Trump DOJ Withdraws Subpoenas for NYT Journalists

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0:54Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required. also in theaters. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Melissa Murray in for Ari Melber, and we start tonight with a huge loss for the Trump administration. Trump's Department of Justice said today that it will withdraw the subpoenas it issued to New York Times journalists who reported on security concerns related to the new Qatari-donated Air Force One. Today, legal expert Andrew Weissman said the subpoenas were a glaring abuse of power from the start. Take a listen. This is either just intentionally lawless or just such a gross screw up that this is one where, you know, if you're a supervisor, you are saying, how could this possibly happen?

1:48The move to drop the subpoenas came after a judge grilled DOJ lawyers for nearly an hour. The Associated Press reported that the judge was, quote, visibly irritated. The AP also reported that the judge specifically noted that he, quote, otherwise would have granted the New York Times request to reject the subpoenas because, quote, quote, subpoenas are the last step, not the first step in an investigation. All of this comes on the heels of a filing from The New York Times itself, arguing that the subpoenas, quote, chilled potential sources from coming forward for fear of being criminally targeted.

2:29When the subpoenas were first issued earlier this month, the executive editor of The Times called them an intimidation attempt. Take a listen. The Trump administration issued subpoenas to five of our journalists in what I think is a naked attempt to intimidate the New York Times and to keep us from reporting on matters that we think are essential to national security. We're going to continue to report both about Air Force One and on the circumstances around the government use of prosecutorial power to intimidate the independent news media. The subpoenas were issued on July 10th with the goal of compelling the reporters to testify.

3:11All of this came just before news reports this week of even more subpoenas issuing. This time, the subpoenas were directed to third-party phone service providers, and they sought the phone records of Times journalists and their relatives, all as part of the administration's effort to, quote, unmask the confidential sources who have provided information for the articles about the security capabilities of President Trump's new Air Force One jet. Now, of course, all of those subpoenas will be dropped. Joining me now to discuss all of this is Lisa Rubin, MSNOW legal correspondent. She was in the courtroom during today's hearing.

3:51Also with us is Maya Wiley, former SDNY civil prosecutor and president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Ladies, in a nutshell, what's your reaction to this loss in court, a self-inflicted loss? Yeah, I was exchanging some signal messages with somebody who was in the courtroom afterwards, and I said, wow, that was brutal. And the person's response was a shellacking. And I think that is the best encapsulation of what happened in court today because Judge Supermanian gave the U.S. Attorney's Office an opportunity to withdraw the subpoenas at the very outset of the hearing.

4:25And nonetheless, they insisted, as you just noted, for an hour that the subpoenas were lawfully issued and continued to have to make admission after admission about a bunch of rookie mistakes that they had made about reading the federal regulations that pertain to subpoenas to media, about reading the case law wrong. And at the end, after asking for a break, Sean Buckley, who is now the chief counsel to the U.S. attorney, was the deputy U.S. attorney, someone who you would not expect to be in court arguing this motion in the first place, had to come back after seemingly making some calls to main justice and saying, you know what, Your Honor, we will unilaterally withdraw the subpoenas.

5:02But of course, at that point, the damage had been done because an entire courtroom full of people from New York Times lawyers to journalists had seen the embarrassment that he inflicted on the office. Maya, was this a shellacking, a true varnishing of you? It was not only a shellacking. I was trying to think of other S words I could say on television and was having a hard time coming up with one. But let me just say this. Good for the New York Times. Yeah. You know, the New York Times came in hard to recognize that if we're not going to counter the bald faced intimidation, and I don't think there's another way to read this, intimidation of independent journalism on a legitimate public interest story about national security, that it literally said, we want to make sure our motion is not under seal.

5:51We want to make sure our defense is part of the public record, that really there be a public reckoning. So I'm glad they didn't withdraw it because I think it's necessary for the public to understand how this has become a department of injustice, something that is a weaponization where intimidation is the point. And that's persecution, not prosecution. And we need to understand that. So this is being touted, and I think rightly so, as a victory for the First Amendment. But let's be honest, the First Amendment has taken a beating over the last 18 months of this administration as this administration has brought media institutions, accountability institutions to heal.

