INSIDE THE DOJ: Why Bondi Isn’t Testifying — And Why It Matters

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We're so happy to have you online with us Scott. You are new. This is a nice tree, I'm really glad you asked. Yeah, you're new in the indie reporter world. How's it going for you coming from a CBS news?

This could not be more different.

“If somebody was trying to find the polar opposite of something,”

I would point to this moment of my life where you're no longer working for a legacy network news organization, you're working for your freaking self. And that's just different after 25 years of working for someone. It's lived. Yeah.

Braiding, it's just stressful.

Yeah, it's always stressful in the beginning.

I mean, I sort of eased into this, I wasn't like thrown in the same way because I had already done podcasting and newsletters and through puck and before that political and I done a few years at ABC News, but I just find that work news just to be like really stifling in general, the bureaucracy, the layers, like if Scott McFarlane reports wants to go live with the report, all I has to do is hit a button and that's it, you're there.

And I can speak directly to people without going through all the filters through all the steps and for better or for worse, when you're doing network news, you're competing with your colleagues, which is a weird dynamic, but you're competing with dozens of other people with really

“important news and there's only a 20 minute broadcast of news at night.”

So sometimes you've got big news and you don't get the tell anybody about it. That's that's just an agronistic to what you and I are about, which is you have news. Get it out there as immediately it is declaratively as you can. Right, exactly. Yeah, this is a, it's great. I love it. For me, it's like a perfect,

it's a perfect medium. It was always felt like more authentic to me and my voice because I was never

really good at the, "Hi, I'm Tara Palmeri," reporting from the White House, turns out I can't really talk like a man that well. But that's, I digress for another take. I do want to talk to you though because you have such a history and covering the Justice Department, which is so important right now when we have like one of the shadyist justice departments of all time, which is really saying something because the Justice Department has always been historically, really shady and never

you know, transparent ever. But you know, Pam Bondi sacked as we know last week and now she will not appear for her deposition on April 14 next week. Isn't that kind of convenient? What do you make of it on Scott? In prior administrations, the Department of Justice at least tried to give the appearance of independence that they were not politically tethered to the administration that appointed them at least tried to give that image. Whether it was true or not, it's probably

debatable, but they communicated in independence in a non-political view of how you provide law and order in America. This is a little different. The acting U.S. Attorney General this week said I love you to the president on national television. That's not going to help restore or project an image of independence. That's going to communicate, I don't know, something else. And all of that is just fueling this problem they have with it appearance that they're covering up the Epstein files on behalf

of President Trump. Whether they are being as transparent as they can be is debatable. But if you're going to say I love you President Trump and do all the other demonstrative things to show you are politically tethered to the president. You'll lose that that image of independence that has been prize for generations and you also tie yourself to the Epstein files crisis. Now Todd Blanche owns it like Pambody is owned it like President Trump owns it and you talked to the survivors. You know

their thoughts on this. They think it's been dismantled from the job. Oh, Prince in 1996 and it has been and yeah, I totally agree with you and this is a apprentice, you know, Attorney General, which is really apprentice personal attorney to the president. You know, that's essentially what this has become. This is a beauty pageant for to be the president's lawyer, not to be a lawyer for every single one of us, which is essentially what the department does to supposed to be. It's supposed

And yeah, it has just become so far a field from what it was supposed to be. Remember a little

“Jeff Sessions and how he was completely, uh, excorcerated before the the Mueller investigation”

for letting a special counsel get involved. Like obviously in the Epstein case there should have been a special counsel involved. There there there there needed to be separation even more so than the Attorney General between the president and the Attorney General. And in this case, got Todd Blanche feeding Glenn Maxwell softballs to try to clear the president's name. So let's play this out. What are the consequences of that? What are the consequences of what you just described? Well,

there's going to be a political consequence to this. Maybe maybe people can campaign against the

Republicans using that as a tool. But that's that's not the real consequence. The real consequence is what happens when the Department of Justice deploys FBI agents and deploys US attorneys, prosecutors to go try to arrest and convict child pornographers, gun runners, terrorists. They have lost at least they risk losing credibility with jurors with judges. If they're viewed as a political arm, that's the same agency that's got to go into courtrooms and put bad guys behind bars.

