Jack - Bonus - Clean up On Aisle 45 - Bork ‘Em All (feat. Jake Sherman)

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

This week find out: who is on Biden’s commission Supreme Court reform; what is going on with court expansion; what makes Andrew really sad; who makes Andrew really giddy; why AG shows up in a FOIA request; and who gets a buh-bye this week.Follow our guest on Twitter:Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman)Former Lead Counsel, House Impeachment Inquiry #1Want to support the show and get it ad-free?https://patreon.com/aisle45podPromo Codes Listen to AG and Dana live on the Stereo app! Download it to your phone for free and Interact with some of your favorite podcasters. https://stereo.com/allisongill Go to Stamps.com, click on the Microphone at the TOP of the homepage and type in CLEANUP for a free 4 week trial and a free postage scale.

M-S-W-Media. Hey, it's Kimberly Host of The Start Me Up Podcast. If you like your politics with some loose talk and salty language, you're gonna love my show. I interview the coolest people like Mary Trump, Kathy Griffin, and DNC Chair Jamie Harrison. The Start Me Up Podcast has an easygoing, casual style and a strong emphasis on left-leaning politics. We also have Frank discussions about sex and more than a few spirited rants. Just visit patreon.com slash Start Me Up or wherever you get your podcasts and start listening

today. The rule of law is not just some lawyer's turn of phrase. It is the very foundation of our democracy. The essence of the rule of law is that light cases are true and light. That there not be one rule for Democrats, and another for Republicans, one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless, one rule for the rich, and another for the poor,

or different rules, depending upon one's race or ethnicity. To serve as Attorney general at this critical time is a calling I am honored and eager to answer. Hello and welcome to episode three of Cleanup on Ile45. I'm A.G. and I'm joined as always by Andrew Torres. Hi A.G. How are you? I am well. I'm having.G. and I'm joined as always by Andrew Torres. Hi, A.G. How are you?

I'm well. I'm having a weird day. I got some FOIA information. We're going to talk about it a little bit. It's really an interesting day because I have some legal questions for you. Surprise legal questions. Those are the best. Lawyers love it when you haven't prepped that out.

Can you like, on the spot? Here, answer a couple of things. But other than... Well, I sent it to my lawyers as well, and they were like, whoa, so it's big, it's big. I can't wait, that was some exceptional teasing there, so. So other than finding your name in government documents, how have you been?

I've been good, I had a good week. I feel like we're starting to get into, we're starting to settle into the Biden calm a little bit. I noticed that I didn't have 97 headlines at the top of a daily beans this morning. It was only about seven or eight. So it's, you know, it's a little different. The fire hose is slowing down. Yeah, I noticed that for once when people said, what's the biggest law story, as you know, we were prepping for opening arguments, it was not a Trump story, right?

It was the what's going on with GameStop and everything. But I mean, it's been four years since the answer to that question was anything other than, you know, well, what is our criminally insane game show host of a president doing? So, yeah, so I'm with you. So I was fantastic up until prepping for the show and then I get super depressed. So. Yeah, and I know why you got depressed too, because we're going to talk about that in a minute. But I want everyone to make sure I will, if you've already, if you're listening, you've already

found the podcast. So I guess this doesn't make any sense, but clean up is one word when you search for it. But we had the honor of chatting with former House Council for the Democrats during the first impeachment trial, Daniel Goldman. We'll have that interview for you later in the show. I might have fangirled a tiny, tiny bit, or a guard interview, but I tried to keep it together. But at the end of the day, this was literally a dream come true for me. Anyway, please keep going. It was fun. It was really good to talk to him. He's just so smart.

He's just so well spoken. But what I think could be the lead story for this week on Clean Up, Andrew, you and I have been beating the court expansion drum for a long time now. You specifically called for doubling the federal bench. And I've been talking about expanding the Supreme Court to at least 13 members. Well, out this week, from Politico, the Biden administration has moved forward with the creation of a bipartisan commission to study reforms to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. The commission will be housed under the purview of the White House Council's office and filled out with behind the scenes help from Biden's campaign lawyer Bob Bauer, who will

co-chair the commission. Its specific mandate has yet to be decided, but in a signal that the commission is, indeed, moving ahead. Some members have already been selected. Among those will be Christina Rodriguez. She's a professor at Yale Law School, former deputy assistant to Attorney General in the Obama Department of Justice. She'll join Bauer as co-chair.

Caroline Fredrickson, a former president of the American Constitution Society, and Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former assistant attorney general in the Bush Department of Justice will serve on the commission. And that's why you're mad. Yeah.

And I think it should be, right? So, yeah. So let's unpack all of that, okay? Well, let me, the Fredericks and appointment, I think, is the key. Because Fredericks and his hinted that she's intellectually supportive of ideas like court expansion. In 2019, she sat in an interview with Eric Lash, who was the executive director of the LGBT bar association and founder of Greater New York.

She said, quote, I often point out to people who aren't lawyers that the Supreme Court is not defined as a nine person body in the Constitution, and it has changed size many times. So I think she's a kind of a key person, but Goldsmith, meanwhile, is likely to frustrate the pros, the progressives, right? Yeah. And for whatever reason, news sources are really downplaying how bad the Goldsmith appointment is, right? So let's talk briefly about everybody else that we know so far. So first, we know that this committee is going to be nine to 15 members. That's what Biden has said.

We know four members already. And I guess in fairness to Joe Biden, let me say that I'm not overly concerned about Bob Bauer being the other co-chair, right? Oppositeite Christina Rodriguez. He's a centrist institutionalist type and yes, in 2018 he wrote an op-ed on why Democrats should not pack the court, right? But I'm willing to give him a tiny bit of a mulligan. I went on a nationally televised radio show in 2017 and said Democrats should not pack the court, right? And the reason in 2017, 2018 was really simple.

Republicans could have packed the court back then, right? When you say pack the court, can you tell me what you mean? Do you mean expand it or do you just mean to point judges? Because packing seems like a weird thing to me. You have a, if you, you either point judges or you expand. Right. Right. And, and I, I think Democrats are sort of deliberately obfuscating blurring the line on those two things because it enables them to make this argument without explicitly making it. And that is this. Donald Trump very clearly politicized the judiciary to a degree that would have been unconscionable

under any other president, right? It by the second half of Donald Trump's sole term in office, it literally, I mean, we call them justins and quar's over on opening arguments. But literally, like, it was, if you're 35 and you're a right-wing lunatic, I don't care, I want you on the bench. And so Justin Walker went from teaching creative writing at the University of Louisville Law School

to being a heartbeat away from the Supreme Court in six months, right? And this is somebody who, you know, at plenty smart, right? Former debate opponent of mine, right? But not remotely qualified to have been a lifetime judicial appointee, and he's like 32.

