The Daily Blast: Trump Push to Jail Foes Takes Darker Turn—and GOP Senators Are Rattled

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By most indications, Donald Trump has dropped his demand for a corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund

to roll out to allies and insurrectionists. This came after Republicans made it clear that they can't support something quite that openly corrupt. And yet, Trump has responded to this with another extraordinary show of corruption. He just appointed William Pultay as his acting director of national intelligence. Pultay is best known in Washington right now for hatching bogus ways for Trump to criminally investigate his enemies. Indeed, Senate Majority Leader John Thune all but admitted that Pultay will be used to weaponize the office of D&I.

Some magaboises, in fact, are openly cheering for that, rooting for him to be turned loose on the left. That's pretty unnerving stuff. So we're working through all of it with one of our go-to people on these matters. University of Michigan law professor Leah Lippman. Leah, nice to have you on.

Great to be here. So let's talk about Bill Pultay as director of the federal housing finance agency. He took it upon himself to ransack the mortgages of Trump's enemies to find fake things to refer to the justice department for criminal investigations. He did this with Senator Adam Schiff with New York Attorney General Littisha James with federal reserve governor Lisa Cook.

“Leah, what's your reaction to the pick of Pultay here?”

It is so absurd as to be ridiculous.

It was always going to be hard to find worse, more ridiculous, D&I than Tulsi Gabbard and Trump just might have done that.

I mean, Bill Pultay has zero national security experience. He spent as you were suggesting the last 18 or so months just digging up dirt on Donald Trump's political enemies and made these criminal referrals. And what I've been calling the mortgage fraud fraud, basically accusing people of conducting a mortgage fraud by misrepresenting some houses. They're primary residents when, you know, as various outlets have reported, a lot of people do this. It can be accidental and also these criminal cases have gone nowhere, right?

And so the idea that we will have a director of national intelligence, who is fine, basically ginning up accusations and targeting the president's political enemies, is terrifying when you think about the vast powers that are part of our national security apparatus. The director of national intelligence is a really important office. It oversees the nation's intel agencies, and it's a really senior advisory role. It seems to me the obvious conclusion to draws that Trump wants to do with the director of national intelligence's office.

What he did with that obscure mortgage office, in other words, poltay's willingness to engage in extraordinary corruption to target Trump's enemies,

made Trump look at him and say, "I want him in a more powerful role, and I want him to have more dangerous weapons that is disposal."

Is that basically what's going on here, Leah? I mean, that's how I read it.

“I think it's a similar story has happened with acting or auditioning attorney general Todd Blanche, right?”

Like Donald Trump wants the people who are willing to be subservient to him and are completely willing to cross every single legal guardrail in the name of loyalty. And so, yes, you're right. He wants to give someone like that more power. And, you know, we have a vast criminal federal apparatus, law enforcement powers are sweeping. They pale in comparison to what the national security state has. Well, the reaction by Republican senators, the Trump's pick of poltay, was really remarkable.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune was asked if he's worried that poltay will weaponize the DNI position and Thune said this.

Thune also said that if poltay is going to go for confirmation before the Senate, he has a lengthy road before him.

“Leah, that is something else. I think Thune basically confirmed there that there is an actual danger.”

The Trump will weaponize the DNI position. What do you think of that? So, I think that that is a real danger. You know, if you saw or heard some of the right wing, that was actually excited about this pick, like Steve Bannon, for example, talking with Jack Pociebiac or whatever his name is, you know, they were talking about how maybe this would allow Bill Poltay to go after domestic terrorism in addition to foreign terrorism. And by that, they really meant the ICE protestors, the anti ICE protestors.

And so, yes, I think that the people who are excited about this pick are excited about it precisely because they are envisioning, weaponizing the national security apparatus and the people who are concerned or hesitant about it, or hesitant or concerned for the exact same person.

You mentioned Steve Bannon, so we're going to listen to that audio. The first voice here is prominent mega personality Jack Pociebiac, the second is Bannon. Listen to this.

Wouldn't surprise me, by the way, if the appointment and I certainly hope that the appointment of Bill Poltay over there while Bill is in is a time where the DNI can actually start digging in on the domestic side of terrorism as well as the international. I think that's one of the reasons Poltay selected because Poltay will go there. Leah, I think that's really, really important because Bannon is sort of the tip of the sphere when it comes to the mega movements search for ways to corruptly target Trump's enemies, don't you?

“Yes, heart and center. I think this was always kind of the plan. I mean, during Trump 1.0, Bannon declared that they're goal with the deconstruction of the administrative state, right?”

