Trump DOJ preps John Bolton case after indicting two Trump foes

0:00Hello, I'm Ozempic. And I'm other GLP ones, kind of like him. Are you shaking a maraca? No, I'm shaking the pill version of Ozempic, which no one should ever do except in ads like this. A nice disclaimer. Hey, thanks. Ask your doctor about which FDA-approved uses of the Ozempic pen or pill may be right for you. Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about Ozempic semaglutide tablets, 9 mg, and Ozempic semaglutide injection, 2 mg. There's a pill version of Ozempic. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

0:36Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. I want to welcome everyone to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber, and we begin with the president continuing the retribution campaign, The once secret, then exposed orders that he gave are being carried out. And now he's bearing down on a former employee, now a perceived enemy.

1:09This is breaking news. MSNBC reporting a Maryland grand jury has been now hearing evidence. What has been for weeks, but breaking tonight is we know about it. And they are building apparently a case that is against a Trump perceived enemy and yet one who worked for president. Trump, longtime neoconservative foreign policy voice John Bolton. Now the suggestion is they are close to getting where they, the Trump DOJ officials, want, and they're trying to cook up this case to get a grand jury indictment, and that could come as soon as next week. The case has sped up. Bolton, of course, was the former national security advisor to President Trump, a top U.S.

1:49official, and since leaving office, while he is not a lefty going to no King's protests, he has referred to what he learned in that time and his view based on the evidence about what Donald Trump is doing. You could put him in a category of more of a Mike Pence than a James Comey, one who served loyally to Donald Trump for years and was, of course, a longtime Republican whose main offense, according to Donald Trump, is that he has referred to things that Trump is doing that are contrary to law or Bolton's view of sound policy. MSNBC reporting that the figure who is seen as Trump's retribution czar, Ed Martin, has been meeting with the acting U.S.

2:29attorney on the case. That itself is unusual. FBI agents did search Bolton's home in August. We know about that. That's been reported. And Trump, who has continued to vacillate between denying that he's in charge of these revenge prosecutions and then bragging or publicly suggesting that he can do whatever he wants. Well, here's what he said then. No, I don't know about it. I saw it on television this morning. I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning. They did a raid. I don't want to know about it. It's not necessary. I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I'm actually the chief law enforcement officer, but I feel that it's better this way.

3:12That's the president's sort of public description, balancing what everyone knows, which is that he has been vowing these type of revenge prosecutions. But even Donald Trump also has understood and even learned in the first term about where the limits might be and that you don't necessarily want to admit that you're building revenge political cases that turn on the people rather than the criminal evidence, if there is any. And if it seems like we're ending the week with more news about Donald Trump on a tear, that's because we are. If you're trying to keep bit straight or you've been busy and not following every domino.

3:44Just this week, the DOJ indicted the top law enforcement official in New York, Attorney General Letitia James, who had previously run a civil case, no threat of jail time there, but a civil enforcement action against Trump Org. So now the DOJ has taken formal legal steps using the criminal investigative powers it has against six people that Donald Trump perceives as foes. You have the indictments, you have the grand jury going forward on Bolden, you have a subpoena for another individual who did oversee a case against Trump, D.A. Willis. You have the charges, remember, against the New Jersey mayor, which were so weak they were dropped, that case never going to trial.

4:24And you have Democratic Congressman McIver, who we heard from on this very program this week. So it's adding up. James and Comey have said they are innocent, and this is no time to be scared. This is nothing more than a continuation of the president's desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job. There are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn't imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees. Mr. Comey, who has proven controversial for a range of reasons, striking a note that now may be heard by other Trump allies or former allies like John Bolton, that when you face this kind of crackdown, this kind of alleged selective prosecution, that's one of the arguments they're making to try to get these cases tossed, you have to be strong, not fearful.

