Morning Joe - Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton indicted by a federal grand jury

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton indicted by a federal grand jury Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Donald was just indicted by a grand jury in Maryland. Do you have a reaction to that? I didn't know that. You tell me for the first time, but I think he's, you know, a bad person. I think he's a bad guy, yeah. He's a bad guy. It's too bad, but it's the way it goes. That's the way it goes, right?

That's the way it goes. President Trump reacting to the indictment of his former national security advisor, John Bolton. Now the third prominent critic of the president. President to face criminal charges in recent weeks. We'll go through what the charges say and read while the Wall Street Journal editorial board says, quote, opposing Donald Trump is a perilous business, but working for him can be equally as dangerous. Also ahead, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be back at the White House today one day after President Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin will dig into the details of that call. Plus,

The battle that played out last night in New York City as the candidates for mayor traded jabs with less than three weeks to go until election day. Good morning and welcome to Morning, Joe. It is Friday, October 17th. With us, we have the co-host of our fourth hour, staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. Special Correspondent for BBC News and host of The Rest Is Politics Podcast, Katty Kay, columnist and associate editor for the Washington Post. David Ignatius is with us. Pulls a prize-winning columnist and MSNBC political analyst. Eugene Robinson is here, as well as U.S. National Editor at the Financial Times. Times, Ed Luce is here. Good to have you all on this big news day on a Friday. John Bolton, President Trump's former National Security Advisor turned vocal credit was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury in Maryland. He is expected to surrender to authorities and make an initial court appearance today, according to two senior federal law enforcement sources. Bolton is now the third high-profile political adversary of the president. to face criminal charges in less than one month, joining former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He faces 18 counts related to the transmission and retention

of national defense information. Prosecutors say Bolton stored diary-like entries about his time in government that included classified information and then shared. more than 1,000 pages of that information with two family members who did not have security clearances. Bolton is denying any wrongdoing comparing the Trump administration to Joseph Stalin's secret police who said, you show me the man and I'll show you the crime. Bolton went on to say in part, quote, these charges are not just about Trump's focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, dissent, and disagreement are foundational to America's constitutional system and vitally important to our freedom.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, meanwhile, welcomed the charges, writing in part, quote, no one is above the law. Jonathan Lemire, let's stop right there. Let's talk about these charges and what they're exactly. looking at here with this former national security advisor. Yeah, we had a similar victory lap-like statement from FBI director Cash Patel yesterday as well. It is well known, John Bolton, who did briefly work for the president and national security advisor in Trump's first term has turned a sharp critic of Trump, including in recent months,

how he's handled the situation in Ukraine. In fact, he has drawn Trump's wrath on truth social a number of times, most recently around the Putin summit in Anchorage, two. months back that yielded very little. And now we have a moment here where a retribution campaign is continuing. We know it's James Comey, it's Letitia James, Trump just this week, Mika, as we've been talking about from the Oval Office with the Attorney General and the FBI director standing alongside him, naming other individuals he would want to see indicted. This one, though, does seem a little different. And for more on that, let's bring in MSNBC

Justice and Intelligence Correspondent, Ken Delaney. And so can people I've talked to say, look, this is still a broad pattern of retribution. There is still a real, there is still great concern how the president is break, is shattering norms and directing his DOJ either specifically or just by, you know, naming villains, if you will, naming foes and others kind of get the hint to who they go after. But the John Bolton case was described to me is a little different than Comey and James. There's a little more of a there there. Walk us through what you know about this particular matter.

Good morning, Jonathan. Good morning, guys. You're absolutely right. I think it's a lot different, actually. This is what my sources are telling me than those other cases, which appear to be largely without merit. This one, though, arose in the Biden administration. And this is a very serious and detailed indictment. It says that John Bolton derived secrets from his time as National Security Advisor, assembled them because he was writing a book, sent them over unclassified email and messaging apps to his wife, daughter. We've identified the two people as his wife and daughter. And then that information was hacked by the government of Iran. At least one of those email accounts was hacked. And so the government of Iran obtained some of these state secrets according to this indictment. And the indictment says that Bolton used language that made clear he knew he was talking about sensitive information, things like the intel briefer said or when in the situation room I learned. So this is this and these charges, as you said, carry 10 years each so he could spend the rest of his life in prison, in theory, if convicted, on these charges. But let me tell you what the defense could be here.

