Rational Security: The “Forbidden Fruit” Edition

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Now, on the deed point, the A/recruiting. Who is a mistake number one? Yes, so he went golfing. He left the house to go golfing and I came in the house. This is only maybe a one hour gap.

There were just grapes everywhere. It was grape carnage. My dog is sitting there wagging and bopping around with his face all wet with what seemed to be grape juice. So I think, "Oh, no."

I think I read something about grapes being dangerous for dogs and called the vet. They said, "Bring him in right away." and they asked, "How many grapes did he eat? May husband to his credit immediately drove back from his golf to meet us at the vet. I don't want to be maligning." My husband here and they asked, "How many grapes did he eat?"

And we filled up the form when we just wrote a lot. So they induced vomiting. Correct answer would have been a bunch, but that's fine. Yeah, well, perhaps more than a bunch. I don't know if there were grapes stems all over the ground.

I mean, this was... Yeah, that was man. Truly, like, a battle field post-vattle. Oh, great apocalypse. They produced from my dog.

They came back to us and had, you know, on the take home instructions. 140 grapes. Wow. Did they have the count really? Right, she was like a weird job for the summer intern at the vet's office.

I know what that's like. I know what that's like. It's got the little bit like a dig, too.

“Like you let this dog eat 140 grapes, but honestly, it was good.”

It was good news, right, because that's suggested that they had gotten all the grapes out. Presumably. Well, he's alive. So... This whole grape thing.

It was so I learned this well after I became a dog owner. And it was like not... I feel like it was not common knowledge when I was growing up at least that this was like a thing that grapes really bad for dogs. And so I asked my vet and she said, "Oh, no, we discovered this in like 2011."

Like this is totally new knowledge.

Somehow we just had never put together a grape plus dog equals problem.

What is the nature of the problem at it? But don't really know, which is part of what's so crazy about it. So it causes kidney failure. But they don't know what it is in grapes that doesn't. They don't know how many grapes they don't know if it depends on the type of grape.

And also some dogs are... And some species are like more susceptible. And some dogs aren't. And they don't know why. They can't test for it.

It's a plea mystery. So this is, you know, I was thinking that if I were going back to school and choosing a different path of study or career, I could devote myself to figuring out why... And how the mechanism is, and I could save a lot of dogs. But my husband didn't know the grapes were toxic, which is part of why the grapes were

out. Again, I don't want to be maligning him here.

Also, our dog had never displayed any interest in grapes until this day.

Forbidden fruit. There you go. You get a taste. Yeah, I don't eat it. I have a hundred and thirty-nine more.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to rational security. The show we're going to invite you to join members of the Law Fair team. As we try to make sense of the week's big, national security news stories, I am thrilled as always be back here with several of my colleagues to walk through the week's big headlines. Much indie kind of weaponization, rule of law, Department of Justice Lane this week.

Joining me are Law Fair Senior Editor Molly Roberts back on the beat on rational security after a few weeks off. I should never give you that many weeks off, but we appreciate it, Molly, thank you for joining us. So happy to be back.

You bring a little springtime spirit with that shirt. I don't know how colorful it was. I didn't see it. You just suggested in advance. I love it.

“I think it's actually what they advise against wearing on camera, but what can you do?”

Hey, you know what? It's springtime. We got to lean into it. Why not? Also, join me is Law Fair Senior Editor Mike Feinberg.

Mike, thank you for joining us. Not quite as colorful in your tire, but that's fine. I'm assuming your shorts are paisley and colorful.

These are your imagination however you want.

This is the secret of home offices. Exactly right. Exactly right. And of course, join us as well as Law Fair, rational security co-host, emeritus, law fair editor and chief Benjamin, witness back on the show.

Thank you for joining us. I feel like you have two more cactuses behind you than the last time I saw you. They mate and proliferate. It's not like going to me, but I'm just like just separate. I actually think actual cactuses do.

They just propagate. I'm an egg-lang situation. I don't want to rub mullers involved. We're at the fuller puppet, but that's okay. Well, regardless, thrilled to have you guys back on the show.

Let us get into it. We've got a couple of big topics to talk about this week. Topic one, Blanche Check. DOJ may soon have a new permanent leader as president Trump has now formally nominated acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, to the role permanently.

But to secure Trump support, Blanche has indulged some of Trump's most concerning instincts as evidenced by the attempts to establish an anti-weaponization fund for Trump allies and renewed indictments of figures like former FBI Director Jim Comi. Meanwhile, DOJ has seen scandal after scandal during Blanche's tenure over the rapidly declining quality and credibility of its work, exemplified most recently by evidence of

grand jury tampering, arguably, in the broadviews' six prosecutions. What you would be expect of DOJ under a confirmed blanche and how enduring will some

“of the potential harm that may result be for the department?”

Topic two, Tinker Taylor Realtor Spy. Trump's decision to do a federal housing finance agency director Bill Pultz, a man with no national security experience who is best known for using his role at the FHA to facilitate some of Trump's most transparent attacks on perceived political enemies as acting director of national intelligence, has triggered strong reactions across the political spectrum.

This includes a threat by congressional Democrats to kill renewal of Section 702 surveillance authorities if Pultz remained in the acting position. The Trump thus far has refused to back down what does Pultz appointment and the potential exploration of Section 702 mean for national security? Topic three, Prat Falls.

The open primary in the Los Angeles mayor's race is over, and Trump endorsed candidate Spencer Bradford as just outside the final two will proceed to the general election. The U.S. Attorney Bill Assayley, a Trump loyalist, has suggested that photo-frauding guest investigations are ongoing, leading some other Republican officials and leaders to call the results of the election in the question I think specifically about Speaker Mike

Johnson who suggested as much in comments earlier this week. Which we make of these unsubstantiated allegations, and are they a preview of what people have planned for 2026? For our first topic, let me turn to you on this one first, Mike. We now have a formal nominee for the Attorney General position.

We talked about this a few times on the show.

“I think you've been on a few of those episodes.”

We talked about it as the kind of beauty contest for who will finally get the nod to replace Pam Bondi as Attorney General was playing out. We had a couple of candidates all of them seem to be really trying to reach and do things to put them on President Trump's positive side of the ledger, whether it is, you know, Harmy Dillon being involved with a bunch of social media campaigns, you know, lobbying

the president essentially, arguing in favor of some of specific causes, evolving yourself in a variety of litigation, whether it is a variety of other people who've kind of thrown their hat in the ring.

But Todd Lynch kind of always had the inside track.

He's already in the acting role. He already was a Deputy Attorney General, Trump knows him well. But I think most of us would have said, at the out front, if I had to pick somebody who's going to get it, it would probably be Blanche. Part of that though, at least for me, at the time, I think I said this on the podcast was that

Blanche will seem like a little bit more conventional like candidate and might be an easier sell to, you know, otherwise skeptical Senate Republicans, of which there are a few. But I'm not sure that is as true now as it might have been a few months ago, because we have seen Blanche do things like endorse and let to move forward. We proposed 1776 compensation fund, which is now been put on the back burner and killed as

we think. And put us a congressional opposition in part, we don't 100% know. And of our idea of other measures, that Blanche has kind of co-signed. It's been a much more of a yellow season at the Justice Department than frankly it was of the Pan-Bondies tenure.