5:25And for those who think that the president might have stopped just at Comey or just at a Democrat in New York, Well, tonight's reporting that he is moving quickly through his DOJ to go at someone who worked in the highest levels of the White House for Donald Trump shows that no one appears to be safe. And that may be exactly the message this president wants to send. I want to get right to our guest tonight, New York Times Magazine legal writer Emily Bazelon and our politics expert, professor and MSNBC analyst Jason Johnson. Jason, I want to go to you first based on our understanding of what's happening, that this is more of a story about politics or politics infusing the DOJ to a degree that might be unlawful rather than a traditional legal story.

6:12Although, Emily, I'm sure will give us some legal analysis on the strength of these cases. Do you, I guess, Jason, agree with that premise? And what do you see here happening politically as Donald Trump is sending a message clearly across the bow, even to his own former aides, John Bolton, a longtime neocon Republican? Ari, I don't know why anybody should be surprised. I mean, Donald Trump has never been loyal to anyone. He has a list of people that he has taken advantage of, a list of people he's lied to. I mean, he did nothing when people were threatening to kill his vice president. So I don't know why anyone is surprised that a president who said that I'm going to go on revenge is going on revenge.

6:54I think the only saving grace here is that while Donald Trump and some of his acolytes, they think he's Tony Soprano. He's more like my cousin Vinny. Most of these cases don't work. They fall apart fairly quickly. He ends up looking foolish. But the threat of going after these people and making them have to spend money to defend themselves is part of how he's establishing the sort of authoritarian bully pulpit that he's been pushing for since he got back into office. We love my cousin Vinny reference around here. If news wasn't so serious, I would I would trade favorite lines with you. But we'll save that if not for another day, at least for later in the hour.

7:28But before again, I bring in Emily, Jason, I want to show a lot of things have been so transmuted and sort of completely subverted that we forget who we're talking about. I just want to show because I see even, you know, nonpartisan analysts sometimes say, oh, well, this this person's sort of a Trump critic or this person's sort of anti-Trump, which falls into the Trump vector, which is not actually an analysis of ideology or the parties or anything. It's just back to this sort of autocratic lens. And so let's put the president to the side for a moment. However, he might feel about that. And just remember, John Bolton, who worked in the Bush administration and is a longtime conservative Republican.

8:11This is who he is. Take a look. I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job. There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's reelection. What he was capable of was on a daily basis doing something more and more outrageous than he had done the day before, all to the same end of staying in power. I think when you challenge the Constitution itself the way Trump has done, that is un-American. Do you agree with Mark Milley that Trump is a fascist? You know, I don't think he's smart enough to have an ideology.

8:53Mr. Bolton's criticisms have to do with what he learned about Donald Trump having worked for him. He himself is a longtime conservative. And so it would appear that is the fault line, not foreign policy, national security, the things he actually worked on with Trump. All Trump heard was that. Right. All right. And here's the thing, as he pointed out. Oh, I'm sorry. I'll go to Jason and Emily. That's my bad. Yeah. The only criteria seems to be whoever is in Donald Trump's burn book that week. And clearly, whether you have problems with him politically or ideologically, I mean, the toughest thing Bolton said is this guy isn't smart enough to be a fascist.

9:32I mean, that's a that's a pretty serious insult. But at the end of the day, whether it's Comey or Tish James or anyone else that he has threatened, Donald Trump doesn't care if that person has broken the law. Donald Trump doesn't care if that person has stood in the way of policy. If he just personally dislikes you, he's going to weaponize the entire government. And that is a danger for everyone, not just in his own party, but every American citizen. Emily. You know, one of the most striking features of the Trump administration so far has been how few Republicans have been willing to speak out on the record.

10:04Right. I mean, almost no one in Congress has been willing to criticize Trump, except maybe about Jimmy Kimmel a little bit. And so Bolton stands out there as this former Trump official who's willing to go on television and say these critical things. How better to send a message that this is a risky thing to do than to go to a grand jury and ask for an indictment? Yeah, Emily, this is what Bolton said when it came up that these threats were looming. you're obviously on his enemies list uh at least cash patel's enemies list um are you worried that they're going to come after you in some way i mean he's hinted at it before well i think he's already come after me and several others in withdrawing the uh protection that we had for uh from the iranians for the attack on qasem sulaimani so i think uh and i said in the in the new forward to the paperback edition of my book, I think it is a retribution presidency.