I should add that, and this case has been, this case is being prosecuted by career prosecutors, respected people, unlike the Comey and the James case, which was avoided by every career prosecutor in the department and pursued only by Donald Trump's political appointee. This one has gone through normal channels, as we understand it. But let me explain. explain some potential mitigating circumstances here. Lots of people who have jobs where they see classified information write books. And they send the manuscript through a publication review, for example, if you're a CIA officer. And oftentimes those reviewers will say, sorry, you can't say that. It was classified. We're keeping that out of the book. Well,

that information was classified. It went over an unclassified email system. Those people don't get prosecuted for doing that. So what's at issue here are not documents marked classified, which was the case in the Donald Trump indictment. These were, this was information that John Bolton gathered and wrote down in diaries and sent that the FBI and the CIA and other people have determined contained national defense information. And when you look at the descriptions in the indictment, it's pretty clear that some of it probably did. But the question here is, where is the line for people who are writing books? John Bolton did go through the publication review process here.

Now, there's allegations that he ignored some of the suggestions from people about what to leave out of the book. But there's a lawyer named Mark Zaid who represents a lot of people who write books. And what he was saying last night is that if you're going to prosecute John Bolton, you've got to prosecute a lot of other people who wrote books and had potentially classified information on their email systems, which was then left out of the books, but which was actually sensitive. And the other thing is Abby Lowell, John Bolton's lawyer, is saying here that this was not classified. These were, this was information that he kept for diaries. And he said that the FBI has known about this for a long time.

And that's true. This arose in the Biden administration. And what, but what seems to be the case is that they did not know the extent of what was in, at least one of his email accounts, until they discovered that Iran, they discovered the material that Iran had hacked through a U.S. intelligence penetration of Iran. That's according to my reporting. And that's one of the reasons this case didn't go forward in the Biden administration is because officials were concerned about revealing that penetration.

The Trump administration has made a different calculation. They're okay with revealing it. They've revealed it now to the Iranians. So whatever penetration they had is now shut down. That's how badly they wanted to prosecute John Bolton. And that's where you can ask questions about whether this case should have gone forward, guys. Really important reporting there. MSNBC Justice and Intelligence correspondent Kendallan.

And Ken, thank you, as always. And Mika, Ken makes the great point here. There is, you know, there are differences between Comey and James cases in this one. These are career prosecutors. This is what investigation has been going on for a long time. There does seem to be, at least per the indictment, some evidence of wrongdoing. But it's about selective prosecution. It's the idea like this is something that a lot of.

people in Washington who have high-level jobs, access to class-side information, have to deal with, but yet it's just Bolton, a Trump critic who's the one facing potentially now criminal charges. So we want to get to the rest of our panel, Katty, David, Ed, and Eugene by bringing this Wall Street Journal editorial board piece that is being written about John Bolton's indictment, and it reads in part this. Opposing Donald Trump is a perilous business, but working for him can be equally as dangerous. That's one lesson from Thursday's indictment of Mr. Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton for mishandling classified documents. There's little doubt that the underlying motivation for this prosecution is retribution. The president has targeted Mr. Bolton at least

since 2020 when Mr. Trump called for his prosecution after Mr. Bolton wrote his book. Mr. Trump recruited Mr. Bolton to work for him and cast him a statement. side over policy disagreements. The lesson is that if you work for the president, he then sours on you and you criticize him, you are not safe. If Mr. Bolton had praised Mr. Trump in his book, it is safe to say he would have never been indicted. Caddy Kay, the impact and consequences as these indictments keep coming. Take it away. Yeah, I mean, I think as judicial watches, David Ignatius, you know, trying to make out, figure out how important these indictments are. You could look at it from a purely partisan point of view and say, if you are a critic of the president,

then you're going to be indicted. And if you're a Republican, you're going to look at this and say, well, the Democrats used lawfare as well against President Trump. And the two sides seem just very set in their positions on this one. It was remarkable to me. However, when I talk to Republicans, they say, well, you guys did this before, so we're just doing what you did. Is it worth looking at the kind of individual indictments, or should we be looking at the bigger picture here? I think this is a case that shows us that you do need to look at the details. The two things can be true at once. This is part of Trump's pattern of revenge against enemies.