6:33Is this going to make a dent? Does this help turn the tide that the administration was forced to withdraw these subpoenas in the face of what was clearly judicial disagreement with the entire premise? Well, I think that you can liken this effort to sort of the administration's effort to extract a settlement from Harvard, meaning they never start with the bottom. It's sort of like anti-prosecution 101. They start at the top and use that as an attempt to intimidate everybody else. And so from that perspective, I think it was a big loss. But to your point about the beating that the First Amendment has taken, you know, one of the rules of lawyering is that if you win, you just sit down and shut up.

7:12And David O 'Neill, the lawyer from Devil Boys in Plimpton, who represented The Times, did not do that because he wanted the judge to know from his perspective and his client's perspective, there are First Amendment issues still. And he said the efforts that the DOJ had made were replete with bad faith. And that's even clearer now, meaning after this hearing, it has been damaging not only to this reporter's abilities to do their jobs, but to the public's right to be informed. I think the fact that he wanted to put that on the record speaks to the moment that we're in that you so aptly recognize, Melissa.

7:43Let's talk about this, Maya. The first thing that should be noted here is that typically when the government seeks a subpoena from a media institution, and it does happen fairly frequently, they will make the request of the institution, not of the individual journalists. So the whole idea that this is an intimidation attempt, I think that might be right. Like to go directly to the journalist, that seems unprecedented. And to intimidate their families. Yes. I mean, this isn't even just the reporters, to your point, when you set up the story. And they didn't disclose initially to the New York Times that they had submitted subpoenas for the records of two spouses and a mom, one of whom does mental health services.

8:26Yeah. But there are privacy concerns beyond the story of the reporting. But that just as a as I mean, it's a kindness to suggest that that's just being incompetent. That's a kind. Although the judge did say that, too, during the hearing. I'm like, Lisa, it's my understanding based on the AP reporting that the judge criticized the DOJ for what he terms sloppy legal work. And this is not the first time a federal judge has chided this administration and its lawyers. So what do you make of this very public rebuke of the lawyering here? Well, I think it's not ended because Judge Subramanian had issued an order tonight after the hearing concluded.

9:05And one of the things that that order says is he wants internal communications from the U.S. attorney's office about a nondisclosure attempt. So what they did was when they went to subpoena the phone service providers, they went to a judge and said, we want the phone service providers to be barred from telling anybody about these subpoenas. They got that order. And then they go to a different judge and not disclose that they had the other. Well, yes. Yes. They went to a judge and they didn't tell that judge, these are subpoenas about journalists. These are subpoenas about New York Times reporting.

9:35And so he really excoriated them for that. And he said, I trust that if you come back before me, we won't have issues that have plagued this from the outset. But then tonight in seeking those communications, what that suggests to me is he is thinking about sanctioning these people, referring them for disciplinary proceedings or something to that effect. Okay, so these subpoenas issued from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which was headed until quite recently by Jay Clayton, who is now the president's nominee to be the director of national intelligence. Does this rebuke from the judge factor into those confirmation hearings in any way?

10:12Well, I think it should, because Jay Clayton, when he testified, said specifically that these subpoenas were lawfully issued pursuant to regulation. Yeah. The sad thing here, and we're already watching it with Todd Blanche's nomination hearing, is we're watching a party give oversight a pass. And essentially suggesting we'll just believe you if you say what we want to hear, which is not oversight. These are serious questions, whether it's the Epstein survivors or whether it's the issues of how subpoenas are being issued. And by the way, also to community-based organizations registering Black voters, to organizations that are literally— You want to see people push back.

10:54Yeah, we need to see people push back because it is journalism, but it's also well beyond journalism, which means if we're not seeing our elected officials of any party making sure there's sufficient oversight into what these agencies are doing and what these individuals are saying and actually testing it, then we do not have a functioning system of government that's understanding its role in protecting the public. Lisa? I think that today reflects maybe a small moment of victory for the First Amendment, certainly for The New York Times. But do I expect that this will stop this administration from investigating who the alleged leaker was?

11:35I absolutely do not. If anything, today was just a series of admissions about sloppy lawyering and mistakes by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. A big blemish on the face of Jay Clayton and all those who serve under him, including the very supervisors Andrew Weissman was saying should have known better. As I say, one battle after another. All right, Lisa Rubin and Maya Wiley, thank you for kicking us off. Coming up, how Trump is losing Fox, Senate Republicans, and the American people when it comes to the war in Iran. Plus, new reporting on how Don Jr. is leveraging links to his father's administration to pad his own bottom line.

12:15And how Democrats are planning to push back if Trump tries to put ICE agents at the polls. We are back in just 90 seconds.