11:07Emily? Right. And Bolton is a good vehicle for sending a message to other Republicans about the problem of being on this enemy's list, which, you know, it looks like the Justice Department is kind of ticking through. We should also say that when Bolton's home was searched, there were some reports from the Biden Justice Department or former officials that they had also been looking at this question of whether Bolton had classified information. So, you know, it's possible there will be more to this case. We don't know yet. But you look at how flimsy and weak the evidence appears to be against Letitia James and James Comey, and there is, you know, a lot to wonder about here.

11:49In those cases, we know that prosecutors who were instructed to investigate, basically told it would be really good for them to find something, they passed on those cases. You know, former acting U.S. attorney in Virginia, Eric Siebert, he was forced to resign rather than go ahead with those prosecutions. So those cases, it just seems really stark what we know about them. I think it's a little less clear at this point about the case against Bolton. And obviously, if there is an indictment from the grand jury, we'll know a little bit more. We'll look at the faces, as you mentioned, Emily, because you're saying there's the larger pattern.

12:28Any individual case can be sort of debated. But when you see all these up, you have this strong pattern. As I mentioned, the case against the mayor was so weak it fell apart, but they wanted to charge it. And in the still pending McIver case, the video evidence shows federal officials saying, turn off your body cameras, which is suspicious. They didn't want a record. and this comes at the order of the deputy attorney general themselves, who was a former Trump defense attorney. All of that is bad for those cases. What you're saying with Bolton, lower left grand jury there, for folks looking at all the cases, Emily, is that apart from this pattern, if they have this kind of evidence in these documents cases come down to where the classified material is, you're saying that they might have, separate from the pattern, some more evidence to go on.

13:20I mean, Emily, folks, remember the president himself was previously brought up on a documents case, although there was a lot of obstruction evidence and evidence that he clearly knew he had him and wouldn't give him back. But you're saying if the right documents are there, that strengthens the DOJ's hand. I mean, I'm speculating because we don't know yet. And I find the speculating to be frustrating because also we're sort of focusing on what Trump wants us to focus on, which is whether there's any wrongdoing here from John Bolton, as opposed to this pattern in the Justice Department. We are obviously also talking about that.

13:57But I find this part of the process frustrating because people get accused and then we spend time sifting through the accusations. We're supposed to do that. But in the end, if the cases fall apart, then all of that is wounding to their reputations. No good reason. Well, I think you're saying something important and insightful while also being responsible, which is what we've come to expect from you, Emily Bazelon. It's why I started the segment with Jason. It's not to sully Jason as only politics. But I think Jason and I agree. This thing looks like a political McCarthyistic autocratic crackdown.

14:40And that's what it looks like. And if we find other evidence, I've told viewers, we'll always report it out. But because it looks that way, we try to cover it for what it is while also following the perversion of justice, which is these cases go to arraignment and then they go to pretrial motions. And if they're not tossed, they go to trial. And obviously you're going to cover the trial of these high profile figures as well. So it is a balance. Jason, I want to also get you in on where Trump is losing because there's been so many shows of force and intimidation. But a judge just trimmed his sails on the effort to keep using troops.

15:14That's been mixed in the courts. I'm curious to get both of your reactions to that when we come back in 90 seconds. With the Vivgard Hytrulo, FGAR TIGAMOD Alpha, and Hyaluronidase QVFC pre-filled syringe, self-injection is in your hands. It's your treatment routine. Use at the time and same day each week. Take the pre-filled syringe with you on vacation. Or have it handy for cozy staycations. For more information, visit livevividly.com. That's L-I-V-E-V-Y-V-I-D-L-Y.com. Brought to you by Argenics.

