Words Matter: The Disease that is Killing the Justice Department… and Much of DC

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28... ...2... ...23... This is Deep State Radio. Coming to you direct from our super secret studio

in the third subbasement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C. And from other, undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to DSR's Words Matter.

“It's that time of the week when we get together and tell you how you should feel about what's happening in your life.”

I'm David Rothkuff, your passive close to ask the questions here and then stands back. And I'm joined this week by the man I stand back for and bow down to the king of insight in Washington, D.C. No... ...normal... ...or at the scene.

How... ...you can't help from laughing even as he says it. No, it's true. You know, I realize that, you know, we've been doing this now. I don't know a couple years, but I keep asking you the same question every time, which is how do you feel.

And I'm not going to do that this time. Good. Because I've learned... No, the answer. I know the answer.

So let me start with a different question for you, Norm. What has your pissed off today? I would say the thing that pisses me off the most today is Todd Blanch. You're not that it's the first time. But let's just go through a couple of the stories from yesterday.

One, the Justice Department is dropping the potential criminal charges against Andy Ogles. One of the worst Republican members of the House who has lied about many things, including his resume. But the worst part of it is some years ago we had a stillborn child. He did a fundraising to create a memorial park for his stillborn child. Raise $25,000, not one penny went to any park.

It went to his own personal luxuries. And not only did the Justice Department say they were going to drop the investigation, they wanted to destroy all the evidence so that no future Justice Department can prosecute him. Okay, that's one thing. Then you have, and it's just boggles the mind that this could possibly happen.

Todd Blanch wants the Justice Department going to the Supreme Court to intervene and make the Justice Department the defendants in the case involving

E. Jean Carroll's $83 million judgment against Trump for defamation.

But you cannot sue the Justice Department for defamation.

“In other words, if this happens, there is no judgment for E. Jean Carroll.”

Despite the fact that a jury basically said Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll, the judge defined it as rape.

And he repeatedly slammed E. Jean, and therefore got even more judgments against him, which total $83 million.

And probably are building to a little bit more. Now, frankly, for Trump given the grip going on in the White House, that's not a large amount. They probably grip that every single day. But it doesn't matter. The idea that we have a justice department that is acting as Trump's personal lawyer is beyond outrageous.

Then you have the third case, which is not just the Justice Department.

But we know that apparently from journalistic reports, journalism reports, Lindsey Halligan, another one of Trump's lawyers, who got installed for a time at the Eastern District in Virginia, told the Justice Department,

“"You need to go after Louise Lucas, the president, pro-tem of the Virginia Senate, a very feisty Democrat who helped to get this referendum on redistricting in Virginia."”

You have to go after her, not because she's done anything wrong, but because she's an opponent of Donald Trump.

So we see the politicization of the Justice Department dropping investigations against Trump's allies, bringing up political investigations against those they view as their adversaries.

And acting as Trump's personal lawyer to try and screw E. Jean Carroll out of the money that she is owed, because Trump not only assaulted her sexually in a dressing room at, I believe, Bernard Goodman's, but then defamed her repeatedly and has a judgment done by a jury of his peers and trying to get out of that. So that is what pisses me off.

“I'll add one other thing, David, that's really frosted me, which is the story that Cash Patel is going after the Atlantic journalist who reported based on dozens of sources that he was drunk on the job and misbehaving all the time.”

And I am now told by people I trust that at clubs around Washington, Patel has been drunk and disorderly, shall we say. I am this is second hand, I cannot vouch for it. And then we have this incredible journalist at the Atlantic who in the face of this pressure from the FBI came out with another story that Patel has personalized bottles of bourbon with the FBI logo and all of that that he hands out, probably using himself and doubling down. We have the worst acting attorney general in the history of the country and it is saying something that he is surpassed and bondy.

We have a major threat to national security in Cash Patel and that's, you know, among the things that have rankled me in the last date. Is that all? Look, you know, I being restrained. Yeah, no, no, I see that and I appreciate that, but you know, it strikes me and I think that it's great that you put all of those pieces together that, you know, the Justice Department really should not be referred to as the Justice Department anymore. It not only no longer resembles the Justice Department at any point in our history, but it is the Department of the obstruction of justice, it is the Department of the violation of justice.