And that's just one example, right? There were tons of these these and way less qualified. So people who didn't even go to college, probably. Yeah, it more Donald Trump appointees were rated not qualified or qualified by the American bar association than any, than any presidential administration in, since the ABA has been rating judicial appointees. And again, I know we don't have Q and odd listeners here, but the ABA is a nonpartisan independent body

that just assesses the qualifications of candidates. And so, you know, I mean, you had associates. Justin, the reason I continued to pick on Justin Walker is not just because I debated him, but, and he was fundamentally dishonest in our debate. But, but because he literally spent zero time practicing the law before being crammed on to the Eastern District of Kentucky,

and then immediately, like three immediately, like one opinion, three months later, being elevated to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, right? Which again, is the proving grounds for the Supreme Court, like that's Merrick Garland's Court, former Court now. So to go back to your question, yes, right? Democrats have been deliberately combining the idea of packing the courts as meaning just putting your judicial ideologues on the bench with the idea of expanding the bench and in

particular, expanding the Supreme Court, right? And the idea is to say, okay, the latter is a reasonable solution to the former, which by the way, it is, right, because Article 3 judges serve for life. They can be impeached. It's happened a dozen times in our nation's history, but we're not impeaching the Justin's and Cori's from the bench. They're there. No matter what you heard people throwing around Bernie Sanders proposed a like rotating

them off the Supreme Court. That's not going to happen. It is absolutely not a tenable view of the of the of the article three powers. So so there. So we're stuck with these these folks and and let's be clear. Donald Trump appointed about as many justices in four years as Barack Obama and George W. Bush did in eight, right? He got 54 judges to the to the various circuit courts of appeal, three on the Supreme Court and 174 district court nominees. It's bad. Now, I want to ask you just

about commissions in general because there's there's kind of two sides here, right? One side is like, sweet. He's putting together a commission to look at court reform. And the other side is, commissions are where things go to die. And nothing's going to happen. Even Politico says, quote, but any major structural reform is going to be a heavy lift. Several Democratic senators have signaled their opposition to these kinds of measures.

Chuck Schumer, some majority leader, said Monday he was waiting for Biden's commission to decide a path forward on reforms for SCOTUS. So is this a commission assembled to appease the people who want court reform? Or do you think they might actually get something done? So I look at this in two ways, right? And I can see both sides. If you have a bipartisan commission that is carefully crafted that comes back with clear recommendations, then you have a pretty good case

to take to the American public, right? To say, hey, look, I got 15 different people together. I put eight Republicans on it, or seven Republicans on it. And the final vote was 13 to 2, to double the federal judiciary, to add 400 new United States district court judges, which by the way, any objective commission will

come to that result, right? The federal judiciary is criminally overworked right now. It got stressed past the breaking point, thanks to COVID-19. And that trickles down, right, because you have a constitutional, if you are a criminal defendant, you have a constitutional right to a speedy trial. So that means civil litigation already overburdened and pushed out of the system gets put down to the absolute bottom of the pot. Like everybody knows, if you, if you, if you would say in a nonpartisan way, what, what should we do to fix the judiciary? Everybody left right and center would say, give us more judges, give us more resources,

give us more magistrate judges. Yeah. And now, power the co-chair who you mentioned there briefly, apparently as a proponent of term limits for federal judges. What do you think of that? I think that would be a terrible, terrible idea. And I think of it because of the Mitch McConnell rule, right? idea. And I think of it because of the Mitch McConnell rule, right? There is no way to enforce term limits among Supreme Court or Article 3 judges. It would be some kind of voluntary

ethics system. And what that will do is reward the people who don't play by the rules and punish the people who do. Kind of like how we got rid of Katie Hill and Al Franken, but we still have Marjorie Taylor Green. Wow. Okay. Put a pin in that that we've got to come back to. All right. Well, we have to take a quick break, but we've got some more stuff that we want to go over and talk about. And we know, even my surprise FOIA information. I can't wait. Drop on you after the break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey everybody it's AEG. Do you ever listen to the podcast and shout questions at your phone hoping we can somehow hear you? Well now we can. We're going live on the stereo app where you can ask your questions to us directly or make comments or just say hi. So

join us for the cleanup on Al45 after party Q&A for uncensored opinions and exclusive content only available on the stereo app. I love the stereo app, I'm on the app talking all the time and listening to other shows, you can follow me at Allison Gill and get notified every time we go live. We'll take a deep dive into a variety of topics and interact directly with you, so use the link in the description of the show and then join us over on the stereo app. The stereo app has thousands of live social conversations with a wide range of genres for every interest,

including news, comedy sports, and more. You choose whether you get to be a co-host, participate as a guest, or simply listen in on exclusive conversations. We do this, Andrew Torres and I, for Clean Up on aisle 45 every Tuesday, 5 p.m. Pacific time, 8 p.m. Eastern time. So don't miss our Clean Up on aisle 45 every Tuesday at 5 p.m. Pacific time 8 p.m. Eastern time. So don't miss our cleanup on aisle 45 after party over on the stereo app. We'll see you there.

And we're back and I hadn't gotten to the really, really bad news yet. Oh, yeah. Um, there's more bad news. Right. So here's the thing. You could assemble a commission. You could put unimpeachably conservative scholars on that commission, right? You could put originalists on that commission. You could put a Kiela Mar from Yale on there, for example. You could put honest, iconoclastic,

weirdo who's like my buddy Seth Bertelman, I have no idea what he would do, but I know he would speak his mind, right? The problem that I have is Jack Goldsmith is being described as a conservative, and that's not sufficient. Jack Goldsmith is a 20 year member of the Federalist Society. He's a member of the organization that got us into this mess in the first place. In 2018,

like all of the news outlets are saying, oh, well, you know, he wrote a pro-Cavanaugh piece. He didn't just write a pro-Cavanaugh piece. He wrote a piece that clapped and called out and said, hey, great job federalist society, like 20 years of grassroots lobbying, and now we're a position to radically overhaul the federal judiciary, right? This is, it is inexplicable to me. I mean, you know, this is not just inviting the fox

into the hen house, right? I mean, there are no analogies not just inviting the fox into the henhouse, right? I mean, there are no analogies that can describe how angry I am. I'm putting a member of the Goddamn Federalist Society on your judicial committee because... And a huge vocal advocate of Brett Kavanaugh. Like you said, huge vocal outspoken advocate of Brett Kavanaugh and his appointment to this Supreme Court. And look, the only honest thing you could say about Brett Kavanaugh about his judicial philosophy is what I said at the time, right, which is here is somebody who is unquestionably academically qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. And it is a litmus test of, is it permissible to have a judicial philosophy that is plainly at odds with both the Constitution

and 90% of practicing lawyers left right and center, right? If we are going to reclaim what it used to mean to be a conservative jurist, it did not use to mean that precedent doesn't fucking matter at all. And oh, yeah, well, that case is three years old. So who cares? I thought it was wrongly decided. And it was plainly obvious to me that Brett Kavanaugh was coming on to the court to continue to give voice to the right-wing, activist wing that says the only thing that matters is what I in my head imagine that the founding fathers would have thought this meant 250 years ago, which by the way, just means what you want the law to be. It is the most ridiculously activist philosophy possible.