And we've already seen some indication, grandures and trial jurors are sus about this Department

of Justice. They are rejecting cases at a clip we've never seen before because they're viewing

the cases as flimsy or potentially political. That's going to impact real cases where the administration has got real bad guys, apolitical problems, they've already sewn that distrust there. Yeah, so jurors are going to be like really you're telling me not to be political right now. This is my only chance at actually having an impact in democracy. They probably feel like and I'm going to use this position in a jury to try to change government the way that I want to.

You're right, it's really corrupting from the bottom up, from the top down, it's every face. And so many great people that we're working, civil servants, have worked in justice for so long and resigned because they're just, they don't want to work for cash, but don't want to work for Pam Monde. I just wonder when will we get the full FC files? Will it be a whistleblower inside

“the DOJ or are they just too terrified to come out with that?”

I'm bearish on the idea of a whistleblower presenting the papers and showing the world because there's so much risk to that to people who shouldn't be endangered. We've already seen Tara and you've done a great job reporting. The survivors have been exposed. Survivors who didn't want their names out there have had their names been out there because of mistaken releases of files by the administration. A whistleblower throwing more paper out there is going out and identify a survivor who

does not want to be publicly identified. What's more, a lot of those survivors are getting menaced in threats when their names are publicly available by by that subset of Americans who are truly, truly animals who will just menace and threaten anybody who upends Trump's political agenda. But I also think seasons do change here. And with Democrats get control of the U.S. House eventually, if not in 2027, they may pretty clear. They're going to call on all these people to

come back before their committees. They're going to hit them with questions. They maybe we have more leverage to un-earth more these files even during the Trump administration.

“Here's the thing I don't understand about James Comer. I mean, he is the chairman of the”

House Oversight Committee, right? And he doesn't really think it matters that if Pam Bondy comes back and and testifies. He's just like, you know, do we really need her? He didn't vote to subpoena her. He doesn't think it's necessary. He's talking up Republicans about next steps. But there is, you know, obviously Tom Massey, who's a Republican from Kentucky, he wants, you know, he wants to honor the subpoena. That's what he said. But it's just going to be another

fight, like we've seen before, to try to get, to get her to come before the committee. I would characterize the Republican Oversight Committee response as equivocating. It's hardly

with her not showing it all. I mean, they do want to respect the, the authority of their committee.

And they have made the Epstein files on priority in a bipartisan way on the Oversight Committee. So I'm not sure where they land on that yet. But the coalition politically on the Epstein vials has been this unique unicorn of a coalition where you do have Republicans joining Democrats pressing back against the administration. I mean, but about that remarkable near unanimous vote to require the transparency act, to require their release. That's the one real strong push back

the president's gotten from his own party. I don't rule out Republicans getting on board. Some type of train going down the tracks to try to press Pam Bondy to get back in the room.

“Yeah, I think we need it. So I think we need to bring in Epstein's lawyers back into the room”

too after the waffling on whether they, you know, had to, had to do a settlement with a victim

in connection to President Trump. We never really got down to the bottom of that, right?

No, I agree. And somebody's going to have to answer the question eventually. Why the hell did go in Maxwell get transferred? It has been not given a public answer to that. The Bureau of Prisons is not given a declarative public answer on that. And members of both parties still are dissatisfied with what they've gotten. Yeah, so I, okay, we're going to go into the war because I feel like everybody is obviously, you know, that's, that's the big thing right now.

