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unidentified
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
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| And past president, why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo court. | ||
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Amid a busy week on the Justice Department beat, we turn now to Sadie Gurman, who covers the DOJ for the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Sadie German, former FBI Director James Comey said to be arraigned today just across the Potomac River in an Alexandria, Virginia federal courthouse. | ||
| Remind us what happens at an arraignment and what the charges are that he's facing. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, normally this is a pretty perfunctory thing. | |
| A defendant walks into a courtroom and has read the charges, but in this case, from what I'm being told, the courthouse is already mobbed with reporters. | ||
| There were lines to get in. | ||
| And so basically, he'll just make a very brief appearance and acknowledge that he understands what the government's bringing against him. | ||
| And does he get to make a plea at this point? | ||
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unidentified
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He could, yes, he could. | |
| Are we expected to hear from him outside the courthouse? | ||
| Is he expected to take questions from reporters? | ||
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unidentified
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Now that I don't know. | |
| Seems like the kind of thing he might want to do, but I'm just not sure. | ||
| When it comes to the charges against him, your story in the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump overcame internal dissent to get his case against James Comey. | ||
| Explain the background here. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, this story sort of talks about how these charges came over the objections of many career prosecutors and also President Trump's handpicked prosecutor, who he actually ousted and installed in and installed his own personal lawyer in his place. | |
| And she was ultimately able to obtain the indictment, but she did this all by herself. | ||
| And this story sort of talks about how, you know, even advisors were telling him this is not a good case. | ||
| You know, the prosecutor has some doubts about it. | ||
| Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche were telling him, you know, that this might not work out the way you want it to. | ||
| And he just didn't, he said, I don't care. | ||
| Lindsay Halley, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is she going to be in the courthouse today? | ||
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unidentified
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She very well could be. | |
| From what I understand, she has brought in prosecutors from North Carolina. | ||
| That's outside the district. | ||
| That's unusual. | ||
| And it's a signal that maybe people inside the office didn't want to be part of this case. | ||
| How big is the spotlight going to be on her and what's her background? | ||
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unidentified
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I think it'll be very big. | |
| She is a former insurance lawyer. | ||
| This is the first case that she's ever prosecuted. | ||
| That was the first time she's ever presented anything before a grand jury, but she represented Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case, and she's been really by his side ever since then. | ||
| If she prosecutes this case and gets a guilty verdict, what sort of punishment could James Comey face for the charges that he's facing? | ||
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unidentified
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These charges come with some serious prison time, potentially, if he is found guilty. | |
| So I think it's up to like 10 years in prison for Lying to Congress. | ||
| So it's a pretty serious charge. | ||
| James Comey being arraigned today in an Alexandria courtroom, just one of several stories happening on the Justice Beat. | ||
| Yesterday was Pam Bondi, the Attorney General on Capitol Hill. | ||
| What did you make of her testimony? | ||
| What stood out most for you? | ||
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unidentified
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It was very combative. | |
| You know, even at some of the more, just even at some of Democrats' more simple questions, straightforward questions, she just came back with very personal attacks. | ||
| So actually, it felt like rather than answering even the most basic questions, she just was ready to go to combat with these people. | ||
| And it made for some fireworks and it was interesting. | ||
| And it made for a TV moment as well on the Republican side of the aisle. | ||
| We showed the clip of Josh Hawley talking about the Biden-era phone tapping of Republican senators, what has come out from the FBI, Kash Patel, tweeting about that yesterday. | ||
| What do you know about that story? | ||
| How far are we into that investigation? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, it looks to be just beginning, but there's a declassified document that Senator Chuck Grassley made public that indicates that I think nine Republican senators had their phone records searched as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation. | |
| This was basically just, you know, when a prosecutor is doing this kind of investigation, they can see who, you know, who you've called, and you can see sort of the metadata here. | ||
| And that is what happened in this case. | ||
| But it gave certainly gave Republicans a talking point. | ||
| That was one big talking point for Republicans. | ||