It should be disqualifying to be on the Supreme Court. And Joe Biden knows this because Joe Biden in 1986 was the person that prevented Robert Bork from getting on to the Supreme Court and getting on to the Supreme Court for precisely this reason, because Robert Bork refused to endorse the principle that the Constitution guaranteed an inherent right to privacy, even though it doesn't say you have a right to privacy

in the text. And Robert Bork refused to endorse Brown vs. Board of Education because you can't. Brown vs. Board of Education was wrongly decided for these people. They won't tell you that in public because they watched Robert Bork go down in flames. But it is the logical consequence of their philosophy, right? It's, well, he's the reason, I mean, he's the reason. Bork was the reason we ask that now of every judge. How do you, how do you feel about the decision of Brown, where do you come down on Brown

V. Board? And that's why we have, now we, I feel like it wasn't until some idiot ate his deodorant stick. Then you had to put on the outside of your deodorant for external use only. It wasn't until we found out that he doesn't come down on the side of Brown v. Board that was it that it was decided correctly. Now we have to ask them all. And look, let's unpack.

Here's how that happened, right? Nina Totenberg, this is one of her very best interviews. This is with Antonin Scalia in the early 2000s, right? And she said, your view is that terms in the Constitution mean what they would have meant to an ordinary reader at the time that they were written, right? And Scalia said, yes. And so Nina Tottenberg said, so let's take cruel and unusual punishment, right? That means what somebody's take cruel and unusual punishment, right? That means what somebody thought was cruel and unusual punishment for 1789. And Scalia said, yep.

And Nina said, so like the fact that the rack and thumb screws and water torture were all in widespread use means that if a state wanted to bring those back, you'd be fine with it. And Scalia said, well, I don't think if a state wanted to bring those back, you'd be fine with it. And Scalia said, well, I don't think any state would want to bring those back. And Nina Tottenberg, you know, God bless her journalistic heart said, right, right, right. But if, and Scalia said, well, well, yeah, right. And look, that's the game, right? That, that, that, and now let's apply that to Brown versus Board of Education.

If, right, equal protection under the law means what it did to the average person reading it at the time that the 14th Amendment was passed, the immediate post-civil war, United States of America, it very clearly meant separate but equal. Zero people who voted for the 14th amendment thought that it would mean that schools had to be integrated, right? Nobody thought that at the time. And so you cannot be an originalist.

And yes, I know I'm aligning over some of the various flavors of originalism. We talk about this a lot on opening arguments. I'm not doing it now, right? This is all part of the game. You cannot ascribe to this philosophy and also say brown v board of education was rightfully decided without doing gymnastics that would make, you know, anyone blush. What I don't get is why they want to be originalists. Like what? So for what? Like what's the end game? What's the goal?

So this was really well illustrated in the Supreme Court's Janice decision. Janice versus Ask Me. And that was a kind of an obscure labor case, not a lot of people saw it. But essentially it was whether in Michigan, a public sector labor unions, which are the sole collective bargaining, right? So they represent both members and non-members. We no longer have absolute closed shops, so they can't pass on their political costs to non-members, but they can pass on unions could under Michigan law pass on their non, their administrative cost to non-members, because they negotiate on behalf of non-members, right?

And for three decades, Republicans have been trying to change the law in Michigan, right? And they've lost. And you know why they've lost? Because that policy isn't fucking popular, right? Because people recognize that in public sector unions, right, just pay your, you know, if you allow people to opt out, you will cripple public sector unions

and government employees and teachers and everybody else will get fewer benefits, right? It will be worse for workers. And so they lost at the ballot box. And so what they did was, said, oh, hey, we got a brand new super activist conservative Supreme Court. Let's litigate the exact same case

that we lost on in 1972. It was a case called a booed, right? Ah, I know that one. Yeah, same facts, exact same thing. And let's just go in and say, uh, that was a bad case and go the other way because you should, because screw unions. And Alito wrote the opinion and Alito said the primary criterion that he uses in determining whether to apply starry decisis or not is whether the prior opinion upon which you seek to rely is

whether the prior opinion upon which you seek to rely is right is rightly decided. The quality of the reasoning. So in other words, what that means is if if prior precedent happens to agree with Samolito, then he's okay with respecting it. But if it doesn't, no. So what? Let's blaze a new trail because something being wrongly decided is the primary criterion, which is to say that starry decisis means nothing at all. Right? You were not bound in anyway. And is that sort of what there is that sort of the way to go after Roe v. Wade? Yeah, right. Because remember, Roe v. Wade still exists because of Planned Parenthood versus Casey, right? This, the, the, it's a super, it's an excellent question. And, and let's do

30 seconds on it really quickly. Conservative activists tried this in the late 80s, right? And, and they were teeing up abortion cases to try and say, well, look, we've had eight years of Ronald Reagan. He's appointed an awful lot of people to the bench. The Supreme Court looks very different than it did in 1972. So let's take a swing. And in Planned Parenthood versus Casey, 1989 decision, the majority opinion was authored by Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. And they both essentially said, look, if we were looking at row as a question of first impression, we would probably come out the other way. But we are guided by starry decisis,

by the principle that this has been settled law for 20 years, and we don't disturb settled law lightly, and we look to a variety of factors. We look to have the conditions so changed as to render our prior opinion a mistake. Has the prior opinion proved unworkable in practice? These are the kinds of things. Again, what the court said in Brown versus Board of Education, to come forward and go,

yeah, boy, we sure screwed that up. We made a total mistake. We were 100% wrong. That used to be the test for starry decisis, right? It was, can you come forward and say, this has just been an intellectual and moral and practical and legal disaster? And if you can't, you got to stick with it because the law means something and it doesn't just change every time you get some Yahoo President who gets to appoint a couple of Supreme Court justices.

No, speak in a president's appointing people you don't like. Go back to the school. Smith fell a fair second. Yeah, I like to do that. Is this particularly specifically was he chosen by Biden for this position? So I don't, I mean, all I have to go by are the news stories, but So I don't I mean all I have to go by are the news stories, but and look I would use the same analysis that I would use with Kavanaugh, right? Like Goldsmith, right? Harvard law professor guy who moderates a lot of different forums. He's clearly he's smarter than I am

No doubt about it, right? You had him come on the show, right? He would convince half our audience that originalism is fine, right? But the problem is that I don't see Jack Goldsmith signing off on a commission that approves of expanding the federal judiciary. And we don't even know the rules of the commission either. Yeah, we don't know any of that stuff yet. What we know is we don't know their mandate, but I'm just wondering if Biden appointed him or if power appointed him, I couldn't quite get the clarity on that in any of the reporting.