16:22super versatile and stand up to even my most intense training sessions. Plus they come in three inseams and a ton of colors. Ready to try pair? Go to viuri.com slash arch and get 20 % off at checkout. I think you're going to love them as much as I do. That's viuri.com slash ARCH and get 20 % off your first order. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Not only will you receive 20 % off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any us orders over$75 and free returns. Have a great day.

16:48We invited our viewers who are living in Maine. post-apocalyptic wastelands of Chicago and Washington and Memphis and Portland to show us their hell holes. You can see that the carnage here on the streets is amazing. It's so scary here that the dogs need protective eyewear. Let's look at Portland at night this week.

17:14This is J.B. Fritzker reporting from war-torn Chicago. As you can see, there's utter mayhem. We've seen people being forced to eat hot dogs with ketchup on them. And we're back with Emily and Jason. Some of that is a real world reaction. Some of it, of course, joking about Donald Trump's claims, which are legally relevant to whether or not he can use the troops this way. And Emily, it's been mixed in court, but we have seen, for example, just here at the end of the week, one judge at least paused this for two weeks saying they can't send more troops into Illinois when the baseline facts, which was the punchline of those jokes, don't meet the standards for the kind of mayhem or disaster that would allow the Guard.

18:01Yeah, I think it's been a kind of relief to a lot of us to see judges looking at the facts and saying that the statements, the claims the administration is making both in court and through Trump's social media posts are just untethered to the facts was the way Judge Immergut in Oregon put it. She's, by the way, a Trump appointee. There's just this feeling that, OK, well, the courts are taking a look at this. There's some law happening here, some analysis of the factual patterns, which, you know, I have to say all summer as the Supreme Court was issuing emergency order after emergency order with zero reasoning or explanation, that was really lacking.

18:42So I think the lower courts here are doing their job. And, you know, we'll see whether they get upheld on the law on appeal. But there is a kind of reality check happening here from these judges. Jason, I'm curious what you think about the way this is getting out to the country. Some people have tuned out. I get it. Some people are despondent. The Democrats have to balance looking like they take this seriously and fighting hard, but also doing something that I thought those videos showed more than some other past iterations we've seen, which is instead of only being outraged about everything and only amplifying the losses, boosting your L's, as Emily would say, sometimes you've got to update people and remind them that some of the steps are working, and maybe it's not enough and people are upset.

19:32But it's certainly working that groups, including some of the Democratic governors, are slowing this down in the courts, no? No. Yeah, Ari, but I don't think it's enough. I don't think these politicians are making it clear enough to the people, to people outside the states, how dangerous this is, how, you know, children and moms and dads being dragged out of their houses at two o 'clock in the morning and being zip tied, people being put into ICE facilities and shipped back to Iran and Russia as political dissidents. This is dangerous. This is just another stress test. And I know that these court rulings are good.

20:10And we feel like, hey, we've gone through the darkness. Everything is opalite. Yes. No, no. This is just one good legal result right now. The Democrats have to actually go on the offense and start suing ICE and suing this administration in advance and not waiting for these attacks. Emily? I am not sure about proactive lawsuits, but I think, Jason, you're absolutely right that what is happening so far is not going to stop the Trump administration. And in the end, I think the answer lies in politics, right? I mean, it's the voters who are going to decide the fate of this administration. The courts have a role to play, for sure.

20:48But in the end, it's people and how they respond and what they do in the next elections and how they react generally that really shapes the behavior of politicians, including Donald Trump. We haven't seen his approval ratings really sink in a consistent way yet. And to the extent they have, it hasn't been clear that these kinds of issues of rule of law and the democracy are the cause of the problems he's having. If that started to really become clear, I think that would actually have an effect on the administration's conduct. And, you know, that's kind of developing. We'll see. Emily and Jason on more than one topic tonight.