But I got it. I saw something yesterday on my ex account and I actually thought it was a parody and it was RFK Jr with his own podcast. Like what it's, first of all, like, does anyone want to

“listen to that voice? That voice is horrific. Second of all, I mean, the kind of destruction that”

he has done to our health system in such a short period of time is kind of incredible. I mean,

the case is right now of measles is skyrocketing as he's changed the vaccine schedule. So doubt in just being, you know, our entire vaccination program, um, I mean, what did you think when you saw this guy is going to get an even bigger platform? Well, first of all, let's take a look at the image you have there on the screen. That's quite something. First of all, doing a podcast is easy doing a second, third and fourth podcast is hard, continuing and getting

the regimen in the volume. It's a real work. It's real work. And one would think he'd be busy as it is. Right. He's been a uniquely polarizing figure for a health secretary. That's not lost on anybody, likely by design. But he has the ability to impact such brick and mortar retail things

“about people's lives. If they're not campaigning against that, from the Democratic campaign arms”

in Congress, maybe a missed opportunity. Because this stuff that you really can easily talk to voters about and they'll get to understand what it means if their kids are less healthy, if their, if their medicines or foods are more questionable. And if we're still, we're still going back and forth on on the damn COVID vaccine. And it looks like the administration still trying to press an argument with that. This is all tinder for a fire during the midterm elections. And if they

don't take this opportunity that may be viewed by some of the party, according to my reporting, as a missed opportunity. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I've taken the COVID vaccine a few times. I stopped taking it. I have my own reasons. I just don't, I feel like I'm a young, healthy person. I'll be okay. But measles spreads really quickly. And there are pockets, even like, they're all over the country in Texas, particularly, it's really bad. But Fox. Yeah. Exactly. The Carolinas. Kennedy

was published in Fox News. And he referenced a study that shows that vitamin A can quote dramatically reduce measles mortality. However, it's, it's only good for measles patients who have a specific measles specific deficiency of vitamin A. So, I mean, what do you think? It's out of context, though. It's like, if you were sick, with, I guess, you had the flu, and you had a vitamin A deficiency. I'm sure vitamin A would certainly help you fight the flu in the same way that vitamin A would

help you fight anything. I'm not sure how far and wide that philosophy has gotten with moms and dads around the country. But I could tell you this. Yeah. If you're in administration or anybody running for elective office, you want to talk about progress, things that you're moving to move the ball down the field. This feels like the ultimate case, Tara, of regressing, going back to a 19th century or 20th century problem in the 21st century seems to be madness to worry about measles.

and try to declare this to be a success if we are struggling with things from the mid-1900s again

when you don't have to be. It just runs counter to every political argument you'd want to be making. Yeah, no. And the number of children, kindergarteners, vaccinated against measles has gone down by three percent. But that's significant since 2020. You know where this is comment, a dominant issue and it's important because it's an election year. West Virginia is it's state legislature right now is bottled up fiercely on the issue of vaccination requirements. This stuff

trickles down into local communities and into state governments. Even in West Virginia, which Tara is to put it mildly, overall well-mingly majority Republican. The legislature may have literally just two or three Democrats in it. But they're not on up on what to do about these

“vaccination requirements. This stuff rolls downhill. Yeah, the only thing that may be saving”

America's health is the fact that this voice will be speaking to them on a podcast. Let's just

play a minute for a second or just 15 seconds because I think that's a lot of can handle. Guys,

roll that podcast. Can's have been told that we should trust the system. But our children are sicker, chronic diseases exploding and the answers that we've been given are working. Many of us have come to the conclusion. I only play that because I have had people obviously, we have technicalities on the shows. Sometimes, and they're like, "Therry are audience. Audio is terrible, sometimes." And that happens, okay? But that actually sounds like audio that's terrible, but it's

actually just a voice. And I don't think you can fix that. A couple of things here. First of all, you said, "Let's give it 15 seconds. You lasted six seconds." And they're like, "That's it. I'm about