I don't, I mean, I'm in the same, I'm in the dark as much as you on that. If anybody knows, hit us up on Twitter at aisle 45 pod AISLE 45 POD. Let us know. Oh, that's also, let me add. Good way to get a hold of us via Twitter. You can also, we read every message that comes in at our Patreon page, which is patreon.com slash Ile45Pod. Or you can send us a good old email at Ile45Pod at gmail.com. Wonderful. Now. Wonderful.

Now. Yeah. Are you done? Are you done? Are you done? Corvetshing about gold? I'm trying. I'm gonna bring my blood pressure down.

Look, people have been asking, are we just gonna cheerlead everything that Joe Biden does in the years? No. Yeah. And that's why I wanted to know if Biden did it or if Bower did it. Yeah. And I think it's really important that you, because you're right, no one is, no, it's like, it seems like the reporting is absent

on this, it's huge. Yep. It's a huge story. If you want to get anything done, and there has to be a vote, and everyone's got a vote, I don't understand why he would be on this commission. I, Donald Trump did not put any members

of the American Constitution society on any judicial commissions that he had. So, you know, all right. So, I've been waiting for the story. Now, as you know, I used to work for the Department of Veterans Affairs. My podcast was then investigated. I was denied representation during those investigatory fact finding sessions. Although there's some funny, there's some funny parts to that story though, Andrew, because when they had me on the phone and had me looking up myself online

and asking if it was me, one of the videos they made me watch was me leading a three-part harmony of the word fuck in a sold-out theater and Minneapolis about Maniford. And so while I was terrified being interrogated, I was also, he-he-he. It's hard to be terrified when you're going, fuck, fuck fuck fuck Yeah, fuck yeah

I'm like yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's yeah, that's uh sold out theater Three part fuck-time and he yeah, you got me um Anyway, after some time you can read my whole story if you want to. You can look me up, Alison Gill, at the Whistleblower News Network. They did a piece on me in their outstanding publication, digital online publication. But the thing is that I could, you know, I never had, I mean, it all seems fairly obvious that they were removing me for my political stuff. But I never really had that smoke and gun piece of, which is still circumstantial evidence,

but that piece of evidence to show that they had their eye on me and they didn't like what I was doing politically. Well, friend of mine was doing a FOIA request for his name Poppenepp in different information from the Department of Veterans Affairs. And sent me part of the FOIA request that had my name in it. And it is, it's a briefing document to the secretary, to the secretary of the VA. That says, it's a long list.

It's the social media takeaway. It's like a brief, one-page document to brief the director on what's going on in social media. So key points here in this briefing. Top 10 tweets were on the storyline of the House Republicans walking out and refusing to vote on legislation regarding healthcare for female veterans

And then they list a few people saying they tweeting that they you know the House Republicans don't care about their constituents vote vets tagged Hashtag shameful they go on about this for a while the poison pill amendment The VA affairs Dems are in here, criticized Republicans, someone criticized Republicans for walking out, et cetera, et cetera. You get down to the bottom here. They also mentioned red tea, red tea raccoon, friend of ours, and Travis Acres.

And then they get down here and they say, oh, and by the way, Mueller, she wrote, posted about the claim that the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection has been shielding Trump appointees from whistleblower and EEO complaints while retaliating against complainants. And then they list how many times it was retweeted and how many likes it had. So and that was four months before I was removed from my job. Wow. So I take it, you have asked your counsel to drop another foyer request.

Because I would sure, I mean, again, don't take legal advice from a podcast and you have plenty of fine lawyers working for you. You don't need legal advice from a podcast and you have plenty of fine lawyers working for you. You don't need another one, but I would kinda like to know what follow-up to that email was, right? Like, is this a one-off? Very, because look, let's- Well, that wasn't an email.

Well, yeah, it was the briefing, right? That was a briefing document, yeah. But I could imagine, right, if you're listing, like, all right, here are a dozen things in social media that, you know, might look bad for us. And you show up on one, right? If it's a one-off, then maybe that I'm doing my best to play devil's advocate here. Why? I don't know why. But I sure would want to know, well that's why you follow it up with an additional request, right? What was the response to this briefing document? What are their mentions of Mueller

she wrote, right? And Alison Gill and Mueller she wrote in any emails between these top six advisors and my chain of command. Yep. Mm-hmm. Already on it. Oh, I can't wait. Do you remember Monica Goodling from the George W. Bush administration?

Mm-hmm. Okay. So she was a, one of these, you know, has a cargo cult law degree from Regent University, right? Which I don't even know if they're accredited. has a cargo cult law degree from a region university, which I don't even know if they're accredited. I certainly don't think they're recognized by the American Bar Association.

If you look at their curricula, right? Like ordinary law schools will say like, well, you've gotta, contracts and torts and constitutional law. And Regent requires you to learn apologetics and like the role of Christ in discipleship. And it's, it's, it's, it's not baggary, right? Like she, she was, you know, graduated from Messiah College, went to Regent University. It's Pat Robertson, Floss, right? Like it is. Messiah College?

Yeah. I have no idea what the hell Messiah College is, but like I can guess, right? But Regent University was founded by Pat Robertson, right? Like, so. Yeah, I thought you were joking. Oh no. Oh, God.

I'm Messiah College. I never joke about the Messiah. You should do it. Um, and, and, uh, and so anyway, anyway, story broke in 2007 that essentially this woman, Monica, good or least she was like 30 at the time. Right. She was, you know, out of a cargo-called law school, no ability to practice, was working at the Department of Justice and basically was vetting US attorneys for are you politically conservative enough, right? And so, you know, various career professionals were being passed over because Monica didn't think they were trustworthy because they were Democrats.

And that goes against internal DOJ policy, as you might imagine, getting rid of Alison Gill for her work on Muller, she wrote so long as you undertook the appropriate steps not to violate the Hatch Act, which you and I have discussed on my show at length how you did, right? It retaliating against you for your political views is it's not a protected political class, right? Like Starbucks can fire you as a barista if you wear your MAGA hat in and they tell you to take it off.

Okay, but the federal government, it is widely considered sort of among civil service that you don't take someone's political views into account in hiring, firing, promoting decisions. Right? Line officials, sure, right? We're about to do a Kiss and Goby segment, right? Like so drawing that line can be tough, but somebody in your position, I feel pretty strongly that the VA's internal policies would prohibit them doing from what sure looks like they did.

would prohibit them doing from what sure looks like they did. Yeah, so we're going to get that, uh, that foyer request and see if there's multiple instances and mentions. Yeah, I can't wait. Thanks for sharing that. Hmm, fun. Yeah, you know, for however I thought, I'm no one knows who I am. I'm not big enough for them to get rid of me for this. It must be something else. So it can't be that. It can't be this podcast. And then, you know, me and then the Mick Mulvaney story comes out

that he's got a trick to move people across country to get them to quit. And that's what they did to me, but I didn't. And so they tried that move with me. And so, you know, and then of course we won the webby, the same year, or the same month that I was told, my job was moving across country, come back three months later, my podcast is being investigated.

