Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Lies Blow Up in Shocking Declassified Report (w/ Rep. Jim Himes)

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Rep. Jim Himes joins Tim Miller to discuss the de-classified report revealing the Trump administration used disputed intelligence to justify mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act despite internal reports contradicting their claims.

Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. I am back with Congressman Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. There's a lot of, there's a lack of intelligence in a lot of what's happening out there today. So it's important that we bring you in on this. And I want to talk in particular, Congressman, about this assessment that the Intelligence Department had made that was undergirding, I guess, you can maybe explain if I have this exactly right, the argument that they need to employ the Alien Enemies Act, which was this notion that, you know, that we had this invading force, that have to, you know, enact this wartime power in order to deport these folks to El Salvador. And as it turns out, you guys over on the committee were asking for the classified, I guess, internal documents and briefing on this. And it showed that, you know, actually, that's not exactly the case. So that's my Reader's Digest summary. You give us

a little more detail. Not just not exactly the case. So that's my Reader's Digest summary. You give us a little more detail. Not just not exactly the case, right? What the president, the administration and the director of national intelligence were saying, which is that Trend de Aragua is operating as a proxy of the Venezuelan government, is the exact opposite of what the intelligence community, which purportedly the director of national intelligence runs was actually saying, right. And, and, you know, it's, it's deadly serious stuff, Tim, right. Because, you know, we're, we're a country that takes liberty and freedom seriously. And at the core of that is that the government doesn't get to take your stuff or take you or, you know, whatever without due process. And that's, that's true of everybody in our country. And there are these very, very narrow exceptions, including the Bizarre Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which says that in this very limited circumstance, if there's a state of war, or if they're in wonderful sort of 18th century language, if there is a predatory incursion, then due process disappears. Well, you know, the White House has a few lawyers and they know that we're not in a state of war. And so they were like, OK, maybe we can convince some folks that there is a predatory incursion. Maybe Alito and Clarence Thomas will sign up for

that idea and maybe we can get a few more. Well, that, of course, relies on the notion that this that's trend de Aragua is something other than just a regular terrible street gang, right? Well, it turns out that the intelligence community that the Americans spend 90 billion-ish a year to pay for looked at this and said, no, there is no direction of Tren de Aragua by Venezuelans. And, I mean, that's scary for two reasons. Number one, due process is pretty important, and it's important for people you don't like as well as for people that you do like. And secondly, you know, the president and a lot of senior officials were, if I may put this very nicely, not being entirely honest with us about this. Yeah, that is very nicely, not entirely honest. I mean, they made it up out of whole cloth,

it seems like to me. I'll sign up for that. Okay. I do wonder, there are a few things that are concerning about this. There's one, I don't know if I want to call it a silver lining, but the thing that I was curious about, which is these guys, why did they play ball with you, do you think? I mean, I'm kind of surprised that the administration isn't just totally stonewalling everything just based on how they're following the norms and procedures and rules of law across other elements of the administration? Yeah, no, I mean, it's a fascinating question. We're all scratching our heads around here because you're, of course, referring to the fact that I guess it was the Freedom of the Press Foundation submitted a Freedom of Information Act request. And lo and behold, it was acted on very quickly. The report that is now public is dated April 7th.

You know, sometimes FOIA requests can take months and months, if not years, right? Boom, it's out there. There's probably a story there. I don't know what it is. But what I do fear, you know, since this was just such a black eye for the administration's credibility on such an important topic, what I do fear is that, you know, some pretty hefty political people are now knocking on the door of whatever poor SOB does FOIA requests for the government and saying, it's time for you to take a very long vacation to a radar station in Alaska. That's also concerning. Okay. Thank you. I love that. That's very appropriate for the bulwark that you take a little hopeful anecdote and turn it into something scary

and concerning and alarming. So I guess my other hopeful potential anecdote is these guys have almost no leg to stand on legally, I think, as far as looking forward. I want to get to the people that are already in El Salvador next. As far as looking forward, making this argument, what do you make of that? I mean, this seems to really undermine any plausible case they would have that this is an appropriate use of the Alien Enemies Act. Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, the case was always going to be thin, right? And again, there's this bizarre, you know, 1798 language about a predatory incursion, you know, and so it was always going to be a thin read, right? I mean, what's next? You know, is the mafia going

to be subject to this because they look like trend in Araragua and maybe they have some connection to Sicily? I mean, you can see the slippery slope here. Right. So, yeah. And I'll tell you, this makes me a little nervous, too, because, yeah, they don't have a legal any legal ground to stand on. And it's you know, in some ways it's ridiculous. Right. Because if they had afforded these people due process, these people would be on their way out of the country, by and large, right? But they chose not to. They chose a shortcut. Now they're embarrassed about the fact that they were lying to the American people about the connections between Venezuela and Tren de Aragua. And of course, you know, this is the Trump administration, right? So backing down is never okay. You know, Tulsi Gabbard is still out there