And that was not a high par, necessarily.

So talk to us a little bit about what you think ultimately put Blanche over the edge and

where the dynamics of that go under this new scheme. I mean, are there breaks on this, does once you get confirmed, does that give you a little

“bit more leverage and a little bit of inclination to push back?”

Or is that just not blanches and inclination as far as we can tell? This is a really difficult question to answer for the sole reason that it's hard to talk about this concept without it devolving into something that very much sounds like an attack on someone's character or reputational assassination. So I'm going to sort of back into it by describing the transformation I saw in long-time

DOJ and FBI employees in terms of how they viewed Blanche. When the announcements for who was going to be who at DOJ first came out, there was skepticism about Pan-Bondies. She did not have any of the traditional federal law enforcement or prosecutorial experience.

But the feeling that Todd Blanche was going to be there, a veteran of SDNY, which is arguably

“the most prestigious US attorney's office in the country, there was a feeling that he would”

at least bring some respect for institutional norms and a knowledge of how the department was supposed to operate with him when he arrived. According to Media reports, that very much was the case in the early days of the administration. But with Bondie out, it does appear that ambition has overtaken prudence and Todd Blanche

really is willing to do things that a lot of people who knew him at SDNY never would have

predicted. You've named some of the politicized prosecutions, which have occurred under him. You mentioned what people are referring to as the slush fund or less politely the thug fund.

“And there's also what's most remarkable to me are public statements that fundamentally”

mistake the law that would appear to be uttered solely for political gain. I'm thinking in particular of his comments that he saw nothing wrong with armed ice agents being at the polls to guarantee election integrity.

This struck a lot of us as wrong because there is a federal statute specifically for bidding

armed federal agents from being a polling place during the election. And for the attorney general to either be unaware of it or to pretend it doesn't exist for the purpose of a press conference is really abnormal. And that's the sort of thing that could call into question whether the public can trust DOJ pronounce them in general.

“And once DOJ can't be trusted to tell the truth, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say”

that the entire criminal justice system sits on a precipice.

Yeah, I want to not back into this subject and I want to say this.

That was an aggressive backing in, regardless, I don't think we got to this subject. But there was backing and slow backing in. Todd Blanche is in every formal sense, very qualified to be attorney general. He is morally unfit for the position and the last year and a half of his service demonstrates that on a serial and repeated basis.

So for those who don't understand the structure of the Justice Department, the day-to-day operation of the Justice Department is managed and run by the Deputy Attorney General. Every single decision by the United States Justice Department that you profoundly disagree with, you can lay at the door of Todd Blanche because the Deputy Attorney General's job is to harmonize the positions of the department and direct the operations of the department

in a fashion in which it doesn't do things like make up nonsense about the former FBI director to indict him repeatedly, make up bullshit about the attorney general of New York to indict her repeatedly maliciously prosecute a guy like Kilmarabrego Garcia because he embarrassed the president because he had the temerity to get deported wrongly to a dungeon in El Salvador. Not to mention the hundreds of situations in which the Justice Department has violated

court orders, all of this is the fault. Among other people, he's not solely to blame. These things don't happen when a deputy attorney general of a certain moral character and caliber is in office and when somebody has that record of degree of moral failing in the position, the idea that he should be elevated to be attorney general and confirmed should

be unthinkable and that said it is not unthinkable and we already have had repeated demonstrations of this Senate's willingness to confirm hash, Patel and Pam Bondi herself and by the way, Todd Blanche himself. Now that question, the question of whether he was demonstrably unfit 18 months ago or two

myself, by the way, you know, considered a blanch to be not an attractive figure, but you know,

certainly a relief compared to alternatives, but you know, he has a record at this point and the record is one of unremitting impropriety across a lot of different vectors. That's before you get to the destruction of the department itself, the firings of enormous

“numbers of people, and remember that everything people objected to about Emil Bovi was actually”

the office. Emil Bovi is an arm of Todd Blanche. He was the principal associate deputy attorney general. He's like the arm of Todd Blanche. And so I, this is not a close call whether this is an appropriate nomination. It is not. And I think we should assume that there probably are the votes to confirm him. I was going to say I agree with Ben and Caron drive and foot on the gas as far as talking about

Todd Blanche goes. I think that the initial feeling that he was going to be an adult in the room in the initial sort of reporting on, oh, he's acting like the adult in the room. He doesn't like Ed Martin. He made Ed Martin move down the hallway and then he made him move to a totally different building and he didn't like the Viticia James prosecution and he advised against it. Okay, sure, but it seems to be that while he advised privately quietly against stuff once the

president decided I want to do this, it's not like he made any real effort to stop and he of it from happening similarly now, the New York Times reported that on the weaponization fund. He advised privately against that, but he was willing to go to Congress and take a lashing for it. And he said we're backing down from that, but then defend without any reservations, seemingly the part of it that immunizes the Trump family from any audits or at least as our colleagues,

Eric Columbus, and Annabauer concluded in their most recent piece about it from any action that the IRS or Treasury at least could bring against them. So it seems to me that maybe he's more of an adult in the room and that he doesn't just yes or everything, but when it comes down to it, he'll say the yes, sir. He just might not say it right away. And as far as the confirmation goes,

“yeah, I think probably he gets confirmed. Probably he has the votes, the people to look out for.”

I would guess besides the usual Susan Collins might have concerns would be Tom Tillis and probably Bill Cassidy, which is the sort of self-inflicted thing for Trump. And Tom Tillis, remember, was one of the Senate's most vocal supporters of Cash Battelle for the FBI director decision. Yes, that's true. He was not, I don't think he announced his intention to retire at that point, Eddie. No, but I do think he's a little bit of a game chef. And Tom Tillis noticed

he's also the co-sponsor of legislation to kill the weaponization fund. So it's a little bit of

slick as I'm hearing. I mean, look, I am always happy to be pleasantly surprised if you look at

Tom Tillis's record on confirmation of demonstrably and appropriate justice department officials, it is not a good one. I think the way it works for Tillis is he says I want to get this weaponization fund killed. And if they say the right things about killing the weaponization fund, they get his vote.

“Enough. Yeah. I think that might be right. Like there's a lot of trade and hustle going in here.”