I'm being investigated for all kinds of things, but they couldn't fire me for cause. They never found any cause to fire me. So they actually found a work around and removed me for being medically unfit. So what okay? Can I say I think that wound up doing a lot of us a favor by freeing up your time to do the investigative reporting and podcasting that not only that but I'm after not working for the government anymore I was not bound to buy the hatch act and I could fund raise for campaigns and we did absolutely absolutely and

Yeah, and and look when you win by a point and a half Every dollar that we raised out there for us often warlock You know, you can you can say our listeners help make that happen and every dollar that we raised out there for us often Warnock. You know, you can say our listeners help make that happen. And that's true. So. So that all turned out. Are you excited to talk to Daniel Goldman?

Oh my God. Oh my God. Andrea, that's Daniel Goldman. Oh. I'll get your fainting couch for you. We'll be right back. Thank you. After this message with Daniel Goldman, stay with us. it taking trips to the post office, not only dangerous because of COVID, but it's probably not how you want to spend your time and your money. That is why I recommend mailing and shipping online at stamps.com.

Stamps.com allows you to mail and ship anytime, anywhere, right from your computer at home, in your jambies if you want. You can send letters, ship packages, and pay a lot less with discounted rates from the Postal Service and UPS and more. Stamps.com has saved businesses thousands of hours and tons of money. With stamps.com, you can get the services of the post office and UPS all in one place. Plus, big discounts on mailing and shipping rates. to of packages per day. Stamps.com can handle it all with ease. Simply use your computer to print official US Postage 24-7 for any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send. Once your mail is ready, you just schedule a pickup or drop it off.

It's that simple. With stamps.com, you can get discounts of up to 40% off Post Office rates and 62% off UPS shipping rates. Stamps.com is a no-brainer, saving you time and money. It's no wonder nearly one million small businesses already use stamps.com. So stop wasting time at the Post Office and go to stamps.com instead. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, at the top of the homepage and type in clean up all one word. That's stamps.com promo code clean up stamps.com. Never go to the post office again. And joining us for the interview is the lead attorney

in the first impeachment trial, Daniel Goldman. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. You did a fantastic interview with A.G. on the daily beans a couple of days ago. And I have to tell you, the thing that struck me the most about that was your dare, I say, certainty from a political standpoint that the House impeachment

managers would not be interested in calling witnesses. And I want to drill down on that a little bit because as a trial attorney myself, right, like when I saw the 55-45 vote over jurisdiction, I thought, okay, well, great, right? Like let Rand Paul Crow about that or whatever, but that means we have the votes for witnesses. And certainly, you know, someone like a Brad Rathensberger seems like, you know, that would be really an ideal person to kind of put up, you know, and receive their testimony

and, you know, have them talk about how he felt like he had to surptitiously record the president of the United States to avoid being shaken down and lied about it later. So I still think that they're not interested in all the witnesses and talk to me about how you would approach that. So I didn't mean to say that the managers would not be interested in witnesses. I'm sure they are. The decision of whether or not there are witnesses is made by the senators. And what I was talking about was sort of the odd confluence of both parties wanting this to move quickly.

And you know, there is a scenario where you would agree on witnesses, then the managers and the presidents' lawyers would go off and do an investigation of some sort with witnesses and two depositions, and then they'd come back to the senators to deal with it. And I could see something like that in theory happening, but the problem, I think, for both parties is that just keeps this thing alive. And I think there's a real desire, certainly from President Biden and the White House, but to move past Donald Trump, and to focus on what's going on in our country with COVID and other, and the economy and all sorts of, you know, HR1, S1 voting rights. I mean, there's so many legislative priorities that the administration has.

And in Washington, you just can't do too many things at once. Even as much as people talk about it, it doesn't happen that way in my experience. So I think the impeachment managers would want witnesses. There's a lot about what Donald Trump knew and when he knew it, that we still don't really know. I think, yeah, certainly you could have Brad Raffinsberger.

You could, you know, bring in Jeffrey Rosen. You could, I'd love to talk to Mark Meadows. I'd love to talk to Dan Scavino. You know, there are a lot, I mean, I'd want to bring in some of the capital police victims. And have them, I mean, as a prosecutor, the most compelling testimony is victim testimony. So, you know, if this were a court of law and this were a trial, I'd have a whole line up of witnesses and I'm sure all the impeachers managers who are lawyers and litigators themselves would love to do that.

But I just think the practical reality is, and Senator Schumer has kind of foreshadowed this, is the Democrats want to move past this to focus on the fact that they have a majority and all three relevant entities that can pass legislation. And they want to move on to the things that majority and in all three relevant entities that can pass legislation and They want to move on to the things that are really affecting the American public and that's no longer Donald Trump so And the Republicans this is as someone said last week, you know, I think this trial is like a root canal for them so

They are they wanted to be over as soon as possible. So it's really a function of just the practical realities of where we are that I think that in order to get this done in a week, you just can't have witnesses. And that's why I love it is because it's a root canal for the Republicans. But also, you know, like my whole, you know, my whole life right now is rooted in accountability for this president. And I don't even have a taste for how a witness path might go. Like it just would keep adding on and adding on. But I feel like you could get, you know, like you said, you do depositions behind closed

doors, you bring out the witnesses you want to bring out. It could be limited. You could limit it to, as Andrew said, and as you and I talked about last week, Daniel, that, you know, more along the lines of the election interference and the, you know, election officials in Georgia and Raffensburg, or et cetera. But, you know, there are, honestly, people who want to hear from, for, like you said, the couple of police officers that were hit, beaten, hurt, lost their eye, et cetera, because that kind of testimony has a huge impact. But I think we're also

kind of already on the road where there won't be a conviction and they're just trying to do it to do it. And like we talked about again last week, I think we're kind of relying on some sort of a commission or special counsel or Senate or congressional investigations to actually get everything out in the open and the truth to like air it out and take time to do it. Yeah, there are lots of ways to get accountability other than through impeachment. And there are better ways to actually get to the facts than, you know, a Senate trial for impeachment. And so I don't think that the fact that there will be no witnesses means that there will not be a deep dive into everything that happened, everything the president knew what the security deficiencies came from his efforts. Yes, especially this new memo that we got this weekend,

date of January 4th from Chris Miller, because we talked about the fact that all this evidence now has time to come out between now and February 9th, but that memo disarming basically the national guard was pretty damning. Yeah, and I'm sure there's more to it, and I'm sure there's more conversations involved. I don't, you know these these people are no longer They're no longer government employees. They their protections are far more limited

So you know, there's there's a there are pathways to getting to the bottom of it And by the way, as an aside, it's a Biden administration and this is all administration materials. There are emails that are gonna be within the control of now the Biden administration, not the Trump administration. So. That's an excellent point.