saying this is a case of, you know, a media outlet manipulating a report. You can read the darn report and it contradicts what she says. Right. And so, you know, it makes me nervous because at some point the courts are going to rule. You guys had no basis to do this. So you need to get these people back. And, you know, Stephen Miller is going to be whispering in the president's ear. Just don't do it. Just don't do it. And now you've got the prospect of a president ignoring the Supreme Court. And that is a very, very ugly place for this country to be. Yeah, it's alarming. What are the folks that have now that are in El Salvador because of these actions, those three planes or whatever that have been there now,

and at least several cases where it seems like these folks are not even trying to Aragua, even if they were doing a predatory incursion. Like, you know, the makeup artist, the guy with the autism awareness tattoo, the Uber driver in Michigan that accidentally drove across to Canada. And there's the family that went to Columbia first, came here the right way. I like there are four or five of these at minimum. And so do you have any thoughts on what is possible at this point regarding those folks? Sure, I know what's possible. It would take three milliseconds for the president of the United States to call up Mr. Bukele, the president of El Salvador, and say, every single person that got off that plane and

is in your prison gets on a plane this afternoon and comes back. That's absolutely possible. El Salvador is not going to say no, right? But it's an ego question for this president who doesn't like to be told what to do and certainly doesn't like to backtrack from a previous position. So now we're in the uncomfortable position that I, that I alluded to before the courts are eventually going to order that that happened. And, you know, uh, the MAGA folks are going to say, yeah, but these are, these are illegal, undocumented, illegal aliens. A lot of them are gang members. Fine. That, that may be true. In which case we want them the hell out of the country or in a United States prison. Right. I mean, they never needed to be sent to El Salvador. You know, they could have been sent to their home countries. They could have been imprisoned here in the United States.

But the point is that that's irrelevant who they are. You know, bad people are entitled to due process in this country, too. And the whole reason for that is that, you know, everybody is entitled to it. We don't know if somebody is bad until they've been through due process. Yeah. And it does. It feels like now we're moving out of the intelligence space into kind of the PR and like the politics of all this, but it already feels like the attention is starting to wane, right? And like, there's so much crazy stuff happening in the world. Trump's doing so much crazy stuff. Like what do you feel as an elected official that it's going to be

incumbent upon you guys, the Democrats to use the power you have in the minority to continue to advocate on this? Or is this like a, these guys are boned till 2029? What do you what do you think? Yeah, look, I mean, you know, rule of law is not something that should be, you know, judged against whether the American people are focused or not on it. The fact is that it's important all the time. And yeah, we're going to keep raising hell. But, you know, gosh, I'd love to imagine I'd love to imagine that maybe some of my Republican colleagues might also say, hey, rule of law is important. Do we really want a precedent set where a president can just decide to arbitrarily restrict due process? I mean, I chuckle with my Republican opponents, you know, when President Bernie Sanders is in office.

You know, are you guys going to love the fact that you created an imperial powers for the guy? So I'd love to believe that maybe that would help, but I'm not holding my breath on it. Do you ever get any serious replies to that question? So this is a real question. I mean, I've got a couple of people I'd like to send to El Salvador. You know, if Jim Himes is ever president again, I might have a few folks I could recommend. Absolutely. You can run yourself and just let it happen. You know, look, there's a list of 300 questions that none of my Republican colleagues want to answer. Right. That's one of them.

Tariffs is another one. Medicaid is another one. Because, you know, right now they know that to get up in the president's face is to probably bring around the end of their political career. And that, you know, I'm a big believer that there's some things that you ought to be willing to sacrifice your political career about, including maybe the rule of law. But unfortunately, way too many of my Republican colleagues don't feel the same way. All right, last thing on a separate topic. We had some news yesterday that we had yet another Super Hornet fighter jet on the Harry S. Truman aircraft get lost into the Red Sea. Still called the Red Sea so far.

We're renaming a lot of seas. We're not doing well for bringing prices down, but we're renaming a lot of bodies of water. So I don't know. With the Red Sea, we might update that to something else. I don't know. The MAGA Red Sea. The Red Hat Sea, maybe. We've lost, is it two?

Two jets we've lost in the sea there. Do you have any intel on what the hell's happening? Is the Secretary of Defense on this at all? You know, I don't have a good answer for you on that. You know, I'll sort of reserve judgment. I want to give our troops in the field a lot of latitude on how they operate, especially when they're engaged in hostilities as they are. But yeah, this does raise some questions, right? And again, I don't want to speculate too much, but I think of the United States Navy as being incredibly, incredibly competent. And to lose two very, very expensive fighters in a fairly short period of time does raise some questions. Yeah, two jets putting putting an Atlantic journalist on a text chat,

or firing random people. Not a lot of W's on the board for Secretary Hegseth so far. Several staffers writing op-eds about how he's terrible. Not a great resume so far. I just, you know, amongst many other things, I wish he would, he seems to delight mainly in trolling on social media, you know, and in a healthy society, the secretary of defense doesn't have a spare millisecond to troll people on social media. And by the way, no desire to do so either, because they're conscious of the fact that they have to be serious people to do the jobs that they have. Congressman Jim Himes, thanks for keeping us posted on everything going on in Intel

world. I'm sure we'll be talking again soon. Thanks a lot. Take care.