Now, I looked up, I just pulled up just for comparison. Blandch's last confirmation, which was 52, 46 with one Republican not voting. So presumably, you could have gotten 53 votes if you needed it. That's actually not, I mean, let's the margins of the Senate, right? Like that's not terribly shocking. Straight party line vote. It's not overwhelmingly, I don't know. I, I tend to agree. It seems like this is the sort of thing where they're not going to want the president exiting

without an attorney general. I think people will be able to talk themselves more easily in the blanch than maybe heartbeat, Dylan and others, still because he has that conventional resume. Even if it doesn't, he hasn't been acting in a way that one might expect that to lead him to go. That's not a real comfy margin. Like it is going to be an interesting to see what exactly pounds of flesh that senators try and extract, especially because you do have, you know,

Tillis corn in, not coming back, Cassidy with a beef of the administration, Collins,

and Mercowski always, people who, you know, at least are willing to buck the administration a little bit.

I have a little more incentive at the moment with a little more company. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is tricky. I tend to agree just because we seem a lot disciplined, but the administration is really shot itself in the foot with the Senate and with

Lots of wait and see. I do think a lot of it comes down to like what they trade out. There's an old Russian expression. Pray to God, but road ashore. And I think this applies, that's probably right. So the way one should think about Senate

Confirmations in the second Trump administration.

All right. Can I suggest that we might be thinking about this the wrong way in that? First of all, I cannot believe I am in a recording studio being the closest thing to a defender of Todd Blanche that the show has.

“Life is full of choices. I find him frankly a reprehensible human being.”

As a lawyer, as a orator or rather a rotation, and just as a human being in the way he has imported himself with sycophantic servitude to this administration. But I don't think the question is should Todd Blanche be confirmed? I think the question is, is replacement value Todd Blanche who we would get in his place

going to be better or worse? And I just, you know, if it's between Hermit, Dillon and Todd Blanche,

that's not a question for me. I'm not happy about this state of affairs. I don't want any of them near a law enforcement in Proskitorial apparatus. But in this administration, and with this weak lead and milk toast of a Senate majority, I just don't think we're going to do any better. I think that, by right, frankly, I think that is probably a logic that a number of other senators who might have issue with this nomination will find persuasive. We're helpful

listeners, I should say. For, for kind of two or three different reasons, I right? One blanche, you know, you can still talk yourself in him having some sort of conventional knowledge or instinct or that's relevant. Yeah, and we haven't really seen it manifest in many full ways, so far, but maybe people will say, well, once he's confirmed, particularly once he's confirmed and working for a Trump administration, which has been understands it doesn't have the leverage

over Congress that he used to have. Maybe he'll have a little more leeway to push back on things. I think that's strictly hypothetical. Nobody has any idea what he's going to do with the office at this point. The other fact to go in is that you're right, there are these questions of who else they can put forward, and you also have a problem that you really cannot get away with not having an attorney general.

You can't just do the acting attorney general thing indefinitely. We saw that during the first

Trump administration with the Matt Whitaker experience, it's going to cause lots of problems with more vacancies down the line. It is going to make people concerned about not having someone confirmed with that role, because it's going to break down prosecutions and things like that. So you've got that kind of countervailing pressure where you might not for other cabinet or other senior past positions. And the third factor is, and we're going to talk about this one of our other

“topics. If you want to stick your thumb in the eye at the Trump administration, if you're a”

Republican senator who says, I'm sick of these guys, I'm sick of their weaponization aircraft. You've got a lot of lower hanging fruit to hit before you get to Todd Blanche. Well, like, you know, legislation for weaponization fund or like Bill Pulti, who will talk about in a little bit, whether you formally kill him or the vote against him, if he ends up being the nominee. So, you know, I do think we're 702 for that matter. So, like, you know, when you have

that sort of situation, senators in this situation often, I think their calculus is, I can go to use my votes to communicate something to the voting public and to the administration. And you've got lots of different channels of communication. And the AG role is one that has certain institutional downsides that may make it just harder for people to, to be the one that that held out on, given that, as you say, Mike, who is the best replacement, like who's waiting in

the wings that's going to be better than this? I'm just not sure. They have a clear answer. I want to add a really depressing corollary to my analysis, which is the Justice Department is already gone. And the rest of you may disagree with me in terms of degree, but I don't think you to contest the main point, which is we are already in a situation where it is going to take a generation, if not longer, to restore the functioning of DOJ, and also to restore the trust

“in it of the American people. And so I think whether Todd Blanch gets confirmed versus”

Hermit Dillon or, you know, let's just go back to the early days of the administration, somebody even like Matt Gaetz. I don't know that there's a salvage operation that could occur in the next two and a half years. Even if you got somebody of the absolute highest integrity, which you're not going to under this president in this Senate, like we can't dig ourselves out of this whole given the state of the entire government. And any pushback that an AG might give the

of Blanch as the best option should not be taken is cheerleading for Blanch. It should be taken as a lamentation for how bad the department is already. So that's a good pivot point to bring in another aspect we wanted to touch on a little bit. That's kind of linked in here, which is this broad views six case that we've gotten pretty like shocking revelations about about how prosecutors

“in, I think, the northern district of Illinois, I might have ran correctly, engage with the grand jury,”

basically vouching for their own evidence, engaging in very frank term, basically saying you can trust us, you can trust all sorts of things that read bizarrely, although I will not, I will confess,

I have never really acting gauge with the grand jury. So I may be that's more common than I know.

And perhaps more profoundly, you know, was enough of an issue that you had the Justice Department ultimately say we're going to drop charges against the, I think it was for remaining people who still charges against them a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty damning. My first, I just want to know what you kind of make sense to this. My sense is that you have the greatest experience with grandjuries of any of us. Although Ben, I know you've been following the sort of issues long enough

that you've got a good sense of how these things are done. Well, you might, you might better experience than I do as well. But like more fundamentally, also like how much of this is attributable to the Trump administration? And how much of this is more of an endemic problem, either with U.S. attorney's office there, or with some leadership teams, some, some iteration of that office, because it just seems like profoundly problematic. But some of the people involved were not

Trump people, right? Some of them were queer prosecutors. Some of them had gone, we know one person had

“gone since to go work for, I think, was Senate Democrats on the judiciary committee, right?”

