Mueller Warned Congress. Trump Celebrated His Death.

Welcome to another episode of The Oath and The Office.

“I am John Fugel, saying we've got a great wood plan for you today.”

The truth about Robert Mueller behind the Petulant Tant from Distractions. Ice is in our airports. Is this really about the midterms? Add big news out of Mississippi about the future of Voting by Mail. For more, let's go to the star of our show, the author of The Oath and The Office,

the pride of the Polyside Department at Brown University, Professor Cory Boom Boom Brechonider. Cory, welcome, it's good to see you, sir. Thanks, John. I appreciate the new nickname every week. I look forward to these introductions as ridiculous and wonderful.

As they are, we've also got a lot of stories to talk about and most important on that list.

I'd say, up front, is correcting the record on Robert Mueller, who's really been maligned and slammed and really the story of the truth of the matter and uncovering it is a key to uncovering and rescuing our democracy. Well, let's jump off on that point then, because this is a man who spent his life serving this country and then was insulted in death by a Petulant Shial to treats the Constitution

like something he gives a one-star yelp review to Robert Mueller was a decorated Marine, a purple heart recipient, a lifelong public servant, and Donald Trump responded to his death

“at age 81, you know, like a drunk guy getting kicked out of a casino, right?”

Like, "Uh, glad he's dead, you know, it's, it's vulgar, it's like the comment section come to life." And Professor, I have this crazy thing I do under Donald Trump's tenure. I pick three things every day that I'm allowed to get upset about and I wasn't about to let his insolence towards the late Mr. Mueller make me crazy.

But I want to do point out that I'm glad we're together this week because we need to stress that the Mueller report was not a hoax. It was 400 plus pages of Sir, you might want to sit down, 37 indictments, multiple convictions, seven guilty, please, and buried in there 10 counts of obstruction of justice. That's not fake news, core, I mean, that's like a punch card, right?

One more and he gets a free felony. And I want to get your thoughts on this Professor because you wrote extensively about Robert Mueller, including a great piece in the Guardian, did Trump obstruct justice. Congress must determine that. Far from exonerating him, Corey, this report showed 10 areas where he had broken the law

obstructed justice and it was up to the Congress to decide if they wanted to do anything about it. Let me begin from a constitutional perspective. What did Robert Mueller actually establish? I'll say to, I'll jump into that, of course, and then to the 10 counts of obstruction of

justice and what should have happened if our system was functioning the way the framers intended. But I do want to say, too, you know, that this was just such a decent person who really worked very hard.

“I think to honor his job as positions, both as director of the FBI and also most importantly,”

as special counsel, but it went tragically wrong, partly because I think he was too optimistic about the system. And in retrospect, I might say, too, that, you know, I was hopeful and maybe a little naive in thinking that this might this report and Trump himself thought it, too, might bring Trump to an end.

So let me get into it.

I mean, we'll talk about part 1, but part 2 of the report in some ways is the most important.

It outlines 10 instances where the president of the United States and various ways violated the law, tried to obstruct justice, and they include, for instance, an amazing story where he told Dom McGann his counsel to fire Mueller. And I, as I talk about in the presidents and the people, McGann reflected on this and knew a lot about the Nixon story that really we have to talk about the Sarianite massacre

that framed all this and decided he wasn't going to do it. He was convinced after thinking was about to resign, to just go back to work and turns out Trump never brought it up again, he just didn't do it. So that's just one of 10 instances they include the attempt to interfere with the Mueller investigation in various ways, including using Cori Lo and Dowski to try to do so.

They include, of course, the firing of James Colmy, a story that keeps going as he tries to exact his revenge for Colmy's really refusal to bury the investigations against them and his insistence on doing his job, very much in the tradition of Mueller himself. So why was there no indictment? That's the real story about Mueller and many of us were hopeful about it, especially when

when you read the evidence, the way Mueller put it was very convoluted, he said we have

But the report in its evidence shows guilt, that's what he's doing.

“So I think here's the bottom line, first of all, there was a department of justice policy”

at the time, not a law that prevented indictment of his sitting president and Mueller thought he was bound by that, I think he was wrong, he should have been more aggressive right there and could have indicted the president, but he believed he was bound by this policy. And most importantly, he was following the Watergate Playbook, which was that he thought he would hand over the report, especially these 10 instances of obstruction to Congress.