“done with this." Yeah. When I came up through radio and I'm still a radio guy. I can tell from this”

sweet sound of your voice and the way you handle a conversation. Really, you're really good at it, I could tell. It's nice of you to say. Radio is my soul, my passion. But they tell you, just speak like you speak in radio. There's no wrong way to speak unless you're not being authentic. So, okay, is being authentic, but I don't think that's listenable. And I'm not sure how that cuts through to anybody because it's just, it's a tough challenge for them and I don't think

you can overcome that in the podcast universe. Well, that may save America, that voice. But he has a huge following as we know. Mahahah has a huge movement. Although they're unhappy because they don't think he's gone far enough. And I actually did hope that he would try to clean up you know, preservatives and food and some of the excesses in our industries that they have control of our fertilizer. For the public good, when he stands there as he did recently,

with one of those big, fat coffees drinks that we got the oversized sugary coffee drinks and says, there's just a pound of sugar in this thing. It's not good for anybody. That cuts through. Yeah. There are Democrats who say, you know what, he's right about that. That's a freaking problem. You missed opportunities if you start tying yourself to this, to this more conspiratorial less

mindful type of theory. Yeah. I mean, I lived in Europe for a few years. I always go back to this.

“But I was healthier there. And they just restrict more products. They restrict, I think,”

they only allow like 100 ingredients in skin care products. We allow 400. They banned most of the stuff that we allow in our products. The food is cleaner. I mean, they don't chlorinate their chicken like we do. They didn't want to do a transatlantic partnership. They didn't want to do a trade deal during the Obama years because they thought that all of our food products were shit. And they felt like, and they might be right, you know, everything is so mass produced in America.

And they don't even really, like the word organic isn't even a real thing. It's like biology. I mean, I lived in Brussels, so they spoke French. But everything is biology. Like they don't they just don't grow things the way that we do. In a way that's so mass produced. They're also small. Our country is obviously. But yeah, they're not, they won't sacrifice quality in the way that we do. And they don't eat packaged foods the way that we do. I mean, they actually sit down

and drink their coffee. They don't take it and put hay, as they say. They're not moving at 1000 miles an hour with everything. Exactly. It was actually kind of an American notion where you grab that 20 ounce coffee, you start running around with your life. The Mahah people are upset. They feel unsatisfied with what the administration's done. That reminds me Tara of all these people who thought Trump was literally going to have arrested his political enemies immediately. There are some

constituents of Trump, mega allies who thought that he was going to go arrest the people who, I'm

something they can't do because, oh, by the way, the 2020 election was not fixed. January 6 was not

staged. They said an expectation they could never meet, which is why they're seemingly aimlessly

trying to prosecute some of his critics in their failing. But they'm over promised. Mahahs upset and mega's upset. Yeah. All right. Well, I know I only have you for like four more minutes. So let's get into the Holy War. Right? Oh, I know. It is interesting the way that Hugsett makes it sound like it is truly a Holy War and people who are evangelical like him believe it as well. I've seen it up close, my own family. But, you know, now J.D. Vance, Wittkopf and Kushner, they're going to

participate in talks in Islamabad on Saturday morning. But, like, can the world take the president seriously and can we take Iran seriously? They just offered us the 10-point plan, which Trump called fake. But that plan puts them in an even stronger position than they were before the war. The invocation of a religion in championing the war, you're just begging for trouble. I mean, you're begging for criticism when those two things get synthesized and you've seen the pope

expressed his thoughts on war and you've heard the feedback to Trump threatening to blow up civilization that you're doing that in the name of God. You're you're begging for strong fierce responses. Let's put that aside for a moment. It was no worthy to me when the defense secretary spoke

at a news conference this week. His first thing to do was to thank Trump, the chairman of the

joint chiefs, first thing to do was thank the service members. That's a contrast that's not lost on people who are even just casually watching this and the instability of Trump's truth-social posts, the politicized nature of the defense secretary at this moment, does not inspire courage and war requires courage. War will unify the country when it's done right justly.