It is the Department of injustices and most importantly, it's really Donald Trump's private law firm, where he is stopping prosecutions of white collar criminals like him. Stopping prosecutions of people who storm the Capitol in January 6th in his name, stopping prosecutions of people who illegally tried to metal with election results and going after his adversaries.

The reason he's able to do it is that the Robert's court said he could do it and the Robert's court did so in the same decision of a granted him immunity, but essentially it's said almost explicitly.

“If the president wants to use the Justice Department as his personal law firm, he can because they want presidents to have maximum control over the executive branch.”

Also this week, just the other day, John Roberts, your favorite person in America, Roger Tawny II came out and he said, I don't understand why people don't get us.

And I feel we're misunderstood. They don't think we're not doing anything political. We're just coming to the right answers, you know, and it's a struggle and please give me a big hug.

And I was just wondering if you saw that and what your reaction was.

“I saw it and I gagged as I also gagged when Amy Coney Barrett said, it's absolutely wrong if you look at the data that on the big decisions we divide along partisan lines.”

That's just wrong. Now, I will say, Amy Coney Barrett, back, not long after she was confirmed, which you remember happened eight days before the 2020 election, violating every norm done by Mitch McConnell, not long after she was confirmed and was a Supreme Court Justice. She went to Kentucky with Mitch McConnell, a breach in fundamental ethics for benefactor, and what did she say on the steps of the McConnell Center as he stood next to her, I'm here to tell you we're not just a bunch of partisan hacks.

They are a bunch of partisan hacks. And, you know, much as I gag at John Roberts, who is worse than Roger Tony, much worse, even though Tony has gone down in history as the worst chief justice, because his violations of the fundamentals of our country of democracy of our constitution are far broader than what Roger Tony did, and he's returning us to a Jim Crow era.

“But, let me focus for a moment on Sam Alito, who authored this vicious retort to Katanci Brown Jackson.”

After Katanci Brown Jackson went after Alito and the others on this case, Cally, which has blown up, of course, any hope of having racial justice or fundamental decency in the districting process. And why did Katanci Brown Jackson have a vigorous descent? The Supreme Court, for many years, had adopted something called the Perselle Principle. The Perselle Principle is that you don't change election results, outcomes, district lines, laws, close to an election. When you could distort the results of that election, and especially because you might be doing it, where voting has already started.

So, repeatedly, when it involves a case that could go against Republicans. One example, Alabama, which back in the day when we had a voting rights act, had an unconstitutional jury mander that was racially based. And Alito and his colleague said, we're going to leave that district in place that redistricting Alabama in place because it's too close to the election. In the case of Cally, instead of following the normal Supreme Court process, which is you issue a ruling, and you leave a little more than a month after it before it actually takes effect.

So, you give time for the losing party to appeal, or for any other actions to take place.

From what I can see, the second time ever said, no, no, we're going to have this take effect immediately.

In other words, Perselle applies when it would hurt Republicans. There is no such thing as Perselle when it would hurt Democrats.

And tens of thousands of people had already voted. They gave a green light to their governor Jeff Landry to void that election and redraw the lines so that they could take away a majority minority district.

“And I would say bad as John Roberts' Sam Alito is worse.”

And of course, that doesn't even get us to Clarence Thomas or some of the others who are ethically disastrous and highly partisan.

Clarence Thomas, by the way, who is about to become the second longest serving Supreme Court justice.

After William O. Douglas, he's about to pass 34 years, which does bring us to the whole idea, would you and I've talked about regularly, that we need structural reform and one of the things we need is term limits for these guys.

“Because, you know, here was a mistake, not of George W Bush, but of George H. W Bush.”

Yeah, it was. And, you know, we can't ignore the reality that Joe Biden is responsible for this in part as well. Joe Biden was the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time of the Thomas hearings.

For a variety of reasons, which may be seen not as bad at the time, but we're, we know that when we had these allegations brought up of the sexual harassment and abuse that Thomas had engaged in.

For other women who went to the Judiciary Committee and said, we can corroborate Anita Hill and to maintain comedy on the committee to keep from making it look like they were going after an African American Republican, Biden didn't let them testify. Look, you know, the scene in Shakespeare's play about Julius Caesar, where Mark Antony gives the speech after Caesar's kill misses, but they were all honorable men.