In that way, it's like the cases against James Comey and Letitia James that were brought. But it's different in the sense that, as Kandalanian was saying and his reporting, the fact pattern is different. Those other cases really are so thin. lawyers almost laugh at them. It's not the case here. There are tough questions of law. This is a process that many people who serve in government and then won't go on to write memoirs use. They take their diaries and their diaries have all kinds of sensitive things in them and they use those diaries to write the books. So I think this is a serious case.

The one thing that I think is indisputable is that John Bolton is a target now. in an investigation that was considered by the Biden administration and then dropped because Donald Trump sees him as an enemy. He's on the enemy's list. Which is the point that Wolfgang John is. And now we move into this prosecution. So it's different from the Comey and James cases on one level, but on another level, it's not different at all.

These are enemies. That's exactly right. There is a pattern. You cannot ignore the pattern that if you crossed Donald Trump and just on some very public way, then you're vulnerable. He considers you vulnerable. I'd point out a couple of things. Number one, John Bolton has never been confused with a Democrat, right? I mean, you didn't know would recall him a Democrat. He's not. He never has been. And number two, there is this question of diaries. I mean, it is true, as Bolton's lawyer said, that all these

high-ranking officials, or many of them at least, do keep diaries to sort of record what they did. And yes, I do it with an eye toward writing books eventually, maybe just with an eye toward history that can be revealed someday. So that's the part of the indictment I don't get. I mean, look, you just did a biography of one of the greatest American public servants. Were there diaries? You know, did Zabignyaf Prasinski have diaries, and should he have been prosecuted for them? Well, he, like Bolton, kept diaries, wrote a memoir and got that memoir cleared. Bolton's memoir was clear. It was clear.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that's why it was published. Otherwise, it would have been pulped and then republished with the missing bits, but that didn't happen. I mean, I went to see John Bolton and his. downtown D.C. offices a few days ago to talk about, you know, prospects. And he showed me the sort of the room of filing cabinets where he keeps all his documents. And he described how the FBI had been sort of going through them with a toothpick. I think it's fair to say, as the late great American Senate, Democratic Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, that

there's an over-classification problem in Washington. And that everything, if everything is classified, including like breakfast menus and stuff, then nothing is classified. And therefore, it gives a vengeful actor, like President Trump, enormous scope to just pick and choose who to take revenge on. Yeah. And I think in the case of Zbignyaf Brzynski, Ed and I both know there were diaries and there was criticism and there were sharp elbows and we were on the edge of our seats, quite frankly. But the book is amazing and very, very honest and it gives you a sense of the thinking at the time, which is so important for history. Still ahead on Morning, Joe, the latest from Capitol Hill as the government shutdown drags on for a 17th day after another

failed vote by senators yesterday. Plus all the highlights from last night's New York City mayoral debate as the candidates faced off. Also ahead, our next guest. has spent almost a year profiling one of the most influential players in the Trump administration. We'll talk about the impact budget director Russell Vote has had on the White House. And a reminder of the Morning Joe podcast available each weekday featuring our full conversations and analysis you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back.

