America's Talking - Episode 59: Department of Justice moves to unseal Trump search warrant amid widespread criticism

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb & D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss: Department of Justice moves to unseal Trump search warrant amid widespread criticism. 'Make My Day,' Gov. Abbott says to Mayor Adams in response to threats. Critics: Small businesses in the crosshairs of new IRS auditing 'army'. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the America in Focus podcast powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. You can find all of the Center Square's great podcast at Americastalking.com. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. We're recording this on Friday, August 12th. Casey, it's been another busy news week, what with the raid on former President Donald Trump's home, the House Poised. to take up the questionably named inflation reduction act today. More inflation news, the escalating war of words between Texas governor Greg Abbott, New York City Mayor Eric Adams over the border crisis. Where should we begin, Casey?

Well, I am today reporting live just miles from Mar-a-Lago, so I think we should start there here in Florida, South Florida. And that's really been the story of the week. That's right. You're on vacation again, aren't you? Yes, I am working on my vacation. You know, something to... No, I'm not going to do it.

Not going to do it. Go ahead, Dan. Must be nice all the vacation days the company gives you. Yeah, yeah, I can't wait. So this is my first time to take what. It's really been nice. As long as you work in the morning, you can take as many vacation days as you want. Except that month-long trip to Europe you took in April. Right.

That was an investigative piece I'm working on. Okay. dive into cozy miles away from Maralago. What's going on? Yeah, so that's been the big story of the week, of course. As I'm sure our listeners know, the Raid, the Department of Justice Raid and to former President Donald Trump's residence there.

It has, I mean, the effect of it, I don't think we've really even seen the full effect of what this is going to do politically. It's really galvanized Trump's base. Trump's fundraising has soared. since this happened. You know, a lot of people felt that it was the Biden administration going too far. Because for the most part, I mean, you know, former presidents really get almost a free pass when they resign or they, you know, they leave office.

And there's reasons for that, you know, a big one being that a sign of unstable countries and governments is that they go after their political opponents with the force of law. And so even you may remember even for all of Donald Trump's talk about locking up Hillary and he practically ran on putting Hillary Clinton in jail. Even for all that talk, when it came time for him to be in office, of course he didn't do that. He didn't do anything like that. And so when he left and he got raided, this really upset a lot of people. And it's really gotten the entire Republican Party to rally around him. I mean, probably the big loser in this is someone like Rhonda Santis who was hoping to drive a wedge

between Trump and the Republican Party. But so far, they've only embraced him more. For example, you know, Marco Rubio, Florida Center from here and Florida where I am today, is calling for a congressional investigation. He's not the only lawmaker calling for an investigation of how it's done. A lot of people are saying something needs to be done.

Of course, there's this also a legal battle. And out of Dan, you want to talk a little bit about this legal battle to actually unseal the search warrant for how this how this raid even got started. Yeah, so the raid occurred on Monday of this week. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who oversees the Department of Justice, finally came out and spoke about it on Thursday. He took credit, if you will, for approving,

getting the search warrant to search former President Trump's home at Mara Lago. This dispute is over White House documents, some that might be classified that the Justice Department says Trump took to his Mara Lago home from the White House. He finally spoke out about it last week, as there have been calls since Monday for Garland to release the warrant language. He finally said that he's requested that the court unseal the warrant documents. They have not been unsealed yet as of this recording. But critics on both sides have called for the warrant to be unsealed. Garland is now saying he's asked the court to do that. The warrant, of course, had to be approved by a judge. It would contain the language that

would explain what the FBI agents were looking for when they raided Trump's home. So we'll have to see if they are in fact released, what those documents set. Yeah, I mean, and even former Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who is certainly, you know, not necessarily known for his legal adherent. But even he's questioned this. So you see, I'm just pointing this out because it's bipartisan. Yeah. Yeah, Democrat. He said DOJ must immediately explain the reason for its raid, and it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives, or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation and legitimacy of January 6th investigations.

Right. So when you even have like leading Democrats in the party saying, hey, like this is in danger. And a lot of what a lot of analysts are saying is what you've done is you've taken Trump, who was becoming maybe increasingly marginalized, increasingly irrelevant, and you've made of a martyr. And you've kind of, you've confirmed so much of what Trump's message is, which is, it's me versus the deep state and the media. You know, the deep state and the media are working together to undermine you the American people. And if it weren't for me standing in their way, they'd come for you next. That's really been like a core part of Trump's message from the beginning. And now they've like in a very like, it almost seems like perfectly tailored way they have validated that message, you know, by.