21:31Appreciate your time and wish you guys a good weekend. I want to tell folks what's coming up because I mentioned we might get lighter by the end of the hour. We do that sometimes. We'll be looking at the magazine covers that have changed the country. That should be interesting. Some politics and culture in that by the end of the hour. I also want to share what a former Trump White House lawyer says is the line crossed warning of Trump tyranny and the National Guard's abuse. He says we could see elections stolen. You will hear that tonight on The Beat and why it matters. Meanwhile, Trump's own moves have leaked some of the worst incriminating evidence against him in the revenge prosecutions.

22:10Big, big scoop in The Wall Street Journal. The reporter who broke it is here next.

22:20President Trump has named his enemies list, and in the past few weeks, the DOJ has been on a tear against them. We followed several indictments, and now there's a grand jury impaneled looking at charges against John Bolton, a former Trump aide. Trump has basically tried to turn the DOJ into a sort of selective prosecution operation. That, of course, is unlawful if defense counsel has the evidence that Trump was basically ordering these cases regardless of the facts and that the facts don't support the charges. Well, on that score, the Trump side has gotten a blow by his own admissions and confessions because he directed the DOJ to target named opponents in public.

23:02This is the larger list that we've shown you. Some versions of this, you can see how many people have already faced DOJ actions. But as for the public call, which, of course, hurts Trump's case. Well, it turns out that was an accident. He wanted to keep at least certain orders secret. Wall Street Journal had this bombshell about how he's taking control of the prosecutions, that he has been pushing Attorney General Pam Bondi, traveling together. And while she does try to avoid discussing cases directly with Trump, they report, she does still regularly visit the White House. Trump continues to complain about the pace of cases to aides.

23:40And even after that rather thin and now controversial indictment of the former FBI director, James Comey, he still says Bondi's moving too slow. Other prosecutors are investigating the former CIA director, John Brennan, and the very FBI director that Donald Trump picked to replace James Comey, Christopher Wray. As we reported earlier this week, drawing on the journal, Donald Trump's infamous demand that Pam Bondi investigate and finish these charges against now two or three people that were charged, Comey and James, with Schiff being the other named. Well, the Journal reported he meant that to be a secret directive, a private message, but accidentally posted it on the Internet.

24:22We're joined by Justice Department reporter from The Wall Street Journal, Sadie Gurman. Welcome. Thank you for having me. What is the significance of what you found from your reporting and sources that Donald Trump is calling these shots, breaking rules, and I guess in some cases accidentally leaking or telling on himself? Yes. Well, what I think is very interesting is that, you know, Trump hasn't really changed. Over the years I've covered DOJ, I've seen him call upon his attorneys general time and time again to go after his rivals, show leniency to his allies. And what's different now is the leadership of DOJ.

25:04In the first term, you had people who would, you know, we had people who would have a shared sense of where the ethical lines and the norms stood. And they knew that if they use the legal system in a way that could be perceived as weaponized, that that could come back and hurt them once the opposing party takes office again. So they thought that that would become a cycle and they managed to placate Trump. But in this term, that doesn't seem to be happening quite as much. You mentioned a cycle. Some of them may have honestly believed that the DOJ is not supposed to work that way. And as an attorney, if there isn't good evidence in a case, you have an ethical obligation not to bring it.

25:44That's right. And what we've seen in this term so far is in addition to dozens of prosecutors being fired for their work on investigations involving Trump, we also see many resigning voluntarily because they're concerned that they'll be asked to do something that's unethical and they could be disbarred. when trump did post online this message that said pam referring to attorney general pam bondy and then his demand for these prosecutions when you started to get the clues or the indication from your reporting that this was a mistake what did you think did you say oh wow we got a big story here and of course you do your best to verify it walk us through that because it it seemed very damning.

26:29Right. Well, I mean, there were some early indications that this might have been a misfire, including the fact that the post started, you know, was directed to her. It was started with Pam and it was a message to her. And so in addition to being concerned about a president and the attorney general communicating on direct messages about important investigations, it just it was just kind of incredible that, you know, we've seen him make these public calls so many times for investigations that he actually intended for this one to be private was significant. You report that A.G. Bondi was very concerned about that message, that she called the White House, which is still, of course, they're the boss, but to voice her concerns.