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Jared and Nick discuss the Attorney General's press conference and what it means for the investigation into Trump's mishandling of classified documents. They also delve into the dangers of how the media is portraying this unprecedented raid of a former president's house.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yancek, and I'm here with Nick Halsman.
We have a jam-packed show.
We're going to be unpacking everything that's been going on with the raid at Mar-a-Lago, and there's a lot that has been going on.
Before we do that, though, if you are listening to this and you are not already a patron, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
You'll gain access to our additional episodes, our live tapings, the community, the Discord, but also you'll be supporting the show, keeping us ad-free, editorially independent, and also just helping us move forward, do our audio documentary, A Certain Route to Failure, and just keep things on track.
But right now, Nick, we have to talk about the former President of the United States, Donald John Trump's Just absolutely stupid home of Mar-a-Lago getting raided and everything that has come afterwards.
Sure.
Well, you know, Merrick Garland didn't say anything in this press conference, really, besides that he approved, which we already knew.
There's no way you're ever going to do what he did or what they did without an approval by Merrick Garland, at the very least, and Christopher Wray, I'm sure, as well.
So, yeah, I mean, listen, we are now left to just sort of wonder and speculate and say things that are way out of bounds, right?
Are we allowed to do that?
Well, I'm sure that there's no danger in doing that, particularly if you're the right wing, and we'll get to that in a second.
To go ahead and reset this story so everyone's on the same page, this week, dozens of FBI agents conducted a search at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, before it was all said and done.
And by the way, violated Donald Trump's beautiful safe.
Beautiful safe.
It turns out that they removed multiple boxes.
As everyone basically knew almost immediately, the focus of this were documents and materials that Trump had, how do I put this charitably, lifted, pilfered from the White House.
It was chaotic, Jared.
January 6th was very chaotic, or January 21st was very chaotic for him.
All I know is that when I am President of the United States of America and I'm leaving, I like to take a couple of knickknacks, a couple of mementos.
Including, by the way, a material that is so classified, Nick, that it can't even be described in public.
Right.
I mean, isn't all classified material that you can't describe in public, you know?
I think some you can even say it's about, like, you know, you can say this is about America's relationship with Germany.
You could at least say that.
It turns out some of these can't even be described.
Wow.
So that's not great.
And again, you know, I want to point out in all of this, this was a completely above board by the numbers as anything having to do with Merrick Garland is going to be.
It's going to be very cautious and conservative in nature.
But Nick, I got news for you.
That is not what the Republican Party and or the good people over at Fox News.
That's that's not how they're portraying this.
They are not.
I mean, you're talking about things like Gestapo and, you know, Stasi tactics.
And they're making a thing that's probably the most nefarious part of it all is that they're trying to make it seem like this could be you next.
Right?
And it makes sense.
This is what they peddle.
But that has rubbed me even more wrong when they try and sort of make it seem like, oh, first they came for the president and then they came from you, whatever.
It's like, great.
If you want to steal documents, yeah, then you should expect a knock on your door.
There's a problem in all of this in the fact that they basically have to make the argument that the handling of executive presidential level documents is something that like becomes a populist cause.
But this is what they've done all along.
Going back to the history of the GOP and the NRA, they've always had to shore up their own base by saying, whatever is happening on the national level, whatever is happening to the extraordinarily rich and powerful, that is about you, the person at home who's barely able to afford their rent or to put food on their table.
Meanwhile, they've had to grow this in an incredibly irresponsible way.
There's already been an attack on an FBI headquarters today.
This is a really, really irresponsible thing.
And I would love to hear what you have to say about this, because this is the line that I keep having.
They know what this is.
They know that this isn't some sort of a KGB, politically motivated action.
Deep down, they know that Donald Trump violated a lot of statutes, And they know that there's been this process going back and forth which by which the government and the National Archives has been trying to get these documents back and that Donald Trump has stalled and refused.
They know all of that and everything that we're getting ready to discuss and document is for the most part done in bad faith.
Fair.
That is fair, but I think the main, you know, take that they're using, or the place they're coming from, is like, so what?
It's just some papers.
Which, by the way, is so completely galling when you want to compare that to what they said about Hillary using an email server, right?
That's the problem.