17 past the hour, President Trump says he will meet in the coming weeks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary. He made the announcement yesterday in a social media post, followed a phone call with Putin, where Trump said great progress was made, according to the president. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, will lead a team to meet with Russian officials next week. The location of that meeting has yet to be determined, and Trump's meeting with Putin would then follow. Trump said it would be designed to, quote, see if we can bring this inglorious war between Russia and Ukraine to an end. Hungary's authoritarian prime minister, Victor Orban, celebrate the news yesterday, saying he had spoken to Trump and that preparations to host both the president and Putin are underway. Jonathan. Yeah, so news of Trump's phone call, which was a surprise with Putin, comes as Ukrainian president

Volimir Zelensky was en route to Washington because he's set to visit the White House today. Now, prior to the Putin call, it was believed that Trump and Zelensky would discuss the prospect of the United States selling long-range tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which Ukraine could then use to strike deep within Russia. The AP quotes a senior aide to Putin as saying that in their call, Putin told Trump, if the U.S. sells those missiles to Ukraine, it would, quote, inflict significant damage to the relations between our country. So David Ignatius, there's a lot to sift through here. First of all, this potential second summit comes a bit of a surprise to a lot of people involved because the first one in Alaska basically yielded Trump nothing. It was surprising that he would want to do that again.

It also, I should note, helps normalize what a stage for Hungary and Orban that he gets to play host here. But let's talk about what could happen today as well. It was striking to me, pointed out to me by a couple senior diplomats in White House officials yesterday, that after Zelensky landed in the aftermath that Putin call, he no longer was talking about tomahawk missiles. He's focused instead on more defense weapons. What do you make of the Trump Putin call yesterday? What should we expect today from the Zelensky Trump meeting?

So I think first the Ukrainians were shocked, as many people were, by the sudden announcement, of a new Trump-Pudin summit that came as surprised to them and worried them. They fear that as happened in Alaska, this summit will only be a base for Putin to continue his war. Putin, in their view, doesn't want peace. He wants victory. This whole cluster of events comes after a week of real U.S. Russia brinksmanship about the question of sending Tomahawks, which are long-range cruise missiles that could strike Moscow and

many other targets deep in Russia. President Trump has sort of bandied about how much Ukraine would like them, and gee, we have a lot of them. And now, I end up suggesting, well, maybe we'll send some over. The response from Russia has been unusually sharp with Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, saying this would be a new level of escalation. former president, Dimitri Medvedev, saying we don't know whether these cruise missiles are going to have nuclear warheads or not, implying they might respond to an attack by Tomahawks with some kind of nuclear response because they don't know what's coming. So it was quite a tense showdown. And at the conclusion of that, Trump picks up the phone and calls Putin. And we now

have this new meeting. I think the only reason to take the diplomacy a little bit of bit more seriously this time than in Anchorage, is that there's going to be a pre-meeting in which Secretary of State Marco Rubio is going to sit down with the Russians and talk through, I'm told, in fairly specific and hard-nosed ways, what the U.S. position is. For example, I'm told that Rubio believes Russia cannot get all of the disputed province of Donetsk that would open the gateway to Kiev, something the U.S. now opposes, It's a significant change from before. You'll go to that meeting with carrots, Trump's idea of wonderful economic benefits for Russia

if there's peace and sticks. We do have these tomahawks. There is discussion about other NATO actions that would bring the war more sharply to Russia if Russia doesn't agree. So we're back in this waiting game for diplomacy. There's every reason to think that it won't really lead anywhere because that's been in the experience. But it does come from a more confrontational round between Trump and Putin than we've seen before. That's so interesting, David.

Ed, we all spend a lot of time trying to figure out the relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And to some extent, it's a proxy for where the war might go. Because when he's irritated with Vladimir Putin, he seems to be more well-predisposed to Vladimir Zelensky. When I heard that they were going to have this meeting in Hungary between Putin and Trump, I can't imagine that's terribly good news for Zelensky, and he was meant to be at the table as well. There was this talk about having a trilateral meeting. So in the kind of balance between Ukraine and Russia

within the White House at the moment, my understanding was that Tomahawks would be important, but in some ways are more of a symbol because they weren't going to send them terribly many of them, and yet that symbol is kind of being put on and off the table. So where are we in the balance from Donald Trump's point of view as he weighs these two places? at the moment. So, I mean, it's Putin who's objecting to including Zelensky in any trilateral

talks. And if Trump accepts, again, Putin's precondition that he just meet him with Trump alone and that it's just Trump and Putin again in Budapest, then the balance there is that Putin's going up again and Zelensky's going down. I think that, you know, every time Trump gets frustrated with Putin, and Putin seems to run. Trump's nose in it by elevating, intensifying drone and missile attacks on Ukraine immediately after Trump calls for a ceasefire or some kind of a settlement. Every time that happens, Trump then sort of loses his call, feels humiliated, says something critical most recently a couple of weeks ago calling Russia a paper Tiger.