making him seem like a martyr. So this can have big political implications. Of course, the legal case will be really interesting to follow. As of now, it doesn't seem like there's any big smoking gun that Trump's going to have to answer for, but we'll just have to follow the story to see how it unfolds. Republican critics have also pointed to the years ago scandal of Hillary Clinton's laptop, another Democratic laptop, the emails that she stored on her personal laptop that supposedly contained classified information too and the hypocrisy of justice and not serving a

search warrant on Hillary Clinton to get that laptop to see exactly what was on there. So Republicans are definitely using this as a rallying cry against the Justice Department. Right. I mean, remember Trump's famous nickname was Crooked Hillary for a reason. That's what he named his opponent, Cricket Hillary pointing to her corruption or alleged corruption. And so, but even then, like I said, he didn't go after her. He didn't, you know, actually lock her up. And if he had, you know, the entire country probably would have been up in arms, maybe not the entire country, but all the establishment media, so many of the people who are celebrating this Trump rate would have been pointing to Trump as a dictator for going

after his political opponents. And so I think that that hypocrisy is a big argument against what's being done now. Well, well, certainly there'll be developments in this story in the coming days and weeks. We'll be on top of it at the Center Square. But let's move on today. As I mentioned today, Casey, we're recording this on Friday, August 12th. They're very well could be a vote later today on the Inflation Reduction Act, which the U.S. Senate in a 50-50 vote with a tiebreaker from Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday past the Inflation Reduction Act. Now they made amendments to it so that it's back in the House where there very well could be a vote. later today. What's going on here?

Yeah, I mean, this seems all but starting to be passed and signed into law. I mean, the Senate has been the main and almost only battleground in this Congress in the first two years of President Biden's administration because it's split 50-50. It's Republicans and Democrats and, you know, some senators on the left on the Democrat side like Joe Manchin or Kirsten Sinema have been really reluctant to support some of Biden's high, you know, high level spending plans. And so getting Mansion on board, getting sent him on board has been really difficult. That's been the main battle for Biden to push his agenda through.

He was able to get the 50 votes with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie to pass through, you know, this bill, which spent a lot of money on the climate, spent a lot of money. And by the climate, I mean, like green energy kind of things. And, of course, on prescription drugs. So once they got through that hurdle, it was all but. certainly would get passed. I mean, the Democrats do have the majority in the House, and they know how difficult it is to get anything through the Senate. So, I mean, for Pelosi to fumble the ball in this would have been pretty, pretty amazing. And it looks like it's not going to happen. So it's supposed to pass today. By the time our listeners hear this, it may have already passed. And then it'll head over to

Biden, who I'm sure there'll be a lot of pomp and circumstance, you know, celebrating this. they've managed to really combine some major elements of build back better, which was, you know, Biden's several trillion dollar spending plan coming in office. They've managed to combine that with this messaging around reducing inflation, which is, you know, inflation has become the really big issue. It's been one of the biggest hindrances to the Biden administration and to his spending because, you know, he passes these bills and sends out the stimulus checks and inflation is continued. to rise. Now, some of the data that came out this week was actually maybe a little more encouraging, but even then inflation is still 8.5% higher than it was the same time last year. We'll get to that in a minute. This is $740 billion spending plan. One of the biggest drivers of inflation has been government spending, massive government spending increases. That's why the $740 billion spending

bill, which is called the inflation reduction ad, seems like a bit of a misnomer. But one of the more controversial, you mentioned the green energy spending, you mentioned the health care and prescription drug spending contained in the bill. One of the more controversial measures contained in the same bill is spending to hire roughly 87,000 more IRS agents to conduct audits of Americans. What are people saying about that? This has been one of the most controversial elements of Biden's plan. He's basically doubling the size of the IRS and explicitly saying the reason he's doing it is to,

or he's doubling the number of IRS agents. He's explicitly doing it to significantly increase auditing to generate more revenue to fund the spending. So I can, you know, I'll get a little bit of criticism, but some people may find this kind of odd. Like, why is this happening? Do we really have a big auditing problem? I'm like what's going on here. I think what it comes down to is Biden, raising taxes is so difficult. It's not something what Biden wants to do.

It's hard to do. You know, he's split 50-50, getting a tax increase through such a tight sit-it would be very difficult. Also, Biden made a pledge to not raise taxes on anyone making more than $400,000 or less than $400,000 a year. So his hands are going to tie. And he's done different tax increases things like he's tried to do. But this auditing is like a really interesting accounting trick where you can basically say, hey, we're going to hire more IRS agents. And so when we pass this bill, we can say that revenue is going to go up even though we're not raising taxes.