So he has always had in his sights the targeting of institutions or individuals perceived as hostile to Donald Trump. And yes, I think that Bill Poltay is appealing for that reason.

I want to add some more context here as well. We're at a moment where I think there's a fair amount of disappointment in mega world about Trump's success in prosecuting his enemies and jailing Democrats and liberals. I mentioned that a little earlier that every one of these efforts that Bill Poltay undertook by ransacking people's mortgages has gone belly up has been another flop. We've seen cash patrol struggle to come up with ways to go after the liberal groups and in ways that he has been threatening to. None of that stuff seems to be really bearing fruit. So that's even more reason to be alarmed by this pick because it's sure shows that what Trump's trying to do here is find a way to satisfy mega's demand for more arrests of liberals, more arrests of Democrats, more weaponization against his enemies.

Do any of you think? Yes, I think that is definitely a driving force and a motivating force. You know, I take some small hope in the fact that what stopped these people was not a lack of will. It's not like Pam Bonnie didn't want to go after the president's political enemies. It's not like Bill Poltay didn't want to. It just turns out we still have protections like the grand jury's or jury's or the constitution and some courts willing to enforce the law. So all of that is just going to make it hard to impose their personal vindictiveness and win.

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And that's exactly why Todd Blanche is in the acting AG role because he appears willing to do what even Pam Bondi would not do. So I guess we're kind of backsliding here even more aren't we?

Because like what's happening is okay, we're seeing like it's like a split screen in a way. We're seeing some encouraging stuff which is grandjuries are holding the line lower court judges something you and I've talked about before are doing incredible fact finding to essentially hold the line for the rule of law.

“And yet Trump's response in every one of these cases is to just try harder to be more corrupt and bring in even more corrupt people who will do even more corrupt things, right?”

I think that that's right. And you know, we shouldn't underestimate the continued risk of this authoritarian autocratic fascist takeover and impulse. I just think it was not for want of trying that Pam Bondi in many cases failed to secure these convictions and indictments, right? Like she tried to get Lindsey hell again and find someone to criminally prosecute Jim Comey and Latisha James, but those indictments were thrown out. Well, what would a fully weaponized DNI look like? In other words, if Pulta does with the DNI, what he did with the mortgage agency, what happens? I want to underscore we know Pulta is willing to do this. He's done it for the last year and a half. What's the nightmare scenario here with Pulta in the slot?

I mean, the nightmare scenario is the DNI and the security state have surveillance powers that, you know, ordinary law enforcement does not. So whereas it might not have been possible to get a criminal warrant for someone's cell phone information or location information. And it's possible they could get that right under national security powers. It's also possible they would be able to detain someone and hold someone even if ordinary law enforcement, you know, police officer FBI officers wouldn't be able to.

And so giving him access to these additional powers is just allowing him to further push the envelope and target individuals using powers that are just subject to fewer constraints.

And fewer limitations. One other funny thing about this Leah is that a lot of people in Trump world absolutely hate Bill Pulta. Politico has this quote from a former Trump administration official who says the following quote, the president has so many smart people at the White House trusted people that he could be listening to. And he listens to Pulta who just continually fucks things up close quote, I mean, that's the thing. It's not just that Pulta is corrupt, although he clearly is that as we talked about with the mortgage stuff that he does.

“He can't even get the job done and somehow Trump has decided maybe purely because Pulta is so eager to please him that he wants him in that role, right?”

It's the, it's the pliability in a way that's the thing here. Don't you think?

I think that that's definitely part of it. I mean, when you look at, for example, authoritarian, autocratic regimes, they often fill important positions with people who don't have competence or expertise precisely because they don't have the wherewithal, the backbone, right? The actual background to stand up right for principles, right, or for expertise and instead they're just completely pulled in in their political careers are completely beholden to the leader and Bill Pulta is absolutely someone like that.

I mean, he's a netbo baby, right? Like his grandfather started, you know, housing finance, you know, company, home, home construction company. And so that's just like was always part of his story and the reason why he was even in these circles. Well, I will say that a number of Republican senators are saying he's not qualified, Senator John Cornan said quote, "I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job." Close quote, Senator Bill Cassidy said, "The best I can tell you is he's not qualified." You know, Leah something tells me that this guy isn't going to be getting a confirmation hearing anytime soon.

So there's yet another layer to all this Todd Blanche is acting attorney general, Bill Pulta is going to be the acting DNI.

“I think we're going to now head into this new period where the corruption kind of gets worse in that sense where Trump is just searching for whoever he can find to try out and carry out corrupt designs that he hasn't been able to carry out.”