Yeah, I, you know, I feel I have to begin every speech about Joe Biden with, but he was an honorable man.

I love Joe Biden. I have a lot of affection for Joe Biden in part because he is a genuinely compassionate empathetic man who was there for me when I lost my son, but even honorable men can do bad things.

“To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network. And there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member.”

Members enjoying ad-free listening experience access to our discord community exclusive content early episode access and more use code DSR 26 for 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR network.com. That's code DSR 26 at the DSR network.com slash buy. Thank you and enjoy the show. Well, and also in Washington. Institutionalism is a synonym for preserving embedded forms of corruption and inequity. And, and he was an institutionalist and he didn't want to hear almost it's literally almost as if here is a guy who was in the Senate for a long time.

And it's almost as if he would cover his hands to his ears and say, "La, la, la, let's not speak ill of the Senate." In much the same way that Merrick Garland is attorney general felt that way about the Department of Justice. And so if you look at the record, you know, institutionalists may mean well they may be seeking comedy. But they are being used by people within those institutions who know how to work the system like Mitch McConnell. Who then take advantage of them who don't care about comedy, don't care about justice, just care about advancing the agenda, which is not a political hack agenda usually in Washington.

I agree completely. And I will say, you know, Biden, when he came to the Senate, we don't want to make this all about Biden. But when Biden came to the Senate, he was he had just turned 30, the minimum age, or 35 excuse me, and no 30.

“Yeah, he was selected when he was 29. Yeah. And of course, he lost his wife and daughter in a horrible car accident, both of his sons in the hospital for months.”

He almost dropped out. He was convinced to stay. And in his first year in the Senate, almost everybody, the segregation is Democrats, the right wing Republicans rallied around him.

And, you know, we're warm and comforting and helped him get through it. And that gave him a view of the Senate that may be applied in some respects back then, many decades ago. But he carried that attitude forward to a point where it didn't apply anymore. And the reality is, if you look at Democrats in the Senate now, they still, many, many of them, maybe most of them, treated the same way as the old boy network. They're paling around inside sharing jokes with the likes of Lindsey Graham. They still have relationships with people who they view in through one lens that doesn't reflect the evil that these people are perpetrating inside the Senate as lap dogs and lick spiddles to Donald Trump.

And, you know, as with a willingness to destroy the fabric of American democracy. So that's absolutely the case. What's also the case, as you know, full well, is that there are far too many Democrats who have the attitude that if we behave in an honorable fashion, it will make them look worse and that the American people will see that we're the honorable ones and they're the dishonorable ones. And the fact is, when they go low, if we go high, they go lower. And there is no credit given for being honorable in that fashion. You have to maintain your principles, but you also have to play hardball when they are not just playing hardball, but they're violating every rule in the book.

“I don't think people have communicated terribly effectively. The role that culture plays in Washington.”

The role, you know, Kissinger made reference to it. The role that inertia plays in Washington. People, you know, in the Senate view themselves as a club in elite club.

They like their privileges. They like, you know, making little jokes among themselves. They like appearing above the fray. And they benefit people, enter the house. They enter the Senate and they become richer and richer and richer.

They know that when they leave, there is a law firm or there is a company or there is a consulting firm that is going to produce big pay days. And this is not just true with senators or congressmen.

True with presidents. You know, Clinton said no money when they came in. They had a lot of money when they came out. The Obama said no money when they came in. They had a lot of money when they came out. It's not just Republicans. The whole culture of the place is oriented towards, you know, benefits for those who are in a position of power. And nobody wants to rock that boat too much. It's considered bad form. It's not self-interested. And so they sit in the breakfast room at the four seasons or the breakfast room at the Hay Adams hotel or the luncheon room up on Capitol Hill.

And they maintain the momentum of a system that has metastasized over time. And whereas it may have been okay once upon a time.

“For Tipo Neal to rob elbows with Ronald Reagan. I don't think it was. I think Tipo Neal had a bit of a blind spot in that regard. We are now at a moment where the malevolent forces in this system are trying to kill the country.”

Kill people, kicking millions of people off healthcare, waging wars that are illegal, suggesting that people shouldn't have medication.

And if you don't say these people are fucking evil and we can't normalize them and we have to stop them. And when they go low, we do whatever it takes to stop them because it's going to kill us.