And that that would trigger, and this is my understanding, would trigger an impeachment. And the system would work the way it did during Watergate, and maybe even we wouldn't have to go through a full impeachment, we would have had the president resign having been accused of the crime. And Trump himself was clearly worried about that early on in the Mueller investigation.

This was the end of his presidency, worried aloud. But in the end, he survived it by just fighting, fighting, fighting, and partly frankly, I'll say one last thing, when Mueller had his moment to testify to Congress about the report, it was really weak, he was too careful, not drawing the conclusions that he should have been, and didn't really give the ammunition to Congress that he should have to push their

hand to impeach him. He was not, of course, impeached for this instance of obstruction of justice, although in that guardian piece, and you and I talked about this extensively, I was certainly pushing for that impeachment ons precisely these grounds. Yeah, so is I.

“I mean, and here's the thing, Donald Trump never actually refuted any of Mueller's evidence.”

He never said, I didn't do these specific things.

His defense was basically, you know, yeah, but can you prove it while I'm actively blocking you from proving it, right? Like he just deleted text and screamed no collusion a lot. The report did not exonerate him, and it failed to recommend a criminal indictment. Based on a longstanding department of justice policy against inditing a sitting president,

not based on Trump's actual guilt or innocence, and Corey, once again, that DOJ policy against inditing a sitting president is based on absolutely nothing in the Constitution, right? Constitution written by gentlemen who did not want to king anymore, did not want someone above the law.

And so that was the reason why Mueller didn't have an indictment. He wasn't allowed to. Yeah, those policies of the Department of Justice, to say the least irritate me, they are the bedrock in some ways of the court's eventual horrible decision, one of its worst ever finding that not just sitting presidents, but former presidents and their official

duties are presumptively immune. We could talk about the details, but it wasn't in many ways the predecessor, but it was a policy. And go figure, it was a policy designed by the Office of Legal Council on the Nixon and Clinton administrations in order to guard what essentially is the boss of the Office of

Legal Council, not really an independence. Sometimes referred to as kind of the internal Supreme Court within the executive branch, but it's no such thing. It's really has a history of defending the powers of presidents. So the fact that the Office of Legal Council had said this, you know, I think Mueller was

overly formalistic, overly deferential to that policy and might have tried to break with it, given how misguided it was. And think of the difference, you know, right now, all of this seems inevitable. We have the immunity case. We have Trump's reelection, but he was vulnerable at the time.

He was predicting his own end of his presidency. And if we would have seen a more aggressive Mueller, we might have been in a totally different world. He was a liberal Republican, and many liberal Republicans during Nixon turned on Nixon and provided enough pressure to cause him to resign.

I do want to say something about what's known as the road map, which is what Mueller had in mind. The road map is what Leon Jorsky, the special prosecutor during Nixon used to hand over all the information that the Grand jury and his investigation had found about Nixon's crimes, including eventually through litigation, they got U.S. versus Nixon, the so-called smoking

gun tape showing, you know, dead to rights that Nixon definitely had obstructed justice.

“And they handed that all over to Congress, and that's what led to the vote in the House”

Judiciary Committee by partisan vote for articles of impeachment, including for this tape and this obstruction around it. And that caused Nixon to resign. That's what Mueller had in mind. So it's not that he, you know, was misguided or didn't know history, it's that he was optimistic

about the way that our system was going to work, and now it turns out it doesn't work that way. Yeah, optimistic. Maybe the kind way of putting it. But I think you're right.

You know, Robert Mueller did bring in money laundering experts and then shows not to follow

the money, which was always to me the greatest tragedy in all of this.

Russia interfered in the 2016 election, it's not a legit, they did it. That is the unanimous conclusion of the entire U.S. intelligence community. The CIA, during Trump's own presidency, I mean, this is like O.J. agreeing with the glove, right? The Kremlin disrupted our election to help Trump become president, Russian intel services

viewed Trump campaign members as easily manipulated because by God they wanted to help. And the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report led by Marco Rubio confirmed that Russia interfered to help Trump. It's an amazing achievement of propaganda over facts that no collusion, which isn't

a crime and he was never accused of managed to dwarf the reality.

I mean, the bipartisan Senate intel committee report confirmed this.

“Why didn't that fundamentally reshape the public's understanding?”

Well, you know, in some ways, when we talk about the birth of the success of Trumpism, rather than its early iterations, the lying about what happened and the, you know, no collusion all these cliches that were so used to Trump repeating, you know, that it was a hoax in particular. I mean, it is true.