It's the same prosecutor actually who presented in front for the broad view. Exactly, grand jury was detailed to Dick Durbin's office. And then when her role in the broad view six grandjury indictments came to light, she was removed from Dick Durbin's office. Exactly. And I was a detail. It's not actually like resigned and took a different job. But it's still indicative of this is not the perception that this was a person with, you know, on the kind of like Trump

administration, Ben, and that was going to help her get a political position and the Trump administration, right? So Mike, I'm just kind of curious what you make of this case now that these additional details have come out the light, like how bizarre are some of these interactions, which certainly strike me as a bizarre as a non person without a lot of experience to base it against. And where does the, you know, where does the rot come from in this case? So I wanted to attack a couple of the assumptions

baked into your question, but do so in a way that actually gives a lot of credence to your skepticism

and believe that this is not normal. First of all, I don't think you can disentangle the

leadership at the head of the Justice Department from the leadership of any given US attorney's office from, and I know Ben and I have discussed this and have slightly divergent views on this from the line level workforce that remains. Leadership flows down, tones are set from DC,

“they are picked up on and assimilated within the US attorney's office. And the fact is that I think”

a lot of the assistant US attorneys who generally have zero problem getting jobs in the private sector at the drop of a hat, the ones who would object to the sort of prosecutions that we see, whether it's the broad view six or some of the more famous political figures who have been

indicted, the people who would object are gone already. They saw this coming or they saw it first

hand and they left. And by definition, you're going to be left with a certain group of people. I think you really have three types left. You have the good intention to go to harder people who are going to try and do the right thing and leave when they're forced not to. I don't think those people were involved here because the indictments went forward and I didn't see any reporting of anybody withdrawing from the case or leaving the office like we saw in Minneapolis after the

refusal to investigate the deaths of Renee Good and now it's predi. The second group of people you're going to be left with are people who are okay with what's happening. They might not be enthusiastic supporters, but for some reason I can't fathom, they don't see violating the rules of grandjuries as inimical to the oath they took. And then the third group of people that you're going to get are people who joined after this administration came in to fill the vacancies of those

who departed on matters of principle. And of those three groups, the good people ironically

They might do so noisily, they might try and throw up road blocks, but they're going to be gone. The people who are okay with what's happening or who joined specifically because of it are also not going to throw up road blocks for the obvious reasons. So you're left in a position

where for the first time in DOJ's history you have judges claiming that they can't apply the

presumption of regularity anymore. You have attorneys who are going to get discipline for violating

“basic rules of criminal procedure. And equally important, I don't think we should ignore this.”

The Justice Department is getting indictments no-build on a regular basis. That is unheard of. And that is going to further erode trust in the department which is going to have the second order consequence of making it difficult to get indictments for even legitimate investigations and prosecutions. The skepticism with which people are going to approach DOJ's pronouncements

while probably healthy for the next two and a half years is going to be deleterious for the department

afterwards. And that brings us to last stage. I want to touch on before we move on from this. Ben, I'll come to you on this. You've done something about this. Although Molly and Mike, I'm sure you guys have used like how, how endemic is the harm that's coming out of this. You know, we've

“seen this undermining the presumption of regularity. We're now seeing as a result of the broad view”

sex revelations, people who are involved in other politically adjacent prosecutions like the southern poverty law center. Other folks saying essentially look, we need judicial scrutiny of grand jury process. We can't just take these as a given that these were, you know, pursued normally in these sorts of cases. Something weird is being like you're saying like, because you're driven down to these field offices that maybe they didn't normal work 90% of the time, but they're being

competitive. Very abnormal things. At least in these cases and maybe more broadly. How do you build back from that? What is the trajectory from that? And, you know, are there parts that can happen under a G-totlant or is this a strictly 2029 and on-work problem, meaning what do you do to

“prepare the ground in the next two and a half years? There is no part of it that can happen under”

Todd Blanch. And that's the reason fundamentally why Todd Blanch is unfit to be attorney general. You can't imagine that process happening under Todd Blanch. Todd Blanch went on national television to defend the southern poverty law center indictment, which is facially invalid. If there is a single person in the United States who is a walking exemplar of everything Mike just said, it is Todd Blanch, down to the fact that he's there to replace people who wouldn't do things.

And, by the way, that person was pounding, you know, um, you know, who's herself completely unfit to be attorney general, but there was a limit to what she would do and Todd Blanch is willing to do the things that she won't do. Well, so, no part of it can happen under Blanch. I look, there are multiple elements to that question and it's a much longer conversation than we're

realistically going to have here today, but let me just flag some of the elements of it. The first

is you need justice department leadership that actually reflects the historic values of the department and not merely that does so quietly, but that we'll speak for those historic values and that judges can hear them speak for those historic values. And you need somebody who's going to say instead of every judge who disagrees with us as a radical activist, you know, they should be impeached. The judge is actually need to hear the justice department leadership saying

there will be zero tolerance at the department for factual inaccuracies, lies and misstatements of the law in our filings, right? The judges entitled to rely on the factual representations of the United States in court. So, there's a leadership level. There is also, as Mike points out, a very troubling line level set of issues here. And this is true both in the department and in the FBI that you have to ask, I'm going to use Mike as an example, you know, who is the person who

untoward, right? Who is the person who's willing to say, don't mind me. I have no untoward

“friendships that are kind of bother Donald Trump, right? You have to ask that question. You have to ask”

the question, who are the AUSAs who are willing to appear in certain cases? Now, some of those are honorable people and some of them are not. And there's going to have to be some hard thinking about how you in a fashion that respects the civil service and the fact that you don't want political people interfering with the basic functioning of the civil service. How are you going to restore honor and integrity to a department that has willfully gutted its own? And those are going to

be very hard questions. They will not begin to happen until you have some kind of edlevy figure since we're focusing on Chicago, edlevy was, of course, the president of the University of Chicago, who Gerald Ford named to run the department after Watergate and began a long process of renewing public confidence in the department. And it was a complicated one that took place over

“really three successive administrations. And so I'm not sure that I agree with Mike that it”

requires generations, but it certainly requires years and it requires a cross-ideological, cross-partisan commitment that I don't know that we have right now. I know we want to move on tonight to something really fast about Todd Lynch, which is that last week, week before last maybe he went on Sean Hannity for a long interview where he talked about the grand conspiracy investigation as it's called at length, called it the grand conspiracy investigation,

named a lot of the people who are under scrutiny confirmed that they have two grand juries that are working on it. I mean, that is all contrary to the Department of Justice policy and is very clearly part of exactly the kind of erosion that we're describing here.

Well, let us go on to our second topic where we have another institution under threat

from the top on down. In this case, as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, President Trump indicated that he intended to point FHA director Bill Polty as the in addition to keeping that role as the acting director of national intelligence. We all kind of thought that might or presumed, I guess, that would last be after June 30th when told to Gabbard, indicated she was going to be resigning. It appears to have jumped up a little

bit, President Trump said Polty would be assuming that role immediately earlier this week. And we're in a situation where Polty is not only not have no national security experiences, number one thing he's known for is facilitating a bunch of these transparently vengeful prosecutions of Latisha James and James Konomi over, you know, a large mortgage fraud, and I thought not the Konomi case in Latisha James case. And in full of other cases, you know,

a large mortgage fraud, and then also being involved and have a facilitating initiative, a bunch of those. Obviously, a inclination that if you have access to the resources of the intelligence community would be much more concerning. The number of Republicans and addition Democrats have come out said, this is a real problem. We've even had John Thunes say, we don't need weaponization of ODI and I. That's not a great sign for how Polty's pseudo-nomination appointment is acting

director has landed on the hill. But perhaps most importantly, we now have Democrats saying,