“This war has not united the country. I mean, I think about this terror. When's the last time you saw”

a war at its outset split down party lines in terms of its response? That's bonkers. And I don't think we're paying enough attention to that. Yeah, Americans love a good war, don't they? Well, maybe because it happened in the dead of night and wasn't sold to anyone. Also, we have extreme war fatigue in this country after a war that lasted for two decades in Iraq and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we lost. We lost those wars. Like there's no other way to put it. And we lost

a lot of American men and nobody wants to go back there. It smells a lot like the last war. It looks a lot like the last war. This idea of weapons and mass destruction without any proof again. Right? I mean, does it not feel exactly the same? Death to America. It's more, it feels almost like a cultural war, more than anything else. It's very much splitting down party lines. Midday today, the Democrats try to unanimous consent to get the war authorization,

approved in Congress and Republicans pushed it down. So you've got a party division on a war.

That's never healthy. No matter which side you're on. I just don't think that these

representatives are actually representing there are people anymore. I mean, look at this, you know, race in maga country, maga maga maga country where they literally have phone lines still.

“And that's how you're polling. And that is Marjorie Taylor Greene's former district in Georgia.”

You know, play, fuller the Republican one. We expected him to win, right? But Sean Harris, he came pretty damn close after a wipe out against Marjorie Taylor Greene just two years ago. This was a 25 point swing for Democrats. We haven't seen this in a really long time. This is Georgia 14. It's a 25 point shift toward Democrats in a special election. And like, I just, I don't think that these holes are even really truly reflecting

yet how the American people feel about this war and their feelings about Trump. And also, they even pollutes and set sweet Easter message that we got. Pray a lot. We're going to destroy a civilization.

“And that does cut through. The Georgia stuff to me is exponentially more important than the”

other specials I've seen so far because Terry, as you know, the road to the Senate majority goes through Georgia. The future of Trump's future Supreme Court nominees goes through Georgia. The future of Trump's war and ice, all of that goes through Georgia. So that's a decent sign.

Interesting. Yeah, I didn't think about it that way. That it goes through Georgia. I mean,

“are there any other races, any other specials that you're looking at? It is interesting that”

Republicans, this is the only special day one, by the way. So far. The, you know, John Ossoff needs to hold that seat for Democrats to have a majority.

Republicans need to grab it to protect their majority. It's critical. But I got to tell you,

I'm getting a lot more, a lot more feedback on Ohio. Sherrod Brown is a known quantity. He's had a success there. Even in the red period of Ohio, and he's running against it and coming with very little visibility here in Washington. And the mid-visibility back home, Alaska's and their aspirations. I'd watch that one too. Interesting. Yeah.

Okay. Well, let's see what happens. I have heard, like I know, there's a lot of hope

“behind James Taylor go among Democrats. But more and more, I think the feeling is that a”

Republican will hold even if it is Ken Paxon. But I'm sure Democrats are enjoying watching Republicans sink a ton of money into a racetrack and have to be spending money on. And yeah, we'll see how that one all pans out. Do we end up getting this really deranged character Ken Paxon in the Senate? And I don't know. I guess I, I think, I'm not really seeing Democrats like seizing the moment, but we'll see if they turn it around.

They're going to have some money to play with. And by the way, I'm really grateful you asked me to join. You've really blazed a trail for a lot of us in independent media. You don't get enough

time for that. So I want to just say it was an honor to join you for the first time because a lot

of us are modeling what we're doing after you. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. And I'm really happy that you're on the other side with me. It keeps me keeps the seat warm now. It's good.

“No, it's great. And honestly, I feel like I think we are going to be many of us.”

And the more journalists that make the jump, the better. And we can prove that this is a model that is safe for journalists who are at, you know, networks and various news outlets that that they can still, you know, do their work have a career, but do it more authentically. Then I'm all for it. And I am so thank you for that. And I'm glad to have you joined. And of course, guys, you can support both of us and what we do by just hitting that subscribe button and consider

becoming paid subscribers to support us and our independent journalism. Thanks so much Scott. And we got a run. I wish I had to get a kept you for another half hour, but I know you're in demand right now. Let's do it again. Bye. Bye.

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