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13:47Donald Trump is facing new backlash from the right as the Iran war spirals, the economy sputters, and the midterm elections loom. Today, Congress dealt Trump a new bipartisan rebuke over the Iran war. Four Republicans in the House joined Democrats to pass a measure directing Trump to seek authorization for the war. The measure also got some GOP support in the Senate before ultimately stalling out. The price of oil is now back above$100 per barrel on average. Gas prices are now over$4 a gallon. Here's Republican Senator Rand Paul weighing in. I think the Iran war was not going to success. I've been opposed to the Iran war from the beginning.

14:36I think by any objective measure, we're worse off than we were the one. Will there be a bad class in November? Probably. That was Senator Rand Paul predicting some backlash in November. And right on cue, new polling today shows that Democrats hold an 11-point lead over Republicans when presented with a generic midterm ballot. Also today, Fox News is out with a poll that, according to the Daily Beast, is, quote, humiliating to the president. The poll shows that 76 percent call the president's economy fair or poor. Just 24 percent say it's excellent or good. And that's not all. Take a listen. The president who campaigned on the economy now receiving negative marks on the issue, with 65 percent saying they disapprove of his performance.

15:33Voters favored Democrats by 22 points on income inequality. quality. Dems are up 21 points on health care. They're up 10 on inflation. They're also leading on the economy, foreign policy, government spending, even immigration. And take a listen to Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, who served in Trump's first administration. He's here confronting a Republican senator. Call it swag, swagger, riz, aura, or just plain messaging, but the GOP doesn't have it. You're bungling everything. Nothing is getting done. Your messaging is non-existent. You've lost your swag, your swagger, your riz, or whatever the young people say.

16:20No one knows what the heck you're doing, sir? They had no idea.

16:27Joining me now is Molly Jung Fast, contributing writer for The New York Times and MS Now political analyst and host of the Fast Politics podcast and someone who is literally dripping in riz. Oh, wow. OK, it's got to be said. Has the Republican Party lost its riz? Are they no longer aura farming? Let's just say that, by the way, Larry Kudlow doing a monologue that involves riz, aura farming, it's a much longer monologue than just the piece you played. And it is nothing I ever thought I would see Larry Kudlow say. And it's interesting to me because what the subtext of it is he's running cover for Trump, Right.

17:10He's figuring out people to blame. And we've seen different machinations, sort of variations on this in Fox Business and Fox Regular. And it is all when they start to deviate messaging wise, when that starts happening, that's because things have spiraled out of control. And that's what we're watching right now. So how bad is it? I mean, have they lost core elements of their base or is this just sort of the standard kind of stuff that you can expect from a very unpopular war, a pretty bad economy and the fact that the midterms were always a time that the Republicans were likely to take some losses?

17:46OK, so if you look at the 2018 midterms that we had are, you know, it was a D plus eight and that was a shellacking for Trump. These were seen polls. I mean, this this D plus 11 poll may be an outlier because that's the Democrats up by 11 points. That's the that's the generic ballot for Democrats up by 11 points. But if that happens, it's game over for Republicans. I mean, 11 points is like a sweep to end all sweeps. Now, is this the war? I think, well, I'm going to refer you to a Politico poll, which was from yesterday, which one in five self-proclaimed MAGAs want the war to end today. They don't care how, they just want it done.

18:32And I think that's a pretty striking number. And I would think, you know, there was another War Powers resolution today. Representative Jaipal, also Jason Crow was in there. I texted with him a little bit, talked to him about it. And, you know, what I think is so interesting about these war powers resolutions are, A, you had four Republicans vote with it. And B, like, these are post-Nixonian anti-corruption, you know, right? This is from Vietnam. We have these War Powers Act because Congress was not supposed to lose its power like they did during Vietnam. Wait, so we have Congress pushing back on this, so that's nice to see Congress off the couch.

19:13We also see voters weighing in here. So I want to take a listen to some sound from Trump voters in North Carolina who talk to MSNOW about the war. Let's take a listen. President Trump campaigned on no more foreign wars. You've obviously supported him. Three times. Three times. Very disappointed. My entire family is very disappointed. You could talk directly to the president. We know he likes to watch TV. What would you tell him about this war? President Trump, you shouldn't have got us in this war and was going to end it fast soon. And now you're starting all over again. This war has been taxing on everyone.