| For Democrats, one of their main lines of questioning was whether Pam Bondi had gotten political pressure from the White House to pursue political investigations, James Comey being one that they pointed to for that. | ||
| Here's part of the exchange yesterday from the Senate Judiciary Committee. | ||
| But then, how about the Truth Social post on September 20th, 2025, in which the president said we can't delay any longer, Pam, using your name, not bringing criminal charges, are killing our reputation, his words and credibility, and then goes on to tell you to prosecute a member of this committee, to prosecute the Attorney General of New York, and to prosecute James Comey. | ||
| Do you consider that a directive to the Justice Department? | ||
| Senator Klovichar, President Trump is the most transparent president in American history. | ||
| And I don't think he said anything that he hasn't said for years. | ||
| The Attorney General yesterday on Capitol Hill, how well do you think she did in batting away that line of questioning specifically on the political pressure side? | ||
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unidentified
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I mean, she didn't really talk about it at all, but she makes a good point in that, you know, this is not unusual to see Trump put this kind of pressure on his attorneys general. | |
| What's different this time is that it seems to be working. | ||
| Do you think Josh Hawley sort of turned the tables then by bringing up this investigation, the tapping of phone lines saying, why aren't you outraged about political pressure by the Biden administration on Jack Smith's investigation? | ||
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unidentified
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Yes. | |
| You know, for Republicans, they see all of this as sort of a course correction after years in which members of their party were targeted, including Trump. | ||
| So this is kind of tit for tat. | ||
| Taking your phone calls this morning, this segment of the Washington Journal, Sadie Gurman is with us, Wall Street Journal Justice Department reporter. | ||
| Here's phone lines for you to call in: 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And Jamie's up first out of Texas. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| The name is Jaime. | ||
| Jaime, go ahead. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, I'm calling because of that subject on Jack Smith investigating, they call it spying on the GOP certain amount of senators. | |
| I think it said eight, maybe. | ||
| And my takeaway from that is that Jack Smith is doing his job. | ||
| All he's doing is investigating what those GOP senators are looking like suspects, because at the beginning of the insurrection, maybe for a day or two, they were totally against the insurrection. | ||
| But then I guess Trump must have scared them. | ||
| And I don't know if he threatened them or, you know, they were afraid for their families. | ||
| And all of a sudden, they switched over to the this is not an insurrection, you know, it was a picnic. | ||
| And no, my take is that Jack Smith is doing his job, not weaponizing anything. | ||
| He was investigating what those GOP senators looked like. | ||
| They became suspects. | ||
| Jaime, do you think Pam Bondi is doing her job, not weaponizing anything? | ||
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unidentified
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Here, I think she's weaponizing everything because she's, I guess, Trump's lapdog. | |
| She'll do whatever he tells her to do because she wants to keep her job. | ||
| It's a nice paying job. | ||
| You know, the government is shut down, but they're getting paid. | ||
| And, you know, they're living high on the hog and getting good money. | ||
| And everybody else is suffering. | ||
| So they're trying. | ||
| I see Pam Bondi as, yes, weaponizing the government, just doing whatever Trump tells her to do. | ||
| And all a bunch of other officials are all on the same boat. | ||
| They're scared. | ||
| That's Jaime in Texas. | ||
| Sadie German. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, one thing I want to point out is that, you know, just the indication that the FBI may have looked at the phone records of these senators does not indicate that they're suspects or that they were under investigation personally. | |
| This was in the course of investigating Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. | ||
| And, you know, he was obviously the only person charged in that case. | ||
| But looking at phone records of a sitting member of the United States Senate, and there is one House member as well on that list, highly unusual. | ||
| And politically charged when you do it, or at least there are political landmines there when you do it. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, I think we'll be hearing about this for quite some time. | |
| Eddie in the Garden State of New Jersey, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're up next with Sadie German. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, my question is, I don't know what the big uproar is about James Comey because when James Comey went on national TV and said that he knew it was a new administration and he did some things that he normally wouldn't have did, he showed that he crossed the line. | |
| So now if they're looking into things that he did, then he should have his day in court. | ||
| I don't understand what the big uproar is. | ||
| Can she explain that? | ||
| Sadie German. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, these, I guess, the charges that are brought against him relate to testimony from about five years ago in which a senator asked him if he had ever authorized a leak to the news media. | |
| And he basically referred back to testimony from 2017. | ||
| So it's it might be helpful if we show those two sections of testimony. | ||
| So it was it was his testimony in 2017 with Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, James Comey with Chuck Grassley. |