“Then you get where we are. It's just the attitude you've been talking about that have brought us to a point where what ones for policy divisions are now existential choices for the country.”

You know, it's interesting. I had a small exchange with a very conservative Republican lawyer named Greg Nunziata who helps to run an organization of conservative Republicans, former members of the Justice Department and elsewhere who are fighting for the right things for law.

And what I said was, Greg, I disagree profoundly with you on so many issues, but I respect you because you have integrity on the fundamentals.

And if only we could get back to a point where we argue tooth and nail or vigorously about policies instead of where we are now, but I would take what you said David, even further, because it's not just the politicians who are

“considered in this system, it is lawyers and law firms. It is businesses who are only out for their own profits. And we're going to have a limiting case here.”

My guess is the Todd Blanch doing what he's doing, believes that no matter how far he goes, the bar associations will not disbar him. And when he leaves, bathed in dishonor, that there will be a law firm. Maybe Jones Day, which hires all of these election denying people, that will give him three to four to five million dollars a year to join them, because he was either the acting attorney general or if he keeps doing what he's doing in this audition, he will become the attorney general. And that's the way to respect the Trump is going to keep him as acting because they don't want to go through another confirmation hearing. And because the more that he's acting and auditioning for the job, the more he'll do absolutely horrible things to try and win the job directly, but he is confident that no matter what he does he'll emerge from this, even more rich and powerful than he was before.

We're much broader than the culture of politics in Washington, and even the culture more broadly of government, it is a larger cultural emptiness or a moral framework that we have to face in this society. We have to find ways if and when this changes to make sure that all of those who have engaged in this duplicity are held accountable. It's true, but you know, you bring up a really good point. Because there are a lot of lawyers that I know in Washington, DC, who privately over a meal will decry what's happening.

If the bar associations could act right now, they could disbar him, they could disbar Pambandi, they could disbar Emil Bove. They could go after these people, Eileen Cannon, for violating below, for violating their oaths as a lawyer, for violating their responsibilities as officers of the court by defending criminals, by defending corruption, by obstructing justice.

And frankly, you know, disbaring the people who are running the department of justice would send an incredibly powerful message.

But it would also block their path to remuneration and riches when they left office, they would make it harder to do it. And I don't understand why they don't get that. Look, we've got, we've got a couple of minutes more. I just want to ask you about one more thing. If that's okay, I didn't mean it.

“Of course it's okay. Okay, so you're far too young to remember the Nixon administration.”

You were just in knee pants at Lake Mini Talk or wherever, you know, wherever, wherever, wherever you were up there in Minnesota by the Lake, Lake Harriet. Yeah, star condolences on your timber world slash night in any in any of it.

the conduct of the Vietnam War and he gave them to the New York Times. The New York Times ran the files and what it said was that systematically, the US government was lying about was happening in the war.

About our losses, about our position, about everything associated with the war.

“Now here we are today. Light ears away from that. Most people don't remember what the Pentagon papers are.”

And yet I must say to the credit of the press, we have stories like one that appeared just yesterday in the Washington Post that says that they looked at satellite images and 238 base or, you know, places throughout the Middle East. The sustained extreme damage from the Iranians that the administration has covered up. We have other stories that say the administration is lying about the cost of the war.

We have other stories that we've seen with our own eyes where the administration has said the nuclear program was obliterated and then the intelligence community leaks it and says it wasn't.

The administration says the drone capacity and the missile capacity in Iran was eliminated and then the Intel community leaks the story and says, oh no, they still have 50 or 60% of their missile launch capacity and roughly the same amount of their drone capacity.

“We have example after example where they lied about injuries to US troops where they lied about the reason for the injuries to US troops were, we're not even sure what the purposes of certain missions that took place here were.”

We had set on a regular basis and I might add with general came next to him, stand up and they mislead and lie about this war just as they, by the way, have done about attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and so forth. This pattern of deception is every bit as complete and in some ways even more pernicious than the pattern we saw around the Pentagon papers and the Vietnam War. And yet for some reason it's not a scandal in Washington and as you know, I wrote a column on this yesterday for the Daily Beast and and I know that there are other stories coming out, by the way, I know there's going to be a story in a major paper later today about another area in which they are lying.

And I know journalists who are working more stories about the lies and we know and I'm equipment this that Pete Higgs has shut down the department of defense to reporters to real journalism.