We can say, oh, this is going to increase enforcement, you know, X amount of dollars, which will then pay more than pay for the $80 billion to hire the agents. So in some way, it's kind of like, I don't know, it's hard to verify, you know, how much revenue is really going to be generated by this. But it allows Biden to help pay for a part of his bill without raising taxes, which would be really politically difficult for him. So that's the why behind it. But as far as the criticism, I mean, there's a lot to be had. But one of the big ones is, hey, wait, who's going to get audited here exactly? Because, you know, it's not just, there's only, you know, a handful of billionaires to go through audits. And they actually usually are pretty

buttoned up and have their act together because they have a team of lawyers and accountants on their side, but the average American doesn't have a lawyer. Maybe they have an accountant, you know, they hired for a weekend or something. But I think small businesses are going to be, you know, I talked to a lot of experts about this. And they make clear that small businesses are going to be one of the biggest targets of this. Because when the IRS looks, they perceive that this is where the biggest tax gap is, where they think they can get the most bang for their buck by auditing small businesses and making them pay back taxes, making them pay things. And this, you know, this comes at a time when small businesses are already really struggling.

So this is an interesting thing to watch. I mean, I think small businesses are the backbone of the economy, of course. But it's important that we know that this IRS auditing increase isn't just going after a few billionaires. It's 87,000 agents. New agents. This would be an additional agents. In addition to the agents, they already have. Correct.

Correct. Yeah. There's not 87,000. And there's not $87,000 billion companies in the United States. So obviously, and agents handle more than one case at once. So it's obvious this is going to trickle down to smaller businesses, even individuals. And really what it assumes is that Americans are tax cheats, that you need 87,000 additional agents to go after these tax cheats,

the tax cheats in America. That's right. and you need small businesses in particular. Yeah. And so you think, well, I can easily see what it's like, well, hey, well, if people aren't paying their taxes, they should. I pay my taxes. And that's true. But you also have to think when you get audited, you know, plenty of innocent people when innocent businesses get audited.

And it's a huge administrative burden to get audited. I know, Dan, you've probably been audited many times, you know, given your, you know, what I know about you. I'm kidding. But if you get audited, it's not just like, oh, I pay my taxes. It's fine. I mean, it's a very long process. I know people who've been audited. There's lawyers involved.

It's very expensive. So it's no small thing to just get audited, even if you are innocent. I think it's important people know that if you've never been audited. I mean, I've never been audited, but I know people have. And it's no joke to get it audited. I mean, it's scary for people. And it costs a lot of money to just deal with the paperwork and hire people to respond to an audit. No doubt, as we mentioned, the House very well could be voting on this today.

So check out thecentersquare.com for updates on this story. But let's move on, Casey, some more inflation news, news that the Biden administration tried to spend as positive for his efforts to reduce inflation. Tell us what the news is, and let's analyze it. Yeah, so we had a couple of big inflation markers come out this week. Of course, if you've been listening to us for all, we've been covering these inflation markers. There's your consumer price index, the producer price index. And so the consumer price index came out for the month of July, and it was basically static.

You know, zero percent increase from the previous month. Producer price index, I believe, actually went down a little bit. And so, of course, this is much better than it continuing to raise it, you know, about 1%, which is what we've seen in previous months. it's been really troubling. So the White House was very quick to declare victory. This is the first time they've had some good inflation news in a long time. So they, I mean, they went all in on declaring victory on this saying, hey, we fix this.

It was really well-timed for them, you know, with the debate over whether the Inflation Reduction Act will actually do that or if it's just messaging. You know, the whole name, Inflation Reduction Act was kind of funny. It's like passing a gun control bill and calling it the 100% definitely constitutional bill. You know, I mean, you can't just name it something and then hope that people believe, just because of the name that it does it. But the inflation has been even more so in the discussion because of the name of that bill and questions over, hey, how is spending all this money actually going to reduce inflation? So, you know, I dug more into the data this week as we were reporting on it. And I found, hey, it's absolutely true that consumer prices have kind of remained static. And the biggest reason for that is because we've seen such a drop in gas.

gas prices. Gas prices in June where they hit a record high of $5 per gallon for a regular gallon of gasoline nationwide. And so we hit that very high point in June, but we've dropped down to basically about $4 per gallon nationally now. So a whole dollar drop in about eight weeks is very significant. And it's kind of skewed all this data. It's an outlier. I mean, that's a huge unprecedented drop, a whole dollar gas in eight weeks. And so that decline has made the overall picture of what consumer prices look like a little warped. And so if you're still going to, you know, for example, go into the grocery store every week,

you're still going to see, you know, higher prices and you saw last month. So actually, food prices have risen at the fastest rate since the 1970s. So, you know, the food at home index rose 13.1% over the last 12 months, according to BLS. That's the highest since 1979. you know, other food, you know, it depends on what kind of food you buy, but some things like eggs are much higher than 13%. It depends on the product. Some are higher, some are lower, and anybody who's regularly in grocery shopping can tell you that. But overall, you know, we can get into some more discussion about what the inflation really looks like, but a lot,

many things that matter to Americans like food prices are still rising in a really fast rate. we did see a minor win for the nation on inflation this week, but it's unclear really how significant that is, or if the data is just warped because of this unusual drop in gas prices that we're not going to be able to sustain. And while certainly it was somewhat good news for Americans, as you mentioned, they are still paying more for everything than they were a year and a half two years ago, what will be interesting to see is if there's a trend here, if this was a one-month blip, or if when we come back in August or in early September and find out the August numbers if the trend continues.

