended. The bill is passed. Donald Trump put his surrender and humiliation in writing in capital letters in a tweet saying, I have just signed the bill to release the Epstein files. There is no legal, factual or moral justification for President Trump to deploy any military troops or National Guard units here in Chicago. The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard in Illinois.

8:36A lot of those losses from the lawsuits. That guardrail is working. Now, the founders also predicted that ambition would check ambition. and this isn't one you even need a chart for. That has not been the case in this Republican Congress. Infamously meek. Republicans don't even defend their own elected congressional power, let alone checking the president for seizing tariff and foreign policy powers or doing anything about one of the biggest stories of this past year, his corrupt and dangerous grifting, which breaks the Constitution's ban on foreign gifts, taking a jet from a foreign country, hundreds of millions in crypto.

9:15though, it dwarfs all White House corruption scandals. And so as we mark this year in the guardrails, let's be clear, it's one of the greatest violations of U.S. government guardrails ever. His family is expanding business interests in the Middle East or facing fresh scrutiny. Blurring the lines between business and government. The Trump organization has plans for luxury skyscrapers, golf courses, and a deal involving cryptocurrency. Oh my goodness me. Five billion dollars. Eye-popping numbers. President Trump preparing to accept a luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar. The jet is just the latest in a series of actions taken by the president that flout ethics norms.

9:52It's crypto friendly legislation coming from the president of the United States, who is in turn cashing in on the crypto phase personally, his family. The single largest corrupt gift in the history of gifts. Facts. patrolling a president's self-enrichment and violating the Constitution. That's up to Congress. And Republicans have completely failed. They didn't even join a plan to just block your taxpayer dollars from being used to upgrade what is now Donald Trump's personal jet gift. It's one of several examples where the GOP Congress just fails as a guardrail. By contrast, many states are stepping up.

10:32They're using their powers to resist those deployments. They take the administration to court in legal ways that not everyone can do. They're using state mechanisms. In fact, we count 23 major suits from the states. This is the Constitution's federalism. This guardrail is working. And states also protect elections. And that brings us, of course, to the people's checks on Trump, which is actually an area very interesting that according to the numbers is working better. We turn to that when this special report concludes. in 90 seconds.

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12:41Welcome back to our special report on the guardrails tested in this first year of Trump's term. Now, we documented government checks and balances, many faltering that you see in red and yellow. Now we turn to the other check provided under the Constitution, the American people's rights, where free speech, protests, and democracy are holding up better, including with the work by citizens as opposed to many elites, with one exception. CEOs have an outsized role in economics, media, and democracy. They can use their power to hold the line. We see that in wartime patriotism or peacetime government collaboration, and sometimes in backing civil rights and democracy.

13:23Some CEOs responded to the original January 6th attack by denouncing it and vowing not to donate to politicians involved. Once Trump came back, though, many reversed themselves donating to him. This includes some of America's largest company CEOs. And the backtracking contrast is striking. Mark Zuckerberg just writing in a statement that shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said, for years, our democracy has built a reservoir of goodwill around the world that brings important benefits for our citizens.

14:05Today's attack on the U.S. Capitol does further damage. Indeed, those 12, those big companies, 12 of their CEOs. Were once standing up to this, we showed you some of that sound. Now they're actively undercutting the red line they claim for democracy. Other CEOs have buckled under government pressure to suspend Jimmy Kimmel. Or pay Trump for baseless cases that attack speech. This includes CEOs who, as part of their portfolio, also oversee news companies. Then there are the lawyers. Trump plotted against the Sixth Amendment right to counsel by retaliating against firms representing his critics.

14:45Now, law firms fight in court for a living, yet early on, many buckled under that plot. About 38 % of the targeted firms have been fighting back over time in court. A mixed picture at best. Trump also tried abusing government funding to attack campus freedom. And while many people criticize the universities which buckled, and that got a lot of attention, when you look over the year, our reporting finds most targeted universities, about 60%, just there, about 57%, are fighting back. Now, some of the parent company's CEOs buckled. I mentioned that. But when you look at the actual editors of newspapers, say The Times, Wall Street Journal and most working journalists, they're not buckling.