And there is then sort of hope springs eternal, renewed hope that, oh, well, Trump's finally got religion on Ukraine. But he never specifies any real consequences. Tomahawk, giving, selling on Tomahawks to Ukraine was as close as he's come. But it never, it never really felt very realistic. You know, you need to, you need sophisticated launches, usually from sea or from submarines, and you'd need American operators if it was going to be ground launchers. The idea that Tom, and it wouldn't have been enough to make any difference. So the idea that. that the Tomahawks was a real threat to Putin is, I think, something that's debatable. And so Trump is true to fall, I think, as he has been all along,

which is that he keeps reverting to his default, sympathetic to Putin position. So Zelensky's meeting with him today, and his heart must have sunk yesterday when he realized this phone call was happening, because this could have been a good moment for him to reset. And there have been a number of occasions now where Trump's had a meeting with Zelensky and either had a call with Putin directly before or directly afterwards. It seems to soften his rhetoric towards Russia. To Ed's point, Mika, about the Tomahawks, yes, after a week or two of Trump's sort of musing, even if it is mostly symbolic, but musing that he could send some to Ukraine late yesterday,

post Putin call, suddenly his rhetoric was different again. Like, well, we only have a few of them. I'm not sure we can give any up to Ukraine. So I think officials going into this meeting, you know, maybe Zelensky can sway him. but they expect that Tom Hoc's probably not on the table. And it's another moment. We also see Putin knows how to play Trump. In the last few days, said that Trump was robbed of a Nobel Peace Prize.

And yesterday, per their readouts of the phone call, he made sure to praise him for the work he did in Gaza, saying only you could have gotten this done. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, advisors are working on the implementation of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. and our warning that more time is needed in order for Hamas to retrieve all of the remains of the deceased hostages. The ceasefire agreement requires Hamas to return the remains of 28 deceased hostages. To this point, they've only returned nine. The Guardian cites U.S. advisors as saying there are significant practical difficulties in recovering remains of hostages amid the devastation caused by Israel's offensive during the past 24 months. Hamas has said it will need specialist equipment in order to do so.

The terrorist groups crackdown on the people inside Gaza this week has also generated global concern. President Trump posted this morning on social media yesterday, quote, if Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in. and kill them. So Katty K, tense, is an understatement. Yeah, I mean, a weak meeker that started with an enormous amount of hope and promise looks certainly more trepidacious at the end of it five days later. I mean, David, we've had the president with quite mixed messages to Hamas that the one

literally on one day saying, I don't mind them killing these members of a rival gang. I think it's a good thing. And then the next day, the message to Hamas being very clearly, you know, you can't be killing other Palestinians. So where are we on this week that started with the idea that we could have a broader peace agreement rather than just a hostage for prisoner swap? Unfortunately, we're in the situation where Trump, through great effort and commendably has achieved a ceasefire and release of the hostages, but has not achieved peace in Gaza. The areas that Hamas controls, roughly half of Gaza, it's now enforcing, it's a

will through executions, through military operations against rival gangs. With a speed and a force that I found surprising. So they've been waiting for this. They didn't Google Gaza for these 20-plus years for nothing. They are tough, hardened fighters. This process was aborted before a decisive resolution. You know, this is a peace deal that was never signed. There is no Hamas agreement to the transition process.

and future governance. So Donald Trump, who rightly is taking a victory lap, has to think, I don't have a victory yet. Who's going to end this war? The answer specified in his 20-point peace plan is that there will be an international force that will create a new police in Gaza so Hamas guns don't rule the scene anymore. There's no sign of that happening yet. So There's another step that has to happen if Trump's going to fulfill all the hope and promise of a week ago. And who's going to do that? I mean, who is going to establish this new police force that's going to supplant Hamas? How does that come about after two years of really brutal war?