Another story I want to talk about, Casey, and we don't have a whole lot of time left, but the war of words between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and New York City Mayor Eric Adams continues to escalate over the border crisis. Of course, Governor Abbott blames President Joe Biden for the hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossings that happen every month into the state of Texas from Mexico. Governor Abbott, in May, started shipping some of those immigrants to Washington, D.C., busing them to Washington, D.C., a move that Democrats said was a political ploy. And then New York City Mayor Eric Adams, before Governor Abbott even started busing illegal immigrants to New York City, started complaining about the homeless crisis they're having there because of the influx in illegal immigrants,

even though Texas was not busing illegal immigrants to New York City, the Biden administration was flying immigrants across the country, including the New York City. But Adams blamed Abbott, so Abbott started busing illegal immigrants to New York City, in addition to Washington, D.C. And now since then, the war of words between the two has escalated with Adams saying Abbott is creating a crisis in a humanitarian crisis in his city because they don't have the resources to deal with all of these immigrants. And Abbott, of course, fires back. Texas has been dealing with this on a much larger scale than New York City for two years now. What's your take?

Yeah. Yeah, when he says, you know, hey, we don't. have the resources to deal with this. I think that's the point that Abbott's trying to make. I mean, this got to, in some ways, it kind of feels like a little bit of high school drama, the back and forth, but it has very real consequences for regular Americans. And I think that, you know, people in D.C. where I am, you know, except when I'm here outside Marlago, of course, but, you know, it's really impacting people. I hear people talk about it a lot in D.C. They're really worried about it. And it's really relatively a very small, number of illegal immigrants compared to what's coming off the border, just to give you some

kind of backdrop for this whole, this whole, you know, fighting and debate as against this backdrop of what we've seen, Bethany Blakely, one of our reporters, you know, found, got preliminary data, border patrol data that was showed that apprehensions and getaways at the southern border total 232,800, so almost 233,000 in the month of June alone. So, I mean, if you could, if you could imagine. and somehow have a vision to be able to see the whole border and just watch it for a month. You're going to see 233,000 people come across in just one month.

And so when you hear these mayors complain about having a few thousand people dropped off in their community, you can only imagine what these border towns or towns in Texas, California, Arizona are going to on a regular basis. And I think this is all about the attention. Let me interrupt you there a second. These Texas border towns are small. We're not talking about. We're not talking to Dallas.

We're not talking San Antonio or Austin. We're talking border communities of a few thousand people who are the initial targets of this illegal immigration, whether people are flooding to. Of course, New York City, biggest city in the United States. So if they can't manage a few thousand illegal immigrants, how are these Texas border communities able to do it? And obviously that is Governor Abbott's message to Eric Adams. Right. It's exactly the message. And one of the biggest problems that's made the border issue going on for so long is that only like, you know, four or five, six states really feel the brunt of this problem.

And so the other 40, 45 can just kind of ignore it. It's not really their problem in a way. So I think what if you look at it in a more friendly light, what Abbott and then we're trying to do is make it someone else's problem to get their attention to get by-in. Because up until now, understandably, states like New York can say, hey, it's not, the border. Southern border is not my problem. I have other things to worry about. And you can get that. But now Abbott is making them worry about it.

Of course, so, too, just to contradict you a little bit here, though, you know, fentanyl has become a national crisis. Fetanol is being smuggled across the Mexican border into the U.S. and distributed throughout the country and a number of non-border states, most non-border states have said they have a, fentanyl crisis. Well, that stems from the open borders in Texas and Arizona because that's where that fentanyl is flowing through into the country. So it is a natural problem. It absolutely is a little bit newer problem than the immigration problem, but it's very real. And that is probably the biggest thing getting states that aren't border states actually interested and involved in the border problem and the border discussion.

Well, thank you for your insight, Casey. I'll let you. you get back to your vacation. Are you going to come back to work next week anytime? You know, I'll let you know. I'll let you know my name morning. Okay. I look forward to hearing that. Well, that's all the time we have this week. For our listeners, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast at AmericasTalking.com. That's Americastalking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. For Casey Harbor, I'm Dan McKeelib. We'll talk to you next week.