We've been talking about part two of the Mueller report, which outlined these 10 instances of obstruction of justice, which to my mind when you read them carefully, they clearly say Trump is guilty of a crime, the same crime that brought down Richard Nixon. Now we're going on to part one. And it is true.

I mean, you know, we can clarify this that he didn't conclude that a crime had been committed by Trump and his campaign, including with the Russian government. But he certainly did conclude that there was a massive operation to interfere with the election on the side of Trump. And when Trump says it's a Russia hoax, he denies that.

And Mueller's team, importantly, did indict the Russians that were never actually tried

because, you know, they're in Russia, but indicted Russians that were involved in this operation and he used that case to show us, in addition to the investigations that you were talking about, how extensive this interference with our elections was. Now, if we're going to talk about Trump's, you know, it's not that he colluded in the sense

“that many thought he might have, but he certainly, I think, was negligent or reckless and”

refusing to do anything about the Russian interference. And then to go even further, to deny that it even happened, you know, that itself, I think is arguably a dereliction of duty that might itself have justified its own impeachment article. You know, the 10 of instances of obstruction, I guess I was focused on that, but the more I think about it, you know, the lying and the ignorance and the refusal to, you know,

the president's oath to go to the name of our podcast is to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States, how are you doing that if you just ignore this level of foreign interference? Well, you and I talk about this a lot on serious like some at the time, to me, the fact that the Democrats, when it had an impeached Donald Trump a few months later for blackmailing

the president of Ukraine to cheat in the 2020 election, and they didn't bother to piggyback. These 12, these 10 gift wrapped cases of obstruction of justice shows to me the Democrats either didn't take it seriously or were embarrassed and wanted to put it behind them, but it was the Democratic Party that could have impeached Trump for this.

They impeached him anyway, and ultimately, that Congress is the ones who let him off.

Did Mueller's restraint, Corey, unintentionally enable all of these future abuses of power that we've seen, because boy, if he'd gone after the money laundering and if Democrats had gone ahead and impeached him for those 10, 10 counts, none of this would be happening right now. You know, unfortunately, my conclusion is that yes, that he had a, it was a moment where we could have stopped a lot of this as Trump himself acknowledged, and the most, you know,

apart from the report itself, and let's not forget, too, that Attorney General Barr was, you know, on television claiming that it exonerated Trump, and he did that, he basically stole all the power of the part two of the report showing these instances of obstruction of justice by lying, claiming the opposite of what it said, that somehow there was an exoneration. So that was mistake one, and Mueller did try to, you know, put out public statements to push back,

“but it wasn't effective. His real moment, I think, where he could have pushed for impeachment,”

he could have been clear about why these, why obstruction is so bad for one thing that might sound like a minor crime. I mean, think about it. He's really trying to place himself above the law, by, by firing, by obstructing the actual investigation of what happened, including the credible investigation of Rutgers interference with the election. That's all, he could have sat when he was testifying before Congress about the report before the impeachment.

He could have brought that out clearly. Now, I don't know if it was that he was already sick,

performance when he did that. So as much as I'm trying to praise his intent,

I can't help but recognize that it was such a major moment. If we would have had somebody like Jack Smith, for instance, I think we might have had a different history. It was a lost opportunity, and then the Democratic Party, as much as you and I and others, did push to expand that impeachment inquiry beyond the, you know, it was, I think, an impeachable offense, the Ukrainian phone call, trying to pressure the president of the Ukraine into giving him dirt on his opponent Joe Biden, and not even

“giving dirt lying about it lying, announcing a fake investigation on American TV. That's what”

that impeachment was about. It was crackers. But again, I guess the villains are the American public as well then, because what you're saying, and I agree with you, Mueller's testimony that was considered so disparating, just kind of show that for the American zeitgeist, it really is the TV age, because the performance didn't matter as much as the facts. Oh, I don't really care what he's saying. He looks tired, and Donald Trump read with that, and that stupidity was enough

to let this fell and get away with it. Yeah, and I do think that's part of what was understood by the Watergate Committee and was understood during that moment. You know, people were glued to their television, as you heard the president's aid, but butterfield said that there were tapes of all of this investigation. And as we began to learn, what was on those tapes, John Dean's

testimony about the details of the cover-up and the crimes of Watergate, which never really

were fully elaborated. There was a focus only on the break-in and the cover-up, not the other vast crimes that I detail in the presidents and the people, including the attempt to attack, even incapacitate Daniel Ellsberg on the capital steps, the attempt to blow up the Brookings Institution to get information showing that the president might be guilty of treason. You know, we could keep going, the breaking at the psychiatrist office of Daniel Ellsberg.