Yeah, and anything they tried to delete or erase, which I'm sure they tried, is actually going to leave a really bright giant breadcrumb trail. You can't just go in and you know, as much as you would like to remove things from the code word NICE system, you can't just do that and have it disappear, right? To work. Yeah. Well, Daniel, something you said that really resonated with me was that if Daniel, something you said that really resonated with me was that if this impeachment, if the trial in the Senate had been held on January 7th, then there's no doubt that Donald Trump would have been, you know, would have been convicted, right?

And but that as time receivables, sadly, I think there still is some doubt, but yes, much much more likely. And wow, okay, yeah, let me not put words in your mouth, right? What a time we live in. But the real point was that the emotion of the raw shock of that insurrection on January 6th fades for reasons that sociologists will be puzzling over for decades, in correction on January 6th, fades for reasons that, you know,

I think sociologists will be puzzling over for decades, you know, but more qualified than us. I think this ties in with the witnesses in the answer that you gave, right, which is ordinarily, right? The way in which you would deal with that emotional distance is by having the testimony of victims. Right. If you review is that the political reality means that we're not going to get that, it seems like that puts kind of a tremendous onus on the House managers to write one hell of an

opening brief and you know, sort of opening presentation. Right. And the video that they're going to present. Yeah. Like, what would you do to sort of remind people like, hey, we have a president who tried to overthrow democracy as we know it and let's not let him walk. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's not going to be in the opening brief. I can tell you that much that's not gonna move the public It'll probably get little attention as ours did last time But there is a very I read yours last time But there's a there's a very powerful presentation that I'm certain is in the works that will merge all of the video and the tweets and the statements both of the president of his surrogates and advocates and agents and all of these, you know, protesters and insurrectionist on social media. And you can put together a very emotional and powerful presentation that brings you back to the heart of the emotional center

of what happened that day. And we've seen a lot of the video, but my understanding is that they're working on putting together a gathering additional video. So I would expect that, you know, similar to how we put together an audiovisual presentation the last time, but that was primarily with witness testimony.

What you're going to see this time are the perpetrators of the misconduct in sort of real time. And you'll see, you know, ranging back from the president's comments about how there are good people on both sides and the Charlottesville thing when there was violence there and how at the campaign rallies that the president had,

how he would, you know, threaten violence against people who were protesting there. And then all of his statements and tweets about the election, just you start the election being fraudulent and rigged, all of it nonsense. You can really piece together quite a powerful narrative that leads you up to January 6th. And then you'll get the protesters

on parlor and other social media sites talking about how the president was sending them to storm the Capitol and things like that. And then you'll get the video within the Capitol that was so harrowing and so remarkable on the day of, you'll be able to recreate the scene pretty well, I think. I think they went with the law firm to put that video together, though, instead of a production company or... Instead of the PR.

Yeah. Which I was personally as a PR person myself, I was upset about. I was like, come on, Hollywood, can do this for you. Let them have it. But... I'm sure they're using the same company that it's through a law firm, but it's not an entertainment company, but it's someone, it's an entity that does a lot of video presentations. A good, because I'm hoping that they're going through the law firm who has all of the people

on, like as long as Scorsese is on it and fun. No. But it's important, right? It's important to put this together properly. And I was like, oh, come on. But I like the fact that I guess they're taking the cover and doing it properly, even though there could be any number of people advising on the way that that gets put together. But it will take without that witness testimony, without the cop who was smashed in the door without that other police officer, the bearded guy with the neck tattoo, I can't remember his name, without their testimony, it's going to be hard to sort of get that visceral emotional reaction, But honestly, and I hate to sound cynical with Republicans, none of that matters.

Well, look, I don't know that it, you know, I don't know that it's gonna carry the day. And I do think it's important to remember, it's not just the Senate that this is for. This is also for the American public. And how they hold the Senate accountable for how they move. And ultimately, I mean, that's why what Donald Trump did was so scary is that the ultimate

source of accountability in our country is the voting is the elections. And for him to get so close to stealing the election and trying to do it violently through a self-coo as Fiona Hill described it, is really as close to losing our democracy as we've gotten in 250 years. At the end of the day, you know, I call me a little bit of a pessimist. So I think that it's ultimately really important to get the message across and resonate with the public who may be just catching bits and pieces of the trial as well, that how scary, how close it was

that we got to a scenario where we were potentially going to lose the democracy as we know it. And hopefully that resonates to some degree. Yeah, and I hate to think what we would have done had that been at all remotely successful. What it would have looked like because I think we're seeing it play out right now with Navalny in Russia.

What's going on with Alexi Navalny? Or Myanmar, right? Myanmar. Where they're basically saying they used the Donald Trump playbook of saying that the election was rigged and the military took over. It's, you know, one thing we don't talk enough about and spending some time on the intelligence committee,

I was introduced to this a lot more than I had ever been previously. The representation of democratic values that American State Department diplomats and others around the world carry is so important to the international order. And when Donald Trump tries to do something like this, it doesn't just jeopardize our own democracy. It jeopardizes our standing around the world. And that is scary because the United States is the greatest force for democracy around the world.

And if we have no credibility, then we run into real issues. Yeah, it's like you don't have your protective big sister there anymore. I was struck by, I think a lot of the heavy lifting that really got us through what Trump did during the election was the fact that that that people and in particular I'm thinking law professor Neil H Buchanan and and a couple of others who wrote about the Redshift phenomenon

back in May and June and said, look. You're talking about the Red Marage, though. Yeah, yeah, that said, look, with the dynamic the way it is, here's how votes are going to come in. And mathematically, right, Democrats are going to be way behind because in these purple states with Republican state legislatures, they are the in-person voting. Yeah. They are prohibited from counting early votes. That's right. They count the in-person votes and Republicans made it so you can't count male

and ballots until after midnight the next day. Right. And so you're going to have that red mirage and it's going to shift blue over the course of the evening. And I think the fact that all of our networks were prepared with that, right, that we talked about that out in the open. We did. We really helped like diffuse that narrative going in. So I guess my question is, you know, what can we be talking about that is sort of the equivalent that helps, you know, people get through, you know, the, the, the impeachment that arms them in the same way? Well, I think what we should be talking about is HR1 and S1, which is, which are the two priority bills of the House and the Senate that will completely which are the two priority bills of the House and the Senate that will completely revamp voting in this country, automatic voter registration, an assortment of different measures that make voting easier for represents. And

if the way to do that is at the ballot box. So, you know, I'm not sure the impeachment trial is going to be satisfying to a lot of people. I think it is still very important for a cup, for primarily for deterrence reasons. I think in some ways it's accountability, yes. I mean, Donald Trump should be convicted and the message should go to him and to everyone who had ever contemplated such behavior in the future that if you do something like that, you will be impeached and removed immediately

whether it's at the end of your term or the middle of your term or at any point. We need to send that message to future elected leaders but also to the world. That is, we do not accept that. Here, there is a deterrent value to going forward with this. I think the disqualification personally, and this is just my personal opinion.