There's lots of receipts out there of the same people, you know, saying how Hillary needed to be raided, and then she needed to be prosecuted, and all of a sudden they turn around and say, and again, we're not surprised by that either.
Of course they're gonna, you know, back their own team and they're gonna have no, you know, ethical, or not ethical, what's the word I'm looking for, you know, COVID.
Yeah, you know, they're gonna wishy-washy and, you know, choose whatever they decide they want to choose, but my interesting thing is, you know, what is the reason You know, okay, there was probably the notion that he wasn't going to give up the presidency, even as late as January 15th, 16th, 17th.
So they probably weren't really packing ahead of time.
So they threw a whole bunch of shit in boxes and like that's what they're going to at least say, right?
And they, oops, sorry.
Charitable, by the way.
This interpretation of things, it's very charitable.
Right, but I'm still trying to figure out, like, there's not, I don't think there's a lot of monetary value in these papers, necessarily.
They're already a year and a half old, unless he's already sold them, but so, like, maybe, you know, and, like, I know he likes money, but he seems to be making money other ways.
Does he really need to go into espionage for that?
So I'm really kind of torn here about exactly what was so important that they want to do this, but again, It's not a big deal to them.
He took some papers.
He'll return them.
All he had to do was return them.
All he had to do was ask.
That's what they're going to say.
But I will say that the reaction to the actual physical operation at Mar-a-Lago has been shameless.
Absolutely shameless.
And before we go down the list, I want to point out one person who has not joined the chorus.
And that is, it looks like a senator from Kentucky named Mitch McConnell.
It looks like good old Mitch McConnell hasn't been joining in a lot of these things.
And I would go ahead and say that's because the Republican Party doesn't want Donald Trump to be its nominee in the future.
And in all of this, they're happy to fundraise off of him.
They're happy to, you know, motivate their base with it.
But again, as we talked about on Tuesday, they are not interested in continuing with him as a flag bearer.
But outside of McConnell, and Nick, here's the thing.
I want to go ahead and give a big old muckrake award to the absolute most batshit thing that was said in the aftermath, which belongs to Mark Levine, who is a, for those who don't know, he is an absolutely detestable radio show host who occasionally had like a show on Fox.
He was the one that talked to Bill Barr about creating basically a Christian legal system.
Mark Levine, you know what?
Let's just listen to good old Mark.
So let's be clear.
Nude is right.
They're all right.
This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history.
Okay.
Nick, the worst attack on this republic in modern history.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, let's get that list going.
Should we?
Well, okay, so here's the number one, and I assume you had the exact same reaction that I did.
September 11th, 2001.
Somehow or another, which by the way killed 3,000 people, and by the way, created an international global war that killed God knows how many people.
That somehow or another is not as bad as the FBI serving a search warrant to Mar-a-Lago.
Yeah, and there's probably people there who are nodding their heads.
You know, I'll kind of make an aside on this because this struck me.
So, you know, Watergate, the reason why Nixon went down in reality, you know, Woodward and Bernstein did some amazing work, but we know that the only reason why they did it is because the number two at the FBI gave them all their information.
Because he knew how corrupt it was, he decided, you know what, we can't let this stand anymore.
He was the last, you know, firewall for democracy.
And, you know, there's compelling arguments that maybe the CIA was involved too and they set him up, whatever.
But the bottom line is...
Um, this kind of applies here.
Like, perhaps the FBI was like, we need, because remember, the penalty for what Trump violated also, by the way, is more severe now because in 2018, Mr. Trump made it more severe at some sort of troll job, you know, for Hillary.
I think he honestly thought maybe we'll get Hillary for five years in prison for this, and instead it's going to be the torpedo hitting the, uh, in the hunt for Red October.
It's going to hit their own ship.
But the point being that, like, you know, the FBI could very well know that the penalty is you can't run for office again if you're convicted of this specific crime, which is, you know, that Al Capone style thing where they get him out of taxes.
So this could very well be, you know, the deep state, you know, putting their foot down once and for all and saying, yeah, you aren't going to be eligible to run anymore.
I mean, we talked about this a little bit on Tuesday and man, the signals are just getting harder and harder.
They do not want him to run for president of the United States again.