“We didn't even get to all that. We just got to one thing, and maybe that's what was in the head”

of the committee during the Trump impeachment showing the obstruction. But that was enough. But it was dramatic, and it was dramatic in a way that certainly Mueller's testimony was not

and certainly the impeachment itself. So when we look back, you know, it's not just could

a shoulda, it's that we're trying to understand how the system was supposed to work and, you know, eventually, when we get to the point after the midterms where we're talking about impeachment again, I think we will be there. We've got to do it in a way that is effective. And yes, television matters, audience matters. Yeah, let me move on to a less obvious, but no less the various example of corruption. This week, Donald Trump is deliberately extending the security line chaos at our airports

by holding TSA funding hostage to really the passage of the SAVAC, which we've discussed extensively, and it's designed to make it harder for people to vote, especially women. Now, John Fue and the Democrats bought Trump a deal over the weekend where they were just carve out ice, until they could come to terms on the funding for ice. And Trump has said he'll sign no legislation, including TSA funding until the SAVAC is passed. So he's intentionally extending the

unfunded operations of TSA. Trump has effectively taken America's air travelers hostage for his voter suppression bill. There was a deal by partisan Republicans and Democrats were both saying, hey, let's pay TSA workers and stop the meltdown. But Trump wants leverage. He wants the chaos. He's holding a paychecks hostage to force through this voter restriction bill. It's sort of like more mafia techniques. Nice airport. You got, be a shave at the security line. Got it,

auger. And now it's not bad enough. I just flew yesterday. The long lines and people furious in the airport and the family's stranded. But he's figured out the way to get around this. And it's also involves cheating in the upcoming election installing ice agents, untrained ice agents who are paid in our airports to ostensibly do the work for TSA agents who are not being paid. So we're now seeing immigration enforcement guys being deployed into airport security environments during

a staged DHS funding crisis. Corey, I don't even understand what I just said. It's very complicated.

“But from a constitutional standpoint, what kind of red flags professor does this race for you?”

Anything involving ice is a red flag. As the reports come out about their training, which is either non-existent or exists online. I mean, can you imagine having a national force like this? It's supposed to be focused on immigration. But of course, it's functioning as a kind of national stormtrooper force for the president of the United States with no training, no regard for civil liberties. We saw them deployed in cities. There's arguably some successful pushback in

Minnesota. But now they're being found out instead of into our cities into our airport, which really

I'd put the ability to move around the country itself at will without fear of our civil liberties being violated. Now the intimidation that exists just seeing ice in the airport given their record really is I think sending a kind of chilling effect on Americans. And the fact that he's using this kind of fear as leverage to try to get his so-called "save act" through just shows you how maniacal this is. This is somebody who is really trying to govern as a dictator. He's both trying

to subtly steal our elections by using this fake "save act." And of course, we talked in an amazing

discussion with Stacey Abrams and such depth about how the "save act" works, why it looks like a voter ID act and it's anything but it's an attempt to try to deprive those who have the right to vote from voting by specifying specific forms of ID that many Americans don't have. And then in the one-two punch, this force that he's brought out. One of the things talking about the first term is it was often said, "Well, he doesn't have anything like the Nazi storm troopers," the so-called

SA who were intimidating individuals in the streets. And now he does. It's called ICE. And we've seen them murder two people in Minnesota. And now that same force that has scared many Americans

frankly, as much as we have some standing up to them. Many are scared. And here they are in our

airports interfering with our fundamental liberties, including the right to travel. Yeah. And again, ICE and TSA have very different jobs and very different missions. And this is happening again because the Republican Party refuses to make ICE follow the law. Three big things, Corey. Democrats want there to be warrants. You can't break into someone's house or business or car and drag them out by the hair without a warrant. Also, they should

“show their faces. Your law enforcement, you should be working above the law, show your”

damn face and three. You should wear body cameras. So we know that you're not committing human rights

abuses. I mean, this is this party by whole life. It's about law and order. And they don't want

law enforcement to follow the law or have any order or be identifiable. It is a lot like Germany in the 30s with a secret police. But again, a lot of people are saying, including me, this is about conditioning the public to accept a more expansive federal law enforcement presence in every day spaces because then we can send ICE to the polling places. Steve Bannon just blurred it out on his show like he's the villain at the end of Scooby-Doo episode. He said, this is a test run for elections.