I think the disqualification aspect of it is less important. Because frankly, I would love for, as a Democrat, I would love for Donald as a Democrat, I would love for Donald Trump to run in 2024. Oh, and be, and I'm sorry, but he'll be the P P candidate, which is hilarious to me, because of the Patriot party. But no, you know, I'm, I'm totally, I'm, I'm with you on that. And, and they're, you know, as I always say, GOP will eat itself.

They're like a circular firing squad. They're going to take each other down. But I would, what do you think of the Tim Keynes who's in Collins proposal, which is the resolution under section three of the 14th Amendment to bar him from running from office again and censure him? Now they want to do it in lieu of a Senate trial. I want to do it also. Ken, why, why can't we do it as well?

At this point, the trial has begun and there needs to be a trial. So it's not going to be in lieu of it. I'm personally not a fan. I think censure doesn't do anything. It doesn't deter Donald Trump. It doesn't deter people in the future. It's less severe than impeachment. To me, it's kind of a cop out. I understand the sentiment about feeling like this is a futile process, practically speaking. And we've got a lot of more significant priorities to focus on. I certainly get that sentiment.

But I do think that one of the, I think one of the problems with the Trump era is the vision into the future of everyone on in Washington, D.C. has reduced itself to 24 hours as opposed to years and years. This is really for historical purposes in my view. This is looking ahead, you know, from the from the Republican Party, I think they should be looking at this the same way. Not just what is, you know, is he going to support a primary opponent next week. It's what's the right thing to do for our country going forward and recognize that we have plenty of time. You know, when everyone says, oh, it's in the bag, et cetera, but like, why not put the spotlight on that? Why not put the spotlight on the fact that the Republicans aren't voting for this?

Let's make that a thing, you know? I mean, I'm sure that will, I'm sure that's part of it. Although I don't think that's the motivating part of it. But that is certainly why 45 Republicans supported the flimsy legal basis to dismiss the case is that they don't want to have to deal with the substance of the charge and they don't want to have to be on record to either vote, you know, to condone this activity or vote against Donald Trump. So that's something they would like to avoid having to do, which is I think

why we're seeing this. But I don't think this article 14 section three pathway is as simple as you know, as Tim Cain has outlined it. I think you would need to have some sort of due process. And it talks about, you know, rebellion, what's the other blanking on the other word, but it's insurrection or rebellion, I think it is. And you'd have to prove that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection or rebellion in order to disqualify him from the future. And I think that's a higher charge to prove than what they have right now. At least you get to the heart of it instead of, well, we just don't think you can impeach a past president.

In the first impeachment, were you surprised the way I was that no Republicans won? But that essentially the Republican Party didn't want to hear from John Bolton. Did you think you had a chance at sort of getting him on as a witness or how did that unfold? Yes. So we certainly had targeted him as a primary, as our number one witness that we wanted. We had a sense that he was privy to additional conversations that would have been relevant to the timeline and that he carried some gravitas as the National Security Advisor and as a longtime Republican.

So on this Sunday before the trial began was when his manuscript was released by the New York Times or at least excerpts of it. And the schedule for the Senate trial up until that point was significantly, had been significantly expedited. And so there was gonna be a vote on witnesses. This was the Sunday afternoon. I believe the vote on the witnesses was either gonna be Tuesday or Wednesday.

And Mitch McConnell immediately delayed things so that the vote was not until Friday. And he clearly did that because he wanted time to let this sit and simmer and he wanted to whip the caucus in order to oppose having any additional witnesses. You know, that was a very different time period, right? We were entering the election season. I think the Republicans had accepted, the Republican senators had accepted that their fortunes are going to sort of rise and fall on Donald Trump at that point. And to, you know, prolong this and to make it worse for themselves and for him. If they were ultimately not going to convict him, did nothing for them. There's no honor in doing the

procedurally right thing if ultimately you were going to quit anyway and it just would not help. So there was a faint glimmer of hope when that story broke, but it quickly dissipated as when the schedule was moved. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I hope that we'll get to speak to you again soon, maybe after the impeachment trial takes place,

but everyone House counsel for Democrats in the first impeachment, Daniel Goldman. And if you ever teach a law class, let me know. I want to audit two books. Thank you for having me. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on. All right. Take care. So that was a wonderful interview. What an incredibly just brilliant man. Absolutely wonderful to talk to him. All right. I mean, don't don't go interviewing replacement co-host yet Sorry, I don't feel I don't feel that inferior. I'm fine You will still get your bowl of whiskey and fish head tonight, okay? All right. Thank you

You're welcome now Let's talk about who's getting the boot I Love this segment. This is a way even with my blood pressure being elevated from cold Smith. Jack Goldsmith. We at least know we've got our good bye to you segment. So, Allison, we discussed on our last episode how on January 20th, 2021, President Joe Biden fired Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board after Robb refused a request from the new administration to resign.

Well, one day later, Biden made the same take it or leave it deal for Robb's replacement deputy general counsel, Alice Stock, said, hey, let us know by 5pm.m. If you're in or out or you're going to be dismissed, she was fired at 5.01 p.m. January 21st, 2021. I love a man that can keep his word. Buh-bye. How about Victoria Coates? So we talked about some of the folks in

the propaganda machine last week. Victoria Coates was hired as the president of the government in the propaganda machine last week. Victoria Cotes was hired as the president of the government funded Middle East Broadcasting Networks. She was fired with two years left on her contract. And when Cotes said, Hey, my contract says you cannot remove me unless I'm convicted of a felony. The Biden administration responded by cutting off her email.

So good for you, Joe. It's sort of like, well, he, you know, we fixed the glitch. He won't be getting a paycheck anymore. Milton Wattam. Apparently, something he kept him on the payroll after he was laid off five years ago. So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch. I'm gonna burn the building down. So goodbye to coast. Bye bye.

I love this one. Biden fired the White House physician. Do you remember that Baghdad Bob want to be? His name was Dr. Sean P Connelly and he was the one, yeah, that came out and told us that, you know, overweight septuogenarian Donald Trump was experiencing only mild COVID symptoms. Yeah. Oh, he was the doctor given us the BS updates while, well, when he was at Walter Reed with COVID. Yeah. Yeah.