“we're not going to move forward on 702 reauthorization, which is up, I think this week or next week,”

is due while Bill Polty is anywhere near the Office of Director of National Intelligence. So Ben talks about this. I mean, you have a long history of section 702. I think you have spoken out publicly about the importance of it as a general matter for the US government for national security purposes. How does that assessment ring in a moment like this with this leadership fight happening? I mean, is what Democrats are doing inherently risky? Is it reasonable in light of this possible

leadership at the Office of Director of National Intelligence, this other angle? I mean,

how does this enter into this, what has always been a heated and highly contentious debate

over 702, every time it comes up, this just seems to throw it into a whole nother dimension, or maybe into another dimension where there's a lot more consensus around and how come that people would never get on board with otherwise, because everyone gets worried about this authority in the hands of someone like Bill Polty. Where do you come out on this? All right. So this is a super complicated question and was before Bill Polty was nominated for me. I will leave the merits of

Bill Polty as a nominee to Molly Roberts, who has for her sins in some past life,

So, but let me talk a little bit about 702 in the context of a nomination or an acting head

that is not merely inappropriate in the fashion that Todd blanches inappropriate, but also completely unqualified in every formal sense for the position. So, if you do not reauthorize 702, Americans will die and it is not appreciably more complicated than that. 702 is the single most important collection tool in the legal arsenal of the U.S. intelligence community. It forms material from it forms a large percentage of the president's daily brief every morning.

“I believe it is the largest single contributor to the president's daily brief.”

It is still because of frankly civil libertarian misrepresentations about the bill,

controversial that the authority is important and productive. It is not a controversial among anybody who has access to what the not just counterterrorism, but leadership level intelligence take is across a wide range of U.S. collection priorities. So, I think it is fair to say it will horrible important U.S. intelligence interests at a lot of levels of government, a lot of levels of important areas up to and including ones that are that involve human life and death.

“If that doesn't make this clear, I am a supporter of 702. My fundamental belief is that 702 is right”

now over-regulated, not under-regulated. We should be renewing it on a permanent basis and we should be renewing it with fewer little sort of niggling over-regulations than it currently has. That's my bottom line position and it has been for several years now. That said, I could not in good conscience tell a democratic member of Congress that they absolutely should vote for this. And the reason is that I have zero confidence that it is not being misused right now. Let me

give you an example of this. There's every reason to believe that intelligence priorities have been

“shifted in directions that, for example, votes strikes in Venezuela, in open waters in Venezuela,”

all kinds of counter-narcotics activity that I would think of as not necessarily in the traditional intelligence space. I suspect have been prioritized within the intelligence acquisition world. I'm not confident this isn't being used to plan a legal invasion of Cuba, for example. And so I could not tell anybody what I could say very confidently the last time this authority was being reauthorization was being contemplated, which was, look, there's mistakes happen in every

collection authority. We know of the ones that happen in this, but we know also know it is not being intentionally misused. There's a lot of oversight. And by the way, the whole system relies on certifications that invoke the personal credibility of the FBI director, the attorney general, and yes, the DNI. And I don't believe in the integrity of any of those people. Also, one of the things that people

like me have always been able to say to civil libertarians is, you know, this has court oversight,

unlike a lot of other intelligence programs. But we also know that this government lies to courts on a routine basis, makes misrepresentations and defies court orders. So why is that now supposed to be reassuring? All of that is the reason before Bill Palty, that I have not gone on a crusade to get 702 reauthorized, as I have in every previous iteration, including in the first trumpet administration. I was more enthusiastic about renewing 702 than Donald Trump was the time that he

based on the premises of the way the statute works, except to say that the consequences of not

doing it will be dire. Now you put in charge of the intelligence community, somebody who is, and by the way, this is not only marginally different from Tulsi Gabbard, who was herself manifestly unfit to be in that position. But you have somebody who believes in lying

“to target people's political enemies, that's what Bill Palty is famous for.”

What is the basis on which a democratic senator or house member should vote to create, you know, reauthorize a program that is predicated on the presumption of regularity with respect to intelligence community and justice department representations to courts? You know, I can't think of one, and so all I will say about this is, you know, as Kirkegaard once said, if you hang yourself, you will regret it, and if you don't hang yourself, you will regret it, and if you marry, you will

regret it, and if you don't marry, you will regret it, and if you renew 702, you will regret it, and if you don't renew 702, you will also regret it. This gentleman is the essence of all philosophy. Well, let me come to you and take up Ben's invitation there. I mean, you have spent a lot of time with Bill Palty's work at the FHAFA. Well, I don't know, actually, but I don't believe you have much exposure to the intelligence community, but talk just a little bit about what he has

done remind people there, and like how big a stretch of what he did at the FHAFA was from what people have previously done and from the factual record, you know, you've written a number of pieces about this in a number of different contexts. Talk to us about what exactly Bill Palty's quote-unquote qualifications might be for this sort of role from Trump's perspective, not necessarily conventionally. I thought you were going to say you've spent a lot of time with Bill Palty,

and I was going to say you know, thankfully not literally. Donald Trump certainly has Bill Palty is often on Donald Trump's play and with him telling him to do bad things, like I don't know, take over the DC, of course. So we'll go after Mr James. So Bill Palty comes from the federal housing finance agency, and you might think what is there even to weaponize there, and yet he has managed it.

“And so I mean, I think that that in my eyes is his primary qualification, as far as like practically”

why he's getting nominated for this job is Donald Trump wants someone to weaponize the intelligence community and Bill Palty has shown you can weaponize anything. It's a lot easier to do, honestly, with the intelligence community than with the federal housing finance agency. So what Bill Palty did at the FHA was he made referrals and kind of ginned up the necessary information to make these criminal referrals against people who were purportedly engaging in mortgage fraud. So from Lisa Cook

to the Tisha James, he's been investigating Adam Schiff as well, investigating, not really his job,

first of all. The question, there's even a question of whether he has the authority in that role

to make these referrals. But the way that he made the Tisha James afro and particular were just

“probably the best way to think about him the one in which we have the most information because we”

got a lot of it out of discovery. In the case is he, it seems, again, I don't want to say he did, but he may have unlawfully accessed Fanny May files kind of overriding the processes that he's supposed to follow to do that in order to find forms where there were possible irregularities, apparent irregularities that he then transformed into these criminal referrals. He kind of would get evidence from these fringe bloggers and then he would go get the Fanny May files to try to

back up with the fringe bloggers were saying. And in the Lichesha James case, he also seems not to have ensured that potentially exculpatory evidence was passed along. It seems like it didn't make it to the grand jury. And also the inspector general at the federal housing finance authority was ousted when he was trying to provide some of this evidence which might have been about the unlawful access of the files or might have been about the communications among

Fanny May investigators asking whether there was indeed clear and convincing evidence of occupancy

fraud, which is ultimately what the referral was about. So basically improperly accessing

about information that undercuts the referrals. And the Adam Shiff case, it gets even a little

weirder and there hasn't been an indictment in that case, but there was this very strange moment where everyone was sort of waiting for an indictment to be handed down. And then it was revealed that this woman, another sort of fringe blogger who was sharing information about Adam Shiff, that she had been contacted by people who were reporting to work with or for Bill Pulti, but were also saying they worked for the Justice Department. So again, misrepresentations

just total departure from the way that this agency is supposed to work. So that's a sort of