In the midst of all this, by the way, just to go down this list here, it's some wonderful stuff.
Steven Crowder, who is just an absolute intellectual heavyweight, I mean, like, really, just an impressive intellectual person.
Steven Crowder tweeted, quote-unquote, tomorrow is war, period.
Sleep well.
Tomorrow is war because they served and searched his residency.
Like, you're literally going to put that out there.
Then, by the way, my personal favorite in all of this, Nick, and I want to talk about this guy because he has not appeared on the podcast as a point of discussion, Scott Adams.
And for those who don't know, Scott Adams is the guy who created Dilbert.
And Dilbert is the comic strip about, you know, a corporate office culture that sometimes you would see in the paper and you'd go, Oh.
Huh.
Scott Adams, for those who don't know, has turned into a complete MAGA chud.
He talks about hypnotism, he talks about pickup culture, how to get women.
He is a really bizarre, weird dude.
I'm going to read you a quick little thing from Scott Adams.
This is incredible.
Just a two-tweet little go.
I waited two days for my government to justify an FBI raid on a former president's home.
I think that was fair-minded of me.
No justification has been offered.
The presumption of innocence of the government and FBI can now be removed from the option set.
Phase 2 begins.
Nick, are you ready to hear about Phase 2?
Lay it on me.
What is Phase 2?
That's the part where things get fixed, one way or another.
All options are on the table.
There's never just a phase one, right?
There's always gotta be a phase two.
It can't just be a one-stop thing.
Dilbert's creator literally is saying here, you know what?
We might need to take matters into our own hands.
I'm gonna have to draw a really mean comic.
Thanks a lot.
And by the way, it just keeps getting better.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, she also deserves a quick little thumbs up.
Does she?
She really does, for this tweet, which is quote-unquote, and as she's like taking time to, you know, not talk about a new civil war.
She literally said, quote unquote, defund the FBI.
And you know what?
I'm with her.
I'm with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Maybe we should.
And I want to make it very clear on this podcast.
The FBI has done some awful shit.
Awful shit.
And we shouldn't be sitting here holding them up or the Department of Justice as heroes.
Like they have been some truly oppressive assholes.
But I love that we've moved from how dare you say defund the police to now defund the FBI.
Love it.
There's a tweet for every occasion with these people.
I still can't wrap my head around this notion.
Here's the thing, what would happen if they do walk him out in handcuffs eventually?
That's a great question.
Because what's being prepared right now, and what the ground is really being fomented for, it's violence, Nick.
It's literal violence.
They're creating a situation where violence is not only possible, it's likely.
And let's talk, speaking of the senators from Kentucky, I know one of your favorite guys, we were talking before we recorded, you're very excited that Rand Paul gets to make an appearance on today's show.
Let's see how the good, responsible Senator from Kentucky is really running this around us.
Let's just get it over with already.
Here we go.
No, people distrust so much the government that we've gotten to the point where, for example, do I know that the boxes of material they took from Mar-a-Lago, that they won't put things in those boxes to entrap him?
How do we know?
Their lawyers weren't allowed to see the boxes go.
They weren't categorized.
Thousands of documents were taken.
Yeah, how do we know that they're going to be honest with us about what's actually in the boxes?
How do we know that was in the box before it left the residence if the lawyers weren't allowed to see everything?
So, you know, they've lost a great deal of trust and it's... Okay, before we address this, I'm sorry.
I have to do this.
It's the weekend.
What's in the box?
What's in the box?
Are you trying to reference Seven?
I'm not trying.
Okay.
Look at what has happened.
And by the way, the manga world has already embraced this thing.
And this is part of what this conspiracy culture does.
All you do is you put out, it doesn't matter how stupid of a counter factual it is or a counter reality it is.
Obviously the FBI is implanting evidence with the one man, by the way, Donald Trump, that you don't need to plant evidence with.
It's everywhere on every surface, probably.
This is, though, a really, really dangerous cover story that Rand Paul, Republicans, and now a lot of the Trump world is starting to push around.
Well, it's the same as, you know, the votes are miscast or like they were stolen.
You cast doubt in everything so that nothing will ever be real.
Nothing will ever be honest anymore.