Corey, is that alarmist thinking or is that really historically grounded, especially since Steve Bannon is saying the quiet part out loud? Yeah, I mean, he often does tell you what's going on. And he wants the most Steve Bannon wants the most extreme version of fascism and Trump, you know, it's not immune to that. That's often revealing what's really going on, even if they're

“saying, oh, this is just an innocuous attempt to help out. TSA, I don't think that's what's going on.”

I mean, I think it's helpful here to return to the purpose of ICE, you know, ICE's statutory purpose and Homeland Security's purpose is immigration enforcement. But when you see what they're actually doing in Minnesota and other cities, it's shutting down descent, going after protesters. I watched one video with an ICE agent. You know, of course there are citizens who are trying to hold ICE to account by taking pictures of them and they're doing that in airports or they were

doing that in Minnesota. And, you know, one of the ICE agents says in one of these clips to a woman who's filming them, you know, congratulations. You're now on the domestic terrorism list. We have a database. You know, that's just one piece of what's going on here, which is the deployment of what's supposed to be a immigration enforcement agency building it up and they have vastly expanded its budget, despite the current battles, Democrats did allow this to happen. And what's happening is

“the shutdown of our civil liberties. That's what this stormtrooper force is turning into.”

So the idea that they would be deployed to polling sites in order to, again, you know, you don't need 100% of people to be intimidated. You just need to sliver of them. And as you start to build up things like the requirement of these IDs that many Americans don't have. And you built and you see too this possible deployment of ICE at polling places. You start to see what's going on, which is the attempt to really shut down our democracy. Absolutely. I mean, when you look at

what's happening now in the mislights and the long lines and people upset and screaming, it's, it's not incompetence. It seems like it's part of the plan. Chaos is the product. This is the point. It's not happening by accident. Chaos is the strategy. This is the environment where power grabs start to feel normal. So before we hit the brake professor, I mean, if similar

or could come into play? You know, I think I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. I'll say a

“couple of things. One is that what I think is successful in Minnesota is the general ID and I try to”

outline this and broad principle, but there's a lawsuit that does this. That talks about the 10th Amendment and the idea that in our constitution, we don't just have a federal unitary state. We have the role of states and in particular law enforcement is supposed to be the role of states. And so when I start to acting like a federal police force, that's a real problem. I've been urging and I've spoken actually to attorney general, so there's one actually I'm going to try to get

onto the show to talk about this. That if ICE commits crimes as certainly looks like they have in Minnesota, that it is the job. It is the duty of attorney general or local prosecutors to bring criminal charges against ICE. We haven't seen that yet, but they are on the impression that they have absolute immunity, JD events lied and claimed that they do not. So we need to see that kind of local law enforcement. Now, when we start to get into the domain of airports, it's a closed

“environment. They have more control. And so how the litigation is going to work, I think, is going to”

be more complicated. We still do have First Amendment rights that can't just be shut down.

We're going to talk later on about a case in which it looks like our First Amendment rights were vindicated that might be one way, but the ACLU, our sponsor and other groups are I'm sure in going to be in the process soon and trying to figure out how to defend our civil liberties, not just in our cities, but in our airports. When we come back, the Supreme Court and the Mississippi ballot case that could affect how all of us vote by mail were don't get to vote by mail.

This is the oath in the office. This episode is sponsored by the ACLU. On April 1st, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Trump versus Barbara. The ACLU's case challenging President Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship. The ACLU and partners will argue that the President's executive order violates the Constitution over a century of Supreme Court precedent and a long standing federal statute. The 14th Amendment speaks for itself. The Constitution not the president

defines who is the citizen. The ACLU is proud to defend the integrity of our Constitution and protect birthright citizenship for every generation to come. Learn more at ACLU.org/barbra. You can also find the link in our episode description. There is a lot. I mean a lot going on in the news around our government and our laws and there's one question we hear all the time.

“Is this constitutional? If you don't remember all the civics classes you may have taken in school,”

you can get the answer to that question and many others by listening to civics 101. The claim podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. Civics 101 is an entertaining way to learn about how our government works or at least how it's supposed to work and you'll hear a lot of surprising stories along the way. Hosted by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capoteche, civics 101 will help you understand a bit more about what's going on and maybe even make you a smarter citizen.

You can listen to civics 101 wherever you get your podcasts and tell them the oath and the office sent you. Welcome back to the oath and the office. I'm John Figuelsing. Hey, Professor Brechidider. This is the part of the show where we tell people they should subscribe. Right? Absolutely. You don't want to just get all this sexy one time. Come on now.