“He answers questions from the pillow guys TV network he doesn't take real questions and yells at people will ask real questions it's the least transparent department of defense in history.”

And just I'm trying to wind you up I guess, but I'm also wondering why isn't this the scandal now it was there. You know, we've lost our capacity for outrage. This is as Moynihan said, Danny Patrick Moynihan defining DVNC down that's a part of it. I want to talk about this in two other ways, so David, and of course you're right. We talk a lot about cacostocracy about government by the worst among us.

What we know from this war among other things is the devastation to all of our bases in the region the people who were killed unnecessarily because they had no protection. What we know is a lot of that damage was because we're spending a trillion dollars on outmoded weapon systems that Pete Higgs has logs because you can drop a bunker buster bomb and blow up a whole lot. But we are in no way prepared for the warfare of the 21st century.

$1,000 or $10,000 or $30,000 drones come and do a billion dollars worth of damage to our radar systems and sophisticated equipment in these bases blow up the bases.

If we manage to intercept any of them, it's with a $30,000-million missile to take out a $1,000 drone and we're not prepared at all for that. What Pete Higgs said has done some of this proceeds him, it's true. But what he has done is to not just lie about a war, about the cost of the war, about the people killed or injured as a consequence.

The second part of this is something else that happened this week, which is not only Donald Trump saying that he was issuing an executive order that the Presidential Records Act meant that he could destroy every document because all the records belong to him personally, not to the United States.

“It's the exact opposite, just as in the Cali decision, it was the exact opposite of what the Constitution in the 14th and 15th amendments and the Boding Rights Act said that was destroyed by the Supreme Court.”

We know that they're now moving forward in his justice department to codify this. Now, I'll take this to another level hope that some of the people who are listening or watching will are people in the government who will pay attention. The Hungarian election took place in Magiar 1, but before he was seated, there were all of these stories including pictures of people in their bureaus and agencies shredding documents, desperately trying to get away from what had happened. I've learned from people who know a lot about the inside stories that many of them made a visible sign of shredding the documents, but before that had made thumb drives of them and are turning them over to Magiar.

So there are people loyal to the fundamentals of a small, deep democratic political system who had to go along when they were there, but now and maybe it's partly to save their own skins if they're going to be trials for those who have violated the fundamentals, but they're preserving the evidence.

“If, let's say, we get to a 2028 election and a Democrat wins.”

That's early November. This administration will be in office until January 20, and they will systematically try to destroy all of the incriminating evidence.

What we know is in documents in the Pentagon, in emails and texts and memoranda in the Justice Department, in every agency out there, one other outrage this week, the Department of Homeland Security is dismantling the bureau that looks at misconduct in detention centers. In other words, they're going to give them a complete green light to kill people, to torture them, to rape them, to do all of the horrible things they're doing, it dilly in these other places.

“They will have documents in there about how they have deliberately defied court orders, how they have used racial profiling, how they've tortured people.”

And they're going to try and destroy them all. We need patriots among those who will still be inside these agencies. Officers in the Pentagon, lawyers and others in the Justice Department, people who are bureaucrats in the Department of Homeland Security, in the Department of the Interior, in the Environmental Protection Agency,

where Lee Zeldin is basically undermining the law and our environment.

To find ways before they destroy these documents, to copy them, to put them on thumb drives, to preserve the incriminating evidence. So if and when we have the ability to look back at how they've defiled every element of decency, the law, the Constitution, that they can be held accountable.

If you're listening, it's just like, hey, Russia, if you're listening, hey patriots, if you're listening, make sure they can't destroy all the incriminating evidence.

And by all means, also if you're listening, and you're in the intelligence community, and you're in the DOD, or if you're in the Justice Department, or any of these other places, you know, it is serving the country to get the truth out. It is your patriotic duty to blow the whistle, and whether the administration likes it or not, is not only beside the point, it is the point.

And that I think will remain to be the case, and it is kind of their signature across the board, I guess, you know, this is goes back to your theme, you know, they, the movie that ultimately they will make out of our podcast called "Adventures in CACA Stock history".

In any of that, norm, as ever, and has been therapeutic for me to talk to you, and I am sure that that is the reaction that all of our viewers and listeners have had.

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But for now, thanks, Norm. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.