“stuff that he's done. And I mean, I think it's pretty clear that if you're willing to”

go against norms, regulations, whatever in your position at the FHFA, what could you do with

the far greater resources that would be available to you as director of national intelligence. So that has concerned people rightly and created as Ben was talking about this section 702 crisis where there's sort of a weird coalition, right? Because you have a bunch of Democrats who otherwise would be on board with reauthorizing section 702, but now might not because they see it as leverage when it comes to Pulti. Yeah, I mean, it's really a remarkable, okay. It is

somebody so uniquely not just unqualified, but qualified in such a deeply problematic way. And something indicted, I mean, this is a question I have for historians and journalists who might be able to dig into this. I actually goes back to Pam Bondi too, which is the fact that if Pam Bondi is removed, all the nominees who want to be a 20-general feel that the way to cater to it is to be willing to weaponize the justice department. And now here in this case, President Trump

has removed Tulsi Gabbard, it seems. Maybe she's resigned, maybe not, but regardless, she's gone

and removed her at least 11 days earlier than a original plan. And the first thing he does,

the person who comes to mind saying, well, who's going to solve my Tulsi Gabbard problem is somebody who's very susceptible to pursuing weaponization in his current role. There's like

“an indicator here, right? Like both, I think, are indicators of what the underlying problem was.”

It makes sure that, again, Pam Bondi, and maybe Tulsi Gabbard too, were not willing to do certain things, were pushed back on certain things, right? And the things that the President wants to do, but you wouldn't see this beauty contest, we saw on the AG's race case, and when you wouldn't see Bill Pulti getting put forward, if that weren't part of the calculus, the President is looking at for both of these roles. It's a deeply problematic process on the AG front and person the Pulti case,

but it should be even more problematic, because the only reason he would be put in this role is to weaponize it, because he has no other qualifications at all whatsoever. It's really astounding. Mike, I want to pull you into this conversation, you have experience with seven of those who talk about your perspective on that, and then Pulti, what, you know, for a DMG, you can do it,

“OD&I. One thing I said last week, and I think this is kind of true, still, is that I'm like,”

somewhat less worried about Pulti at OD&I than I would be at like CIA director, because you've got a smaller set of person. Now, that can do things at less than a DMI is a nonsense position to begin with. Well, I think you are both wrong in the assessment of where he can do more damage. Well, that's the question. I mean, DNI, he can't, you know, he, his ability to like task out people to seize that. It's not a primary danger, but it's about collecting information. No, it's not

about any of that. Let me preface this by saying I am one of the few people on Earth who might be a bigger cheerleader for 702 than Ben. I used it literally every single day, either as a primary investigator, or as a leader and manager during 16 years in the FBI. I think the arguments against it are species. I think the most well known predicts of 702, whether a very specific senator from the Pacific Northwest or a number of think tanks and advocacy groups rely more on insinuation and

bad faith than they do facts in their criticism. But if I were a democratic senator or a democratic house member, I would not hesitate to hold 702 hostage to ensure that bill polty does not get this position. And it's because ODNI gives him a unique ability to do damage to the fundamental fabric of our democracy in a way that even the director of the FBI or the director of central intelligence cannot. And that is, as the DNI, bill polty is going to have access to almost every agency's intelligence

and make it public. And you can do as much if not more damage to a person's reputation, selectively releasing true classified information than you almost can if you were releasing something that was made up out of whole cloth. And we see this in a number of arenas. We've seen it in the way Chuck Grassley has released random, not random, but isolated context-free documents from the investigations into Trump to make it seem as if it was a political conspiracy.

Bill Polty could choose to release an over here of an American talking to a foreign official in which the foreign official pitches the American, but then choose not to release the portions of the over here where the American turns them down. And I have zero doubt based on all the reasons

that Molly stated that he would hesitate to do that. The second reason he's unqualified,

apart from just being a vindictive person who would manipulate extent intelligence, let alone tasking other resources to gain in the future, is that he doesn't meet what the statute requires. Unlike the director of Central Intelligence, unlike Dernissa, unlike the director of the FBI, the statute which creates ODI and I requires explicitly that any nominee have extensive experience in the intelligence community. I don't think Bill Polty has ever stepped foot in an intelligence

community building. He is manifestly unqualified by the founding charter to sit in that office. There is no conceivable justification for confirming him to this rule. And Ben is 100% right. If we do not renew 702, Americans are going to die. I don't think it is hyperbolic to say that.

“I don't think it's exaggeration. I think it's a fact. But if we put somebody like Bill Polty”

in the role of D&I, it's not an exaggeration to say that democracy itself might die because he is going to manipulate intelligence, collection, and extant reporting to undermine free and fair elections. And it's as simple as that to me. Well, we will see where this conversation goes. S702 is set to expire the day. This podcast comes out. That's Friday, June 12th day, day later than usual. This week for the podcast. And we will see where the conversation around

Polty and some out to go from here. Before we do that, before we part, we have one more topic we want to get to. And that is the recent elections in Los Angeles as more related investigations that appear to be percolating. Molly, I want to come to you on this. We've seen this very contentious Los Angeles mayor's race. The city has a kind of open primary system where people

“from a variety of candidates come forward. I believe the top two go continue on the general election.”

We had three final candidates come in. We had Karen Bass, the incumbent. I think the plurality of the vote, close second as a woman whose name is escaping me at the moment, who is a second in the race, but also a Democrat kind of a progressive wing Democrat who kind of came to the race relatively late. And then third, we had Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star, somebody who president Trump had endorsed, who is Republican, has more conservative views,

whose house was burned down in the palace, hates fire, had been kind of organizing around that and building public platform around that to some extent, narrowly missed out on the primary. I think

they're all in the 20. I think Karen Bass may have had closer to 30 percent, but Pratt and the second

woman in the second place had in the mid 20s. So relatively competitive, for Pratt was a series candidate. I guess he did come in third of among the other candidates. But we are now have these allegations that the election appears or has caused some sort of irregularity. Part of this relate to California's regular election system, or not a regular election system, slow method of tabulating the final results. Some of it relates to how the associated press reported different

returns, at various points, causing certain jumps in certain numbers that are kind of part is in allocations. And it's public reporting of this. We've seen the U.S. attorney in California,

“Bill Isaley, who I think it actually was a career, is a career prosecutor, but nonetheless has been”

very lean forward in advancing parts of the Trump administration's agenda has come forward. I would say he's acting. I believe he's not actually the confirmed, or he's not even acting.

He's first assistant because he was an expertly appointed as a attorney.