You want to have this every week in your inbox. Join us every week. We have amazing

guests. We have of course at CC Abrams. We have amazing guests coming up too. So hit that subscribe button if you haven't and join us every week. So let me ask you about the Supreme Court because we haven't screamed about them all day. This case out of Mississippi could restrict counting mail-in ballots received after election day even if they're postmarked on time. You mail your ballot on time, but let's just say for whatever reason Louie enjoys postal service is a bit slower

in certain zip codes and it's received after the polling date. Constitutually, what's its stake here? This seems really crazy and Salamolito seems really excited about this story and anytime Salamolito gets really excited. The Constitution gets nervous. I listened to the oral argument in this Mississippi case, which is Mississippi has a sensible law. Let's remember two, Mississippi is a Republican state and despite that, they have a sensible law about voting rights

and voting access that says, "Look, if you as long as you get your ballot in the mail by election day, it arrives after election day. We're not going to disenfranchise you. We're still going to count it. Now that's very sensible." That of course the Trump and his allies have figured out

safe act and we talked about the possibility of voter intimidation at the polls, they designed

“the lawsuit to try to stop that. Now what's incredible to me is that it's not only gotten to the”

Supreme Court, but when I listen to the oral argument, the justice is seem taken with the arguments arguing that it's somehow invalid to count these ballots after election day. I'll give you their argument, their argument is that there is a 19th century law that mandates one election day and that somehow it's too impractical, I guess, as their argument, to allow for the ballots to be counted after and I'll just give you some of the examples, John, and you can respond to them. I don't think

you need a lot of really respond to these arguments at all. They're so silly. One is that what would if I give it to my brother and I say that I were relative and I say that that I cast my ballot

isn't that enough to cheat and they're basically giving voice to the idea that the false idea

that hasn't been proven at all that this technique is being used to somehow obscure the rules of elections. Now the solicitor general from Mississippi had a pretty good response to that which is there's a postmark on your mail-in ballot and so you've given it to and this has been done also by the way for about a century that you've been able to vote by election day and it's still count after. So all these arguments, I just it's either so naive to think that what's going on here

is not about politics or more likely certainly for some of these justices it's obviously

“that they're taking the side of the president in a crucial matter in which they should not be.”

You know why election day is the first Tuesday of November? Do you know why it's on that

day? Cory historically because 200 years ago the expectation in the agrarian economy was going to be that you were working on getting ready for the harvest for winter all through the fall and then by the end of October okay you'd have to be able to go to church on Sunday once you were done planting your seeds and getting ready and then after you go to church on Sunday they would give you one full day to travel by horse to a polling place and that would be Tuesday that is why

our election day in this century with electric heaters and alarm clocks our election day like daylight savings time we're still being controlled by a farm economy of 200 years ago and our leaders know this and people who don't want greater participation in democracy don't want election day to be a holiday.

“They don't want mail-in voting they don't want it to be easier to exercise your right that's why”

we're seeing women are going to have to have safe act passes bring a birth certificate showing their name before they got married it's all anti-democracy so if the court rules that ballots arriving after election day can't be counted even though they're real voters and they really voted and they mailed it on time but it came late for whatever reason I mean what effect is that going to have on voter participation is this just going to create like a patchwork system where the right

to vote essentially depends on your geography and at how fast the post offices in your part of the country yeah that is actually what will happen you know John Trump has uttered the phrase that he wants to nationalize our elections and there he is succeeding in trying to do that nationalizing meaning nationalize and suppress the vote uh at the national level and not deferring to local governments different ways of doing it including Mississippi which sensibly

says yes your ballot can arrive after election day and they're doing it in different ways we can list them one is a safe act which we talked about with states these year rooms extensively last week I recommend going and listening to that conversation if you haven't heard it

and we talked about the possibility of deployment of ice at polls and now here's a third

that's being done through litigation and with the aid of the Supreme Court unfortunately it looks like possibly in shutting down democracy I should say we don't know for sure how they're going to rule and they were certainly sympathetic and they're using this obscure 19th century law to offer a brand new interpretation as they have so often in Trump's favor think of the immunity case think of the getting rid of the ability of district courts in the federal system to have

universal injunctions just coincidentally at the birthright citizenship case was the moment favoring Trump's attempt to shut down the constitution and now here they're going to do it again possibly in saying that we have to all of a sudden up overturn years and years of allowing ballots to be counted after election day to all of a sudden enforce this unique reading that is the original meaning of this 19th century statute and you know it's demoralizing frankly teaching

this and it just like come on I mean the idea to show politics it's never been conservative versus