That guy, right? Good bye to that guy. Good bye. I literally do not know a thing about his replacement. His replacement is Biden's personal physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor. And I, Kevin O'Connor, you could be a chiropractor and I'd still be waving bye bye to Connolly. Oh, Biden has also shown Kathy Nubell-Covaric, a former staffer to Chuck Grassley, the door. She was chief of staff at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She'll be replaced by Timothy Perry, who was a former official

with the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services. So I think you could see maybe a transition at ICE there. So bubbi, Kathy. Bye. And finally, the way you know the segment is not going anywhere for a while, Biden, we talked about this last week is committed to really rooting out the Trump appointees who have burrowed their way into civil service jobs. Likely next up on the chopping block are two Trump hacks at the Department of Energy. Michael Brown and Kyle Nicholas, they were recently added to high profile international positions at the DOE replacing career civil servant types. Brown is, of course, a, he's in the Department of Energy, so he's a former, what kind of executive? Oil? Yeah, coal. Yeah, right. What kind of executive oil? Yeah, coal. Yeah, right.

That's cool. Okay. He was the national political director for fossil fuel. For Ben Carson's 2016 campaign for presidents. Oh, well, Michael Brown. I can't wait for you to go, but bye. Yeah. And Nicholas was a political appointee who served as an advisor

in the Energy Department's International Affairs Office as under Trump. And hopefully next week we'll be and bye bye to him as well. Yeah, that will be great. I would appreciate that. I would also like to know which part didn't they understand? The Buh or the Buh? Excellent callback. Ah, that feels good. Oh, that feels good. That feels good. Oh, that feels good.

I'm just sort of basking. Yeah, I'm still in the bubbi segment. I needed a come down, you know, a cigar after our interview segments. I figured this was a good way to do it. Anything else you wanna add? Yeah, there was a bit in the New York Times about saying here, basically, I'm quoting now, when Biden swore in a batch of recruits for his new administration in a teleconference

ceremony last week, it looked like the country's biggest Zoom call. In fact, Mr. Biden was installing roughly 1,000 high-level officials in about a quarter of all the available political appointee jobs in the federal government. At the same time, far less visible transition was taking place as you just went over the quiet dismissal of holdovers from the Trump administration who have been asked to clean out their offices immediately, whatever the eventual legal consequences. I just like that, Farrah. I love that too. I have mentioned to you the degree to which the Michael Lewis book, The Fifth

Risk, really struck me that, you know, this administration was going to have to hit the ground running to do the really unsexy infrastructure work of, you know, building everything back up again after, you know, people have been trying to wreck it for four years. It's really encouraging to see that they came prepared to do that down to the level of staffing. If a random department has to fend off a wrongful termination suit, their position is okay. off a wrongful termination suit, right? Like their position is okay, yeah. Well, we'll deal with that when the time comes, but we do not want these moles sticking around. And, you know,

good for them. Yeah, indeed. Well, everybody, there's been an excellent, excellent discussion. I'm so grateful we got to talk to Daniel Goldman. It's been wonderful talking to you. I'm super sorry about Goldsmith. I know you're upset about that. So am I. It sucks. It sucks a lot. And I'm glad that we got to talk about it in the show because I don't see that really being reported anywhere else.

Watch I'll show up on Maddo tonight. But I think it's very important and it was worth the discussion. So I appreciate that. Do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here? Let's just keep holding their feet to the fire. Left right. Our guys, they're guys. That's the point of the show. So.

And don't forget, on Tuesday, at 5 p.m. Pacific and 8 p.m. Eastern, join us on Stereo Live. We'll be there. Oh, yeah, absolutely. All right, that's it. I'm signing off. I've been AG. I'm AT.

Good night. Clean up on aisle 45 is written and produced by Allison Gill and Andrew Torres, and is engineered and edited by McKenzie Mazzell and Starburn's audio. Fact checking and produced by Allison Gill and Andrew Torres and is engineered and edited by Mackenzie Mazzell and Starburns Audio. Fact checking and research by Allison Gill and Andrew Torres with quality assurance and media by Muller She Wrote LLC. Branding Design and Logo by Starburns Audio and Joil Reader with Moxie Design Studios

and her copy is written by Jesse Egan. Our music is written and recorded by Adam Oren Christopher Houghey and our opening sequence was designed by Allison Gill and mixed by Mackenzie Mazzell and Starburn's audio. Follow us on Twitter, at IL45Pod and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Don't miss our cleanup on IL45 after party over on the stereo app.

We'll be going live every Tuesday at 5 p.m. Pacific 8 p.m. Eastern. And we want to hear from you. Our most recent stereo show went a little bit like this. Yeah, but like, for example, they're trying to kick away his, he could still get the president's daily brief or at least get not the PDB, but something like it, intelligence updates and they want to take that away from them too.

Again, something they would just be voted on. And again, there's two levels of that, right? So there's an executive agency determination and it's all, like you can always change the law and you don't need to worry about it being a bill of a tinder, right, which is a law targeting a specific person. You could always just like pass it with sufficient specificity that we know who it is.

And it would not be invalidated that it only applies to like one former president, because there are only four former presidents, right? So lots of things will only apply, right? You could say, you know, to any president, any former president, you know, of the last 10 years, or what I write, like, I mean, there are lots of ways, you know, to, you know of ways to make that to narrowly tailor the bill. I am really encouraged. We talked about this on tomorrow's cleanup in the Babai section.

The Biden administration's approach to firing partisan trumpkins who have borrowed their way into the civil service is to say, yeah, we're going to fire you first and let the courts sort it out later. Yeah, and it's almost as if to say, hey, if you sue us for the max $300,000 and win, that's cost of doing business, you're fired. Yep, exactly right. And so I find that very encouraging. Yep. So do I think that, you know, various bi-executive agencies are going to look at like Trump requests for, you know, travel and extended secrets and just be like, you know, fuck you. No, we're not going to do that. Yeah, I feel very strongly that that's consistent with what they've done so far.

Stereo is the app for live social conversations and we want to talk directly with you, our listeners. So you can join our show, ask questions about news, politics, the law, justice, anything, and you can share your experiences and opinions too. So we want to hear everything from you. So download and join us live this week. Download the free stereo app. The link to our show in the description will be there and join us over on the stereo app. See you then. Season four of How We Win is Here. For the past four years we've been making history in critical elections all over the country and last year we made history again by expanding our majority in the Senate, eating election denying Republicans

and crucial state house races, and fighting back a non-existent red wave. But the Magga Republicans who plotted and pardoned the attempted overthrow of our government now control the House. Thanks to gerrymandered maps and repressive anti-voter laws. And the chaotic spectacle we've already seen shows us just how far they will go to seize power, dismantle our government, and take away our freedoms.

So, the official podcast of the persistence is back with season four. There's so much more important work ahead of us to fight for equity, justice, and our very democracy itself. We'll take you behind the lines and inside the rooms where it happens with strategy and inspiration from progressive change makers all over the country. And we'll dig deep into the weekly news that matters most and what you can do about it, with messaging and communications expert co-founder of Way to Win and our new co-host, Jennifer Fernandez

and Cona. So join Steve and I every Wednesday for your weekly dose of inspiration, action and hope. I'm Steve Pearson. And I'm Jennifer Fernandez and Cona. And this is How We Win. you