Exactly. He's an office. I believe he was there before the Trump administration as well. It came out and said they have a number of active voter fraud investigations happening. Now that's different from saying the results were different. We don't know what exactly that

So talk to us about what we do know, what we don't know, what it seems to be saying,

“about what these different investigations were they're leading, and why it's a significant”

kind of story for us to talk about here. We're none of us living California or Los Angeles. And so we're good to remove from the direct election, but it has potential implications in other contexts. Yeah, sure. So you gave the basic outline, Spencer Pratt is famous from MTV's The Hills. He was sort of a villainous figure on there. And he was running for Los Angeles mayor,

Trump endorsed him. And ultimately, he didn't make it to the general election. The first two

candidates get to it had looked like he was ahead. And then it looked like he was falling behind and falling behind and ultimately he didn't make it. And so this is what prompted the allegations of fraud pretty typical in California that the votes can change because election day votes get counted first, then the male ballot votes get counted. California, let's anyone who wants to vote by a male ballot. So there are a lot of those, and they also lean democratic. So not that surprising

that this is what happened, but it prompted all these kind of conspiracy theories about fraud, the basis for which these initially was basically that there was one update that showed that bunch of new ballots had come in 24,000, I think. And there was not a single one for Spencer Pratt. And it turned out that was just a data lag. But conservative figures online seized on this and said, look, they're updating the votes. And as they update them, they're putting no votes in for Pratt.

And so it's fraud. And President Trump was one of the, well, he was the first to say that local

officials were cheating. He did that in this meet the press interview that he stormed out of. And then on his heels, Bill Salih, the first assistant, he was attorney said, yep, we have these multiple fraud investigations underway and give us some tips. So it is not clear that there are indeed fraud investigations underway. Salih is kind of walked this back a little in other interviews. It seems like nothing has formally been opened. They're asking for tips. They're looking around.

“He kind of said, you have to wait till we certify these. But more, more are going to come.”

You can be sure that we're going to get charges done eventually, which seems sort of just a satisfied Trump angle. There's not any there there, as far as the evidence shows. There's one individual. There's a past case of this woman who was paying people on Skid Row to go vote. But otherwise, there's nothing systemic. So there's no reason to believe this is real, but why be concerned about it? Well, because it's kind of an example of these various,

what I think is reasonable to view as trial balloons. Maybe some of them are literally end up being trial balloons. When it comes to claims of fraud in elections, you can tie it in with what's going on in Fulton County. You can tie it in with what they're looking into it. Wisconsin, Maricopa, there are just lots of places where the administration is pointing to. These other ones are in 2020. This is obviously now. But it's this idea of trying to

seed uncertainty in the elections. And the question is, what will that lead to around the midterms? What will it lead to around 2028? Will it just intimidate election officials? Will it make it so that if they're trying to delay certification of elections, then they can either actually seize ballots and break the chain of custody, making it necessary to run a new election in a contested district or can they just get a delay long enough? That's

sort of thing. So it's sort of the general idea of the administration experimenting with raising

“fraud claims of various sorts in relation to elections. So I think that that's the kind of broader”

picture here. Mike, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, you've been on the variety of investigations over your FBI career. There's obviously some shady languages, Haley's using regards to doing here, you know, maybe what he was talking about at the investigation says, well, we've had complaints and we're looking into it in Yadayada. How much shade, how much areas of gray is he capitalized on here and how much is he is he just lying and is either appropriate necessarily? I don't know that I have

a ton to add what Molly to what Molly just said except to say that nothing that he is doing is remotely

appropriate. In fact, it's just a seemingly unending parade of violations of DOJ policy. First of all,

DOJ with the public integrity section as the gatekeeper, which functionally no longer exists, is not supposed to by their own policies, open any investigations into electoral fraud

until the election is certified, you don't actually have a finished crime, so you should not be investigating something until you know how it's going to turn out, but apparently the U.S. Attorney's

Office for the Central District of California is willing to a lid that requirement. The second

violation, which is a rule now observed more in the breach is that if there is an ongoing investigation, you are not supposed to comment on it and that is what the U.S. Attorney here, regardless of whether he was a career official beforehand, is doing every time he talks about this and it's really difficult for me to disentangle this from what is a much larger conversation, which is the DOJ turning into an active underminer of the electoral process anytime the results disadvantage

the Republicans. And that gets back to what we were talking about earlier today, which is that we are getting to the point where people are not going to be able to trust DOJ's

pronouncements. And that is going to have effects that long outlast Todd Blanch's tenure if he's

confirmed and it's going to have effects that long outlast the aftershocks of the way California counts its votes, undermining that confidence in particular trying not to do so is exactly why these policies exist and they're just being ignored wholeheartedly. I also should have added that Israeli explicitly connected these investigations, these fraud claims with the need for a wide-scale

“audit of the California vote role. He was saying that's what he and Hermit Dylan have been trying to”

get done. That's separately in litigation. It's part of the administration's broader effort to get these voter roles and the sort of strategy that seems that's materializing there is get the voter roles

when there's a result you don't like. Well first of all you could conduct a purge of the voter

roles ahead of time, but also get the voter roles and there's a result you don't like try to compare who voted to the voter roles and say that there's illegal voters voting. And so again, I think that it's kind of all makes it clear that it's all tied together to the elections. And of course a certain fraud here when it comes to the litigation for the voter roles, the idea would be able to support the argument for we need these.

So before we move on, Ben, I want to get your sense on this from a particular perspective.

“There is a genuine complaint you'll have about the California tabulating system, right?”

Like this has been a recurring thing for years and years and years. It's slow to come in. As particular as susceptible to the types of claims that President Trump has made multiple time, which is that, well, when you see vote totals change suddenly in reporting, that's indicative of fraud. While in reality it's often indicative of the method of counting in the method of reporting, right? Because people count up a certain bundle. They send it in,

something they count up bundled. I vote some different bundles from different districts that different voting inclinations. People looked into this time and time again. They really haven't found it as being systematically a problem except in the optics element. How much do you think people or policymakers need to start responding to these optics elements, though? You know, there is this issue saying there's the defense and I think it's a totally valid

defense of a lot of efforts to crack down on voter fraud or quote unquote voter fraud, which may not be real is that there's no real evidence of actually being at a significant scale or significant problems. And, you know, the impact on the flip side is well, you make it harder for certain people to vote or various people to vote. You could say a similar thing here in California, like some of the slow process is there because they have a process that they think produces fairly

reliable results, right? It's slow, but you get to a place that's relatively stable at the end. More so than you might do in your faster. But is there something to be said about

“saying maybe you need to start shaping our literals to just not just the substance of voter”

fraud, but also these optics or perspective, the ability, the susceptibility they have to to these negative framings? Or is that, you know, kind of taking the bait too much, lending too much credibility to these species, as far as we can tell, critiques that have been brought them a regular feature of our elections? Yeah, so I would answer this question in a somewhat different presentation than the way you just organized it. If I were a voter in California,

I would find California's system absolutely outrageous and maddening. It takes weeks to get an answer to a question that, you know, Georgia and Florida get in a few hours. And it is not clear to me that

that you're getting a lot of bang in terms of voter access for your buck in terms of endless

“process. Other big states know how to get answers to election the same day or within 24 hours.”