15:29Even as Trump sues and tries to bar access and recently even oversaw the unusual federal search of a reporter's home, journalists are still reporting and speaking and critiquing the government as the Constitution envisioned. In fact, if you just think about it, a lot of what we know about Trump attacking the Bill of Rights comes from the exercise of that very first right, the First Amendment right to report and speak. It bars the government, of course, from any attempt to censor, ban or punish free speech, free press or the right of the people to peacefully assemble, which brings us to protest.

16:07Americans have been exercising that right to great effect, breaking records for protests in this past year against Trump's autocratic bid for king-like powers, really sparking a movement that is now, according to polling, 13 percent larger than MAGA. Protests now or bow down later. Those are your options? Yes. Everything this regime has been up to is anti-American. More than 100 community members rally around a Vermont man at risk of deportation. Like I say, this is where I belong. This is home to me. Congress makes the laws, not the president. I believe in the Constitution, the rule of law, and I believe in people treating other people with humanity.

16:57I didn't think that our government would be inhumane like that. It is regular Americans who have been fighting against Trump all over the country. Yes, in Washington, but honestly, all over the country. And that's what's made the difference. These protests all over the country are one of the most effective green ratings when you measure the guardrails of this past year. Comparison, the Conservative Tea Party got a lot of attention and drew about 700 ,000 attendees concerned about Obama's leadership across 2009. In the past years, Trump protests have drawn about 13 million people. A massive show of public resistance and unity.

17:44And that can shape public opinion and impact politicians alike. Now, I told you DOJ employees falling down on their constitutional oath. we reported that. The U.S. guardrails also require regular citizens at the beginning and the end of every major prosecution. The grand juries, the charge, and of course the jury of 12 that convicts. And so the DOJ's extreme cases are sometimes dead on arrival because citizens on grand juries keep rejecting cases against protesters, against some Trump rivals. They've stopped now if you're counting 10 attempted cases that we know about from Bondi's DOJ, including the bungled case against New York Attorney General James.

18:23Then there are elections. Trump now muses about an illegal third term or plotting against the midterms. Those are threats to due crime. They got to be taken seriously, especially after his convicted 2020 insurrection. But the fact is this year, elections were still successfully held around the nation. That is another green rating. Democracy's core guardrail, the people decide, is holding under strain. so altogether it is a rough year for the rule of law we're seeing red on the government side trump the source of the attacks on the rule of law his appointees congress all failing the constitution that's as courts and states try to hold the line but the evidence shows the public is leading in this breach.

19:16And you can measure it. Regular workers showing courage their bosses lack. Journalists reporting amid these attacks. Citizens defending a constitution that the DOJ is clearly trashing. From the jury box to the ballot box and those record-breaking protests month after month, even against very real threats of government retribution or violence as soldiers roam the streets. And this is actually what the founders envisioned. Strong checks and rights because they expected conniving tyrants can come into power. The rights protected because we will need them. Not because everything's just going to be easy or okay.

19:56Things are not okay. The rule of law is losing key rounds. The founders planned for that. Madison was fixated on how to systematically thwart future tyrants who might come into office. Or as the late Bashar Jackson said, a.k.a. Pop Smoke, drop a slip and get a light pack. I don't care if you're losing. Still fight back. But people are fighting back. And that's partly because we still have that power because the guardrails are protecting it most of the time. And the American system makes it a stronger power than any temporary politician who's supposed to serve the public.

20:45One year into Trump's new term, we are showing you our original special report tonight, tracking numerically how government guardrails are faltering, and in the green, how many American public protests, journalism, and elections. The public role consecrated in our Constitution is in times working with, as I mentioned, many regular workers braver than their bosses. We now turn to special guests that we've invited for this discussion on the one year anniversary of this Trump second term. The dean of Columbia Journalism School and the New Yorker magazine staff writer Jelani Cobb and an investigative reporter with The New York Times, well known to MS viewers, Michael Schmidt.

21:30Michael, your thoughts here as we measure the guardrails. Look, I didn't think he would be as successful as he was with the Justice Department. I didn't think he would get to a point where he could literally try to invent criminality and cast it on his foes and perceived enemies. And by September, you essentially had that. You had him ordering his attorney general in public on who should be prosecuted and having a Justice Department that even with career prosecutors and political appointees quitting was still willing to go ahead and try to do that and was successful in receiving two indictments.