You know, let's just say I'm pretty sure that they had body cams on when they were searching everything.
I'm pretty sure because, again, who would ever think that you're going to get away with Doing this to a president, right?
This is the most scrutinized person in the world.
That's why Merrick Garland had to even have a press conference today.
He wouldn't have done that for anything else.
So it's like, but again, you know, it hasn't happened in the past.
Have they planted evidence?
Probably.
So that means ipso facto QED that they must have, they must've done it here too.
And that's, you're right.
It's just the people that follow Trump are not going to believe it if he's ever prosecuted anyway.
I don't know what you're supposed to do with that.
Even when he's behind bars, let's just say, it still won't matter.
And you can't just not do it because of that.
And you can't just not do it because you're afraid of consequences.
Literally, by ceding ground to these people and not holding them responsible, it only makes these things get worse.
And by the way, you brought up something which is, you know, going in looking at all this stuff.
The question remains, Nick, How did the authorities know what they were looking for and where to find it?
So let's uh let's hear what Mick Mulvaney has to say about this.
Dear old Mick.
Do you think that person in Trump's orbit would have had to be to know these details about where these documents were?
Uh, really close.
That's a good question.
Really close.
I didn't even know there was a safe at Mar-a-Lago, and I was the Chief of Staff for 15 months.
So this would be someone who was handling things on day-to-day, who knew where documents were, so it would be somebody very close inside the President.
My guess is there's probably six or eight people who had that kind of information.
I don't know the people on the inside circle these days, so I can't give any names of folks who come to mind, but your instinct, I think, is a good one, is that if you know where the safe is, and you know the documents are in ten boxes in the basement, you are pretty close to the President.
Nick, we've got a rat!
We've got a rat in Mar-a-Lago.
We've got a bat in the Trump orbit.
We've got a rat.
We've got a mole.
We've got a stool pigeon.
Things are just popping off.
Sure.
Maybe it's the housekeeping.
I don't know.
You can picture documents.
I know it's in some closet, and I know they put a lock on the door, but I don't know.
To me, I feel like there's probably just some random piece of paper, his notes from the Helsinki conference with Putin on the table, just sitting there.
Well, I'll say this.
One of the things that keeps Donald Trump relevant in political culture, and one of the reasons he won the presidency in the first place, it's palace intrigue.
He consistently gives the media something to talk about, something to speculate about, something to fill airtime with.
And in all of this, and we've documented this for a long time, Donald Trump Does not have allies who are necessarily loyal to him because they're always looking to get themselves ahead because what is his management style?
It's to create constant battles between his subordinates to basically see who can gain his favor the most.
They're constantly feeling like they might get thrown out.
They might get the white hot spotlight put on them.
So as a result, you have people who are both deadly loyal, but also so ready to save themselves.
So at this point, it's like, oh, is it Jared?
Is it Eric?
You know, is Melania sending us signals?
It's a big, giant, fat story that the media can chew on.
And all we know at this point is that somebody around Donald Trump at this point is trying to help themselves.
Meanwhile, Nick, I love this.
Reports are coming out that Trump thinks everyone's wearing a wire.
Everybody's turning on him.
I mean, we're looking at exactly what happens with organized crime and what happens when you start putting pressure on it.
I mean, it's like Al Capone in The Untouchables.
Like, as the fire starts to get closer, I mean, the desperation gets worse and worse.
Yeah, I'm gonna make a call here.
I'm gonna say it's Secret Service.
You know, they're legally responsible to report crime.
They're there.
They see everything that's going on.
Maybe one of them or two of them felt bad about what happened with all their texts being deleted around January 6th and thought, you know, this is something I gotta say something because, you know, they're clearly covering something up there.
That would probably be the easiest explanation for all of this versus anybody else.
I don't think it's Jared.
I don't know.
Seems to me he wouldn't have done that.
But, you know, listen.
You're right.
If anybody would have done it, it would have been Jared, the sniveling coward he is.
Oh, wait.
Did I just imply that he's a sniveling coward for telling on his father-in-law?
I think he did.
Okay, I don't want to do that at all because he's not a sniveling coward.
Anyway, he's a sniveling coward for everything else he's done.
He is a sniveling coward, that's the official stance.
Yes, exactly.
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