And I would find it outrageous if I were a Californian or an Arizona by the way, Arizona has another one of these states. But I'm not. I'm a resident of the District of Columbia and, you know, I actually believe in federalism and different states can organize their election systems in different ways. And California owes me nothing as a non-resident who thinks they count their votes in ridiculous

ways. And, you know, maybe if I were going to move to California, I would say, no, I'm not going

to move there because, you know, they've count their votes in silly ways. But now Congress does have a role in establishing certain minimum standards. And so I suppose we could say as a society, hey, we want a general rule about these sorts of vote counting questions. I am frankly hesitant to do that

“because I think it imports the gamesmanship that people are playing in election counting controversies”

into an effort to make it harder to vote nationally. That said, I would rather do it as a national policy conversation than as a contest to individual election results every freaking time. So if you

have a policy objection to the way California counts its votes, the first question to ask is,

is it any fucking business of yours? And the second question, if you think the answer to that is, yes, is should be directed at Congress not at, if you're not a Californian at the question of who the mayor of Los Angeles should be under current rules? That's my instinct, but I really don't want to, to me, the fundamental issue is not the optics of fraud. The fundamental issue is the length of time that it requires to get an answer to the question of who won an election in California,

and I feel like I have an equity in that question only in presidential races, and actually it doesn't matter in California because California is so reliably democratic. It matters in Arizona. Well, with that, we are out of time for today's episode, but this would not be rational, it's great if we not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Mike Feinberg had a step away before we got to this episode, but he did submit his object lesson

remotely, which we'll cut to now. Today, I actually have an object lesson in progress. In one hand, I have a toy squid that sings in moves. And in the other hand, I have a stuffed animal kithulu. I plan to combine the two in the best style of Herbert West Reanimator into an animatronic HP Lovecraft themed stuffed animal toy for my child. So stay tuned as I progress on this project. Thanks, Mike. Ben, what did you bring for us this week?

I brought you Laugh Fair's newest public project, semi-public, which is a crazy little scheme that I have spent the last few months developing, which we call Ragtime. Ragtime was released this week in limited public beta, only for Laugh Fair material supporters. And so if you're not a Laugh

“Fair material supporter, first of all, shame on you, you should be. Go become one at once. And the”

moment you do become one, you will be eligible for Ragtime's limited beta release. And I know what you're asking yourself. You're asking yourself what is Ragtime. And all I'm going to say is it's super cool. It's the kind of thing you want to play with. And it can answer all your questions, including a question that it answered for Scott the other day, which is, "Are there any instances in the Eisenhower administration of the United States in diplomatic communications

might be limited in our ability to use or threaten military force?" We posed that question to Ragtime

“the other day and Scott, how did it do and get it getting us an answer? It was very good. I have”

to say this was the topic I looked into. I asked that question because I'd written a paper about this a couple years ago and knew at least some of the answers. And I was, I found a couple of additional instances that I wasn't fully aware of. So it's impressive. And I'm looking forward to playing with a little bit more. It really is still in beta. We're still working at the King's, but a pretty phenomenal product. So if you are a Patreon supporter of a material support, I should say, you know, check it out.

And if you're not, but come on and check it out. Exactly. Well, for my object lesson this week, I have, that'll be a culpa, exactly. But I have a confession for listeners. Long time listeners will know that I spent a lot of the warmer months grilling a lot of pizza. I have a whole method for grilling pizza involving sheets of iron and fire proof bricks that I built on top of my gas oven to simulate a pizza oven. It was pretty great. It worked really well. Particularly for New York

style pizza, which you want, like I know, the 500 degree, Mark 5 to 600. Something that was about as hot as I could get it, maybe a little north of 600. If I really preheated it. But I did that because I didn't want to spend all the money on one of those backyard pizza ovens. But I finally pulled the trigger and spent all the money on one of those backyard pizza ovens. I had to say it's

pretty amazing and awesome. So I got, after having a look in this for a while, the Gossney, one of

the Gossney models, which are these kind of beautiful little dome pizza domes, gas fired. You can get a wood fired iron with the gas fired ones. I have to say, it's kind of amazing. It is the only way after finding new enough research that you can really get like the kind of neopalton, like puffy dough. That's really what you're going for. Very hard to get on a sort of like not sub 800 degree temperature oven. And to get over 800, you really need something that's designed for it. It's kind

“of amazing. And I've been using it too cook all sorts of stuff. I think they've only opened my grill”

like twice so far this year because I've been using the pizza oven not just to grow pizza, but to make calzones and viral roasted vegetables and a bunch of other stuff. And it's kind of amazing. It's

because it can make bread into it. I haven't gotten quite around to that. And I will say they've got

a really cool like travel pizza oven, which now I kind of regret not buying. It could be cool to be able to take this on the road. Regardless, I thought it was cool enough to check, recommend it. It is a bit of investment. But if you really if I persuaded you through my years of advocacy to start making pizza more of a barbecue occasion, which I absolutely should be for more people, this is a great great compliment to that. If you really want to take an up and up notch. And how did it do when you asked

it about like an hour and a half of your education about more powers? Completely flamed it. It was brutal. But yeah, it's a fun summer toy. I will say it for anybody out there who's of the culinary inclination. Molly bring us home. What did you bring for us this week? Yeah, I have to say also I endorse both of your endorsements. Although I have an uni pizza oven. Uni also very nice. People like to do the wood pellet one or the gas one. Wood pellet. Well, we use wood chips. That's the uni

cow root 12 I believe. But yeah, we use wood chips for it. Works well. Haven't asked it about war powers. And Ragtime is great. So what I brought is really a proposed nothing. Though we were talking briefly before this about Graham Platner and the main election. And this is main related. So that's kind of why I brought it was just summer. This is a hyper realistic. Like you could call it a pillow. You could call it a toy. I'm not going to let the dog have it. I'm not going to let him have

this or grapes. But it's a mallard. And I think it's very carefully done to look like a this particular type of mallard. And the artist is a main artist. And I could not figure out what her name was. I think it might be Kathleen Bird. But I think that might just be that this is a bird and that Google got confused. But it is from a shop in Rockland, Maine called Archipelago. So if anybody goes to

“Mid Coast Maine this summer, which you should do. This is also an endorsement of going to Maine”

in the summer. You should check out Archipelago. For sure. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful suggestion. I love regional suggestions. It's good. It's summertime. It's a great time to see visit a Maine coastline check it out. By the way, asked about the Eisenhower administrations, war powers that duck said. That was a hyper realistic duck sound. That was well done. What folks, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. A rational security is of course a production

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was performed by CFE again and we were once again edited by the wonderful gen patcha path of my guess Mike Molly and Ben. I am Scott our Anders and we will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.