19:52And I'm on a fixed income. And so it's, you know, other ones that don't fix the income or I mean, I'm really feeling it. How did the Democrats harness this all the way to November if they can? Can they keep up this momentum? So something that's working well for Democrats, I think, and a sign that voters sort of understand the gas prices are so tied to this war is that, you know, Brent crude went to over$100 a gallon,$100 a barrel. Trump said, we're going to get a ceasefire. We're going to get a ceasefire. We're in a ceasefire. The war's over. You know, we have all these quotes of him saying the war's over.

20:33Crude went down. Gas prices went down. And then the ceasefire did not hold and gas prices went up. So it's very easy to see to make the connection between gas prices and the war. And remember, unlike other Republican presidents who have gotten us into war with the Middle East, he never made a you know, the story of why this war is happening. keeps changing. And that's another thing. And that goes back to this idea that when they can't, when they get in trouble is when they can't all be in lockstep, when the messaging starts to devolve into different strains. So I think that's what we're seeing here.

21:09Again, look, Democrats need to keep it together. They need to keep the coalition together. Like, you know, it's a big tent. They got to make sure everybody's in the tent. And then, and that, you know, is not necessarily could be problematic. And they need to run on one thing, affordability. All right. Molly Jungfast, thank you. Up next, ahead of the midterms, Democrats warn of a potential MAGA-fueled doomsday scenario of election lies and voter suppression tactics. Also coming up, a staggering new expose reveals Donald Trump Jr.'s windfall profits as he cashes in on his father's policies. I'll talk to the New York Times journalist who broke that story wide open.

21:56And a top Democratic lawmaker joins the beat on the quagmire in Iran, the heat on Pete Hegseth, and so much more. All of that when we come back.

22:13On this vote, the yeas are 214, the nays are 208. The concurrent resolution is adopted, and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. That was the House of Representatives today voting to limit President Trump's war powers in Iran. This is a rebuke of both the war itself and how the commander-in-chief has overseen it. Joining me now to discuss is Congressman Gregory Meeks, Democrat from New York. He is the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Representative Meeks, what signal does this House vote on Iran send to the president, especially in light of the fact that the Senate failed to pass a similar resolution?

22:57So let me just say that it shows that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of this president's war of choice and they wanted to stop. It says that members of the House, we had four or five Republicans that joined us. And I think that's going to grow as we finish the summer recess, that this war has to stop and that the president has to come to us. us. And let me also say, I know that the vote failed in the Senate today, but we had, I had a war-posed resolution that passed the House and the exact same resolution passed the Senate. And so we are now are going to move forward and continue the pressure.

23:38I dropped another resolution today that goes to the Speaker to say that we need to enforce the resolutions that were passed in the House and the Senate and sue the administration for not following that order. So we're going to continue to put the pressure on, stand with the American people, try to make sure that we are doing our constitutional responsibility of it only being us who can declare war. This is an undeclared war by this president. So you've anticipated my next question. What is on deck for enforcement. The president is now saying that he is likely to order a, quote, massive attack on Iran to inflict pain on that nation.

24:22That seems to be at odds with the resolution's intent to force the president to come first to Congress before taking any other steps in this region. So there's two things, three things that I think that could happen. One, the resolution that I told you that we are going to move forward to sue the president. Two, we have a bipartisan group of legal scholars to also talk about taking the court. But third and most important, Congress has the power of the purse. We've got to stop and make sure that his supplemental dollars that he's asking for to continue this war, that we cut that off. That he has to come and ask for what we call a authorization for the utilization of military force, not to give it to him.

25:10used those same powers, actually, that had to be utilized to stop the Vietnam War. You know, and I heard your guest beforehand said that's the reason why we had the World Powers Act. We've got to use those same strategies that Congress utilized at that particular time right now. We cannot let up on it. Well, speaking of the power of the purse, this week, Secretary Hegseth said that this war has cost about$37 billion. dollars. But other estimates actually put the cost at a much higher amount. Has there been a lack of transparency from this administration in terms of the war and its costs? And how does Congress plan to take steps in the future to ensure that there is more transparency?

25:53Let me just tell you something. There hasn't been a lack of transparency. There's been zero transparency. None. We bring these up at the few hearings that we've had. Well, we haven't had any hearings at the few briefings that we've had in both classified and unclassified sessions. And there has been no transparency. And so that this president has not identified or talked to Congress in regards to that. And unfortunately, most of my Republican colleagues are allowing that to happen. You know, I'm the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. We've had not one oversight hearing on this war.