“liberal I say this whole a time professor it's always been aristocracy versus democracy”

these right wingers run a good game of saying oh we oppose government got a love government governments how they give their owners tax cuts and deregulate their pollution they hate democracy they hate one person one vote they hate the thought of the rabble actually having a saying how these funds were administered so let me ask you about another part of this broader pattern of hostility towards the free press the federal judge just ruled at the Pentagon under secretary

of yager myster ptex up they violated the first amendment by restricting press access we've heard a lot about this including outlets like the New York Times for whatever reason oh you don't want to call it the Gulf of America well then you can't come into the briefing room make room for you you know the my pillow guys news network I wish I was exaggerating that's literally what's going on right now Corey what is the core constitutional issue in this decision that the Pentagon

violated the bill of rights by not letting press in oh it is a great opinion I read it this morning and what the judge says is that this is about nothing less than the right of a free press to operate and what happened here was I mean the details are really kind of stunning it's not just that he's trying to control the press room uh ptex at and and trump but they they really were trying to get the New York Times and other outlets and New York Times that sued uh and had the resources

to do so and often has vindicated press freedom in the past uh what what what what they're trying to get the times to agree to is to not investigate stories that haven't been disclosed by the Pentagon think about that it's in other words try to get them to agree to no longer do reporting

“to do news that's what newspapers do they uncover stories that good people empower that government”

doesn't want us to see and so trading access to the briefing room in exchange for that this judge said absolutely not that you can't you know that it's true that there don't have to be briefings we don't have to open up at all a room in the Pentagon to to press reporters but once you do the idea of the opinion is you can't then pick and choose based on viewpoint or based on opinion and that's what's going on here and so the judge says uh it's unreasonable to violation of the

first amendment to to discriminate against the New York Times because there are opinions and really what I think the most powerful part of the opinion is because they're doing the job of the press the very thing that's protected in the first amendment it's a great opinion and you know as much as we're you know three quarters focused on the threat to our democracy the self-coo that's been unfolding that we've been talking about since Trump took office and we began the podcast we're

always looking for moments of hope where the constitution is reclaimed and yeah this is one of them

I mean anything that just shines a light on the thin skinned unmannedliness a p-tags at this okay

“in my book I mean I think back to the Bush administration in the Iraq War I mean the government often”

uses national security as an excuse when they want to limit press access but I mean where does the court usually draw the line on this and and and droolings like this actually deter future violations or is this too little too late no I think this is a it's a powerful you know we talked about mullers week testimony for instance in the weakness of the report this is anything but it really is a clear slamming of the Pentagon there already and retreat talking about

I think at one point they wanted a chance to rewrite the rules he just said no it is judge

and really slammed this way of doing and it's a clear vindication of the first amendment

we'll see they could try to appeal but I just think that the facts are so damning in the revealing that this was a blatant attempt to shut down report it to shut down the press and that they're going to be too embarrassed to come back sometime shining a light on authoritarianism at least backs it off and and that's my prediction of what's going on here okay I have many more questions about all of this and and tying this together what we come back I want to ask you a few

big picture questions professor and I want to share with you an email from a terrified listener in the UK who is mortified that somehow Donald Trump is going to turn this into a third term I'm not that scared about it but let's let's come for the British when we return this is the oath in the office hey it's Corey if you're like me you may need to take a break from the 24 hour news cycle to recharge and renew your mind which is why I recommend listening to how to with Mike

Peska the longstanding advice show an ambie nominated best personal growth podcast back for a new

I'm a fan of Mike and you might recognize him from being a recent guest on the oath in the office

“or from his award-winning reporting or from his role as host of the longest running daily news podcast”

the just each episode of how to follow security of a listener invited guest to tackle a real problem with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about think of it as ease dropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence you've got questions they find the answers follow how to with Mike Peska on apple podcasts Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell them I send you

welcome back to the oath in the office I'm John Figuelsign professor brush writer when you step back and look at all of this that we've been discussing the the courts the executive

power the presidential secret police of the airport selection rules the press freedom

are these all isolated stories or is this all of it part in a very coherent shift on how power is being exercised now well you know I've been saying this from the beginning and I wish I was exaggerating but I think it just turns out to be more true that the real