22:17That, to me, was for his weaponization attempts and his attempts at retribution, the true high watermark. Now, the interesting thing about that is that those indictments of Tish James and James Comey did not hold. And as we came into the end of the year, I thought a lot about that. And I thought, okay, are we seeing that there are limitations to his ability to materialize and invent criminality and cast it on his enemies? and and if that's true that's a huge deal to what he can and cannot do now that still hasn't played itself out they've gone back and tried to indict James again and they're gonna try and indict Comey again but if he can't literally imprison his rivals at will then I think that that takes a lot of um a lot of oomph out of the potential power that he has to go after people that doesn't solve um all the questions.

23:18It doesn't answer all the questions. It doesn't do a lot of things. But on that issue, I think that he may have more limitations on criminality than at least I thought he did. I think that is true to some extent with one caveat, in that, you know, here the process is the punishment. That irrespective of the outcome, you still have the attorney general of New York, the former FBI director, being subjected to the presumed humiliation of an indictment, having to go through all the legal proceedings, and ultimately, you know, there being a non-indictment, you know, returned on this. But these cases fall apart.

23:57But for other people, and this is a headache, a difficulty, you know, a trial for them. For other people, without those kinds of resources, this kind of process as punishment can have real consequences. And so if you are a regular individual, we can argue that this is the same sort of thing that happens when American citizens are detained by ICE and they have to go through all sorts of bureaucratic processes and jump through hoops in order to get a return to a freedom that never should have been abrogated in the first place. And that's what's so striking, because I think you're right, as people without lawyers and funding have more to fear from that number 14, which is the 14 revenge cases, enemies list.

24:41But when we broaden out and see all of the green, as I put it, on the American public side, you have CEOs with lawyers and money who were quicker to give in, including the 12 who reverse themselves, than the public, as seen on the bottom of this chart, Jelani, who are doing it despite the Here's the thing that's interesting. When we looked at that entire chart, everything in red, the people who are in red are individually the most powerful people in this conversation. And so CEOs, far more well-compensated, powerful, influential, etc., than the average journalist, than the average protester, than the average person who's on a grand jury.

25:24And so there's this inverse relationship between people's willingness to stand up to autocracy and the resources they have that should be at their benefit. And why is that, do you think? So I think that when we look at this, what happens is like there's part of the struggle, which is for people to gain power. And then there's other part of the struggle, which is to hold on to as much power as possible. And there are people who understand that there are things more important than individual power, things that are more important than individual money. And the other thing I'll say is that, lastly, for the people who are protesting, most of them are not protesting on their own behalf.

26:03Right. They could sit this one out. Representing, yep. Right. So let me put it like this. I know, you know, Michael had one rule if he was going to come in for something that's a lot of big segment. He said, there's got to be a pop smoke quote. We gave him that. But I'm also thinking of Joplin, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. And given your writing, I'm curious, any echoes from other people's movements in American history where people who are downtrodden, who already are living a life where the government or the conditions are putting them at the margin or the threat of force or or unlawful violence is part of their daily existence.

26:43So they say, you bet I got to show up versus these people, these CEOs who claimed on January 7th, this was a red line. And then we learned there's no such thing as a red line when it comes to their bonus. Yeah, it's not any other examples. It's all the other examples. This is what happens in labor movements. And when you have the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and you have people who have nothing to do with railroad labor, but who are nonetheless supportive of the people whose labor is being exploited. This is what happens with abolitionists, people who are not enslaved, but who are really willing to risk life and limb to prevent people from being forced into bondage.

27:21The example that I've been citing, the thing that I've been comparing this to, has been the reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which did precisely the same thing. It authorized a federal bureaucracy to go into the North and find people who had escaped slavery and drag them back into bondage. Really quickly, if you look in 1854, there's an example of a man by the name of Anthony Burns, an African-American, escaped slave, was living in Boston, had been escaped from Virginia. 50 ,000 people in that time, much more sparsely populated country, 50 ,000 people came out to prevent him from being dragged back into bondage.

27:59That's exactly what's happening here. So, Michael, as we use this time to broaden out beyond the daily updates and look at this past year, and you do a lot of serious reporting, people hear you on this show, you spend most of your day working sources and writing. Can you measure what matters? I mean, can you measure what happens where in government they go, oh, my gosh, well, Supreme Court, we're not really going to defy the Supreme Court indefinitely over one detainee, Garcia, you know, so they eventually return him, Abrego Garcia. or public protests sometimes matter, Trump gets mad about the crowd size.