He's just going to essentially tell the Senate to kind of screw off for a while, don't you think?

right, and people that attempt to impose any kind of constraint on him, whether that is the courts,

“right, whether it is actually the Senate here, you know, you name it.”

It's funny though, like the big picture here, we had some good news, because Trump's corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund appears to be on hold and definitely,

for once Republican senators found that what Trump was doing was too corrupt for them to stomach a rarity, but it happens occasionally apparently, and the White House essentially sent signals that it's killing the plan for now. We don't really know whether that's a permanent state of affairs, but it has to count as a success in a way because Republican senators really did hold the line.

“And it's kind of interesting that Trump's response to that is immediately to do something ten times more corrupt, arguably.”

It's almost as if, right, the signal is, don't get too comfortable Republicans in reigning in my corruption. The message is, I'm really going for it, no matter what you say.

Yes, completely. And this is always part of his strategy, right, like flood the zone with shit, right, throw a bunch of stuff at the wall, make them fight everything,

and if some stuff gets through, right, that's going to be a win. And then an optimist on this show before because you've said, you pointed out that the lower courts are holding the line, you pointed out that the grand juries are holding the line. What's your overall sense of things right now? I mean, it seems to me that Trump's most corrupt designs are largely failing. He's kind of not winning when it comes to his efforts to pressure law firms and universities, although getting some successes here and there,

seems that the big picture, though, is mostly one of failure. Is that too optimistic?

“I mean, I think that that is true in important respects. You know, it's not like he's been able to get a bunch of laws path that would institutionalize some of what he wants to do,”

and he has been stopped in important respects. But as you were saying earlier, this is still a split screen, right, he is failing in big ways, but we can't underestimate the danger of his continued impulse and in some way doubling down, right, like he sees these losses and so that only makes him more desperate and want to, you know, seize those powers that he can, right, to try to make himself look more powerful than he actually is. And so I don't want to say we've kind of crossed the bridge, right, and are in the downhill part now, where it's easy, but I do think this is another sign, at least that continuing to fight and putting up a fight can do things, even when, you know, you are your audience is the Republicans in Congress.

Right, and it does seem as if Republicans in Congress have crossed some sort of line here. That's my sense anyway.

There's a critical mass of things that he's asking them to do that they seem unwilling to accept. It really does look to me like their frustration is boiling over.

Now, a big part of this is, you know, self-interest because he essentially screwed them by endorsing campaigns in the Texas primary, but that plus essentially treating them like door mats and, you know, lap dogs almost daily seems to have finally got us to a point where, you know, I don't want to say that they're showing backbone, but something different is happening here is that you're feeling. Yes, it does feel like something different is happening here. And it could be that, you know, when they stand up to him and there aren't huge lead negative consequences and follow that makes standing up to him more easier.

That's at least one optimistic take. Yeah, and it's declining approval is a big part of it. So ultimately, I think the one thing that we can do to really try and save the system, I mean, among other things, one of the big things we can do is to drive Trump's approval down because, in a way, that's almost like the the coin of the realm here isn't it the lower Trump's approval gets the less likely Republicans are to go along with his corrupt schemes. Because they start to actually worry about voters who aren't Trump voters, they like start to worry about the rest of us like voters outside the Maggie universe and it's a little hard to get Republicans to take the rest of the electorate seriously.

When Trump gets to, you know, polls showing him at 34 or 35% then all of a sudden, especially with midterms looming, then the rest of the electorate suddenly matters to Republicans and that's almost our best hope in a way.

What's your big picture take right now? Where do you see it all going? Do you feel like we're going to model through or not?

I really don't know. You know, on one hand, we have the plummeting public approval ratings and Republicans standing up. On the other hand, we have an electoral landscape that is heavily skewed toward Republicans and that Republicans are in my view, corruptly engineering to try to make it really hard for Democrats to obtain political power.

“So I think these are two competing forces that, you know, could offset one another and it's hard to say which one might win out, but at a minimum, right, recent events suggest the fight is worth fighting.”

You know, I am making my homemade, don't pay insurrectionist t-shirt because the more we can do to lower Donald Trump's approval ratings, the better, even if it's just by wearing t-shirts to remind people what he is doing.

Well, it's a little bit like one step forward ten steps back. I don't know, but it's, I think that's a little too pessimistic. I think we've got a shot here, I really do.

I agree. Yeah.

“Always great to talk to you, Leo, and thanks so much for coming on.”

Thanks for having me.

Wow, and that's just one thing?

“Of course, the world is almost automatic.”

Suddenly, I feel like I'm so excited. Hold it in your mouth, deep in your breath, with viso steuer.