“mega story here there were meta story if you want to call it of all of these pieces how they fit”

together is that this president is really intent on destroying the checks and balances that define the rule of law and our democracy and we began by talking about mower and the way that he was exposing the you know these 10 crimes really of the president and trying to communicate in a subtle way that this was a authoritarian threat and and think about it you know the the way that those crimes unfolded they really showed a disrespect for the idea that there were any constraints on

the president and he's gotten so much worse but that was really the warning sign I come back often to Patrick Henry the anti-federalist warning you'll see me I'm if you want to tune in I just did an interview about Patrick Henry and the authoritarian threat from the founding on for a PPS news hour and and just to to sum up what he said he said look the the way that this system's weakness will be exposed is that when you get a president who's not just a bad president but a criminal

president they'll begin by testing the system with small crimes now these weren't small crimes the destruction of justice but relative to a lot of what's going on now for instance January 6 and the stealing of the election they were and Patrick Henry's warning is that president when he sees there are real checks on power and Henry unfortunately predicted correctly that impeachment is not going to be the real check that framers like Madison and Hamilton think it's going to be

they're going to get more bold and bold and bold and I'll just remind you of what Henry says until they make one bold push for the American throne in other words try to collapse the system and become a dictator that is what we've been talking about the ways that trumpets you're surping the system into pure authoritarianism and is he losing well each week we charted there's some wins some losses on the side of authoritarianism and some against it on the side of

“democracy and and that's that's I think what brings all of these stories together and sometimes”

they're happening in obvious ways like these crimes and sometimes more subtle ways for instance the supreme court undoing the right to vote in this case DC Abrams talking about the details of how the save act works and you know it's not obvious to those who aren't following this closely that this so-called voter ID laws actually a voter suppression law and so yes that's the theme here is is the authoritarian threat to our democracy so I want to read a letter we got from

a listener in the UK this is from vanity and she writes the 20 second amendment to the US

constitution ratified in 1951 defines the number of terms a person can be president it officially limits an individual to being elected president no more than twice and then vanity writes in all caps is there any way in trumpson holy leadership that trump can defy this amendment and get a third term and then she concludes I know I have a simple mind compared to professor Corey but I want to know Donald Trump sure seems to think he can get around this guardrail as well Corey I don't think

the 22nd amendment is keeping you awake at night I don't know that he's determined to get this third term but I will say that there's so many instances where I would have been tempted several years ago or even during the first term to say no way you know and this is certainly one of them I think it's very clear you can't you can't have three terms as president but are there ways around it you know one thing that they've toyed with is the idea that he would run his JD events as vice president

and then JD events would resign with that work possibly the president hasn't shown an interest in it but here's the sad fact that things that we thought were bedrock no longer are and if you're

he's still in good health really everything is on the table and that is frightening not necessarily

because I think he would do it through the rule of law although courts have surprised us before and the immunity case coming out of nowhere is there some magical argument like what they've come up within birthright citizenship which we'll talk about next week you know something that I think is just

crude and and wildly out there to justify this maybe I just can't say no and then let's not also

“forget the possibility that really he succeeds in crushing our democracy that's why the jury is”

still out on whether or not we're going to be in a democracy when we get to this next moment and really the answer isn't dependent on what the text of the Constitution or an amendment says or even

what the court says it's dependent on us on whether or not we succeed in defending our democracy.

Well your answer was a lot smarter than mine Corey I was just going to tell her God's in charge and Trump's arteries are going to do what God wants Trump's arteries to do but I'm sure he'll look really healthy three years for me professor thank you so much for everything

“what what is the best way for our listeners to keep up with you and your brilliance the other”

six days of the week well we love these questions we can't respond to all of them but we'll respond to some you could write to me at Corey dot breadchider at gmail dot com i'm reading these emails and taking questions and getting comments let's subscribe of course to the oath in the office podcast you also can watch on youtube and subscribe there there's an oath in the office sub-stack and you can

“find me also on blue sky at the democracy prof my name on john figels saying i host the evening”

programming prime time on serious sex and progress channel 127 we're also a free podcast called the john figels saying podcast then my book is called separation of church and hate professor brechonider thank you every week i come here with snarky questions to cover up my cowering fear and every week you talk me off a ledge with your constitutional Jedi skills thank you for what you do i want to thank bear wolf and uh Wendy and everyone helps put the show together and thank most of all you guys

for listening and subscribing please keep on tuning in share these episodes and tell your friends about the oath and the office peace