Remember, Israel was going to eradicate Hamas. in Gaza and here we are this morning we're talking about Gaza's control of roughly half of and Habas's control of roughly half of Gaza so it's there on it's there on the firmness of that control it's there on paper I mean that's the US has got plans for a 200-person command and control force that will work with troops from Italy Indonesia Azerbaijan other countries the the problem is it takes, you know, weeks, maybe months to get that kind of force together. And meanwhile, people are being killed again in Gaza by Hamas. By Hamas, right.

All right. The Washington Post, David Ignatius, thank you very much. David's piece entitled Superpower Brinksmanship gives way to uncertain resolution is available to read online right now at the Washington Post. U.S. National Editor at the Financial Times, Ed Luce, thank you. As well, his latest piece for the paper is on U.S.-China relations being deja vu all over again. And once again, Ed's book, Zbig, The Life of Zbignav-Brasinski, America's great power profit, is on sale now. And coming up, we're going to dig into a pair of investigative reports from ProPublica, including almost 200 recent cases of Americans being detained by immigration agents.

Plus, an in-depth look at one of the most influential players in the Trump administration. Someone our next guest calls the shadow president. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. I want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuddering the bureaucracy, not just the funding, but the bureaucracy. that we now have an opportunity to do that. And that's where we're going to be looking for our opportunities. So you're saying there's been a snapshot of 4,000 jobs cut. Correct. Is there a special, but it could grow much higher? I think we'll probably end up being north of 10,000. That was White House Budget Director Russell vote this week, previewing potential mass layoffs

during the government shutdown. Vote, who was a key architect of Project 2025 and also served as OMB director during President Trump's first term. He has been a catalyst behind the administration's efforts to fire federal workers, gut, key agencies, and slash foreign aid. Now a piece published jointly by ProPublica and The New Yorker is taking a deeper dive into votes dismantling of the federal government, chronicling his rise from the mailroom of the U.S. Senate to what some call the show. shadow president. Joining us now, author of that piece, who spent nearly a year profiling vote, investigative reporter at ProPublica, Andy Kroll. Andy, it's good to see you. I'm curious

what you found overall about who Russell vote is and what space he's taking in this administration. Are there any echoes of Elon Musk or something completely different? It's good to be here, Mika. The Elon reference. is an interesting one, I would say. You know, the first few months of the administration, Elon and his Doge crew were rampaging through the federal government, breaking things and moving fast to use the Silicon Valley term. And what Russ Vote has done is actually quite different. Russ Vote is methodical. He has been working on his plan to, as he puts it, dismantle the federal bureaucracy, fire workers, in some cases, shutter entire agencies like the Consumer Financial

Protection Bureau or USAID. He's been thinking about these things for years. He has been planning them. And in fact, as we report in the piece, drawing on new interviews, new audio that's never been published before, Russ Votes spent the four years of the Biden administration laying the groundwork for a lot of the things that we have seen in the last nine months. And that really helps explain why this Trump administration has looked so different compared to the chaos and the dysfunction of the first one. Katty Kay, I'll read this from Andy's piece, and then you take it in Votes Vision for the U.S. government, an all-powerful executive branch would be able to fire workers, cancel

programs, shutter agencies, and undue regulations that cover air and water quality, financial markets, workplace protections, and civil rights. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, would shed its historical independence and operate at the direction of the White House. All of this puts vote at the center of what Steve Vladick, a law professor at Georgetown, described to me as the Trump administration's complete disregards for the law. And if you look at historical parallels, and you read books like the one written by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright or, and. And Abelbaum, the groundwork being laid here for destroying democracy. I mean, Mika, it's pretty clear what Ross vote wants, right? He's written it all out.

He wrote it in Project 2025. And Andy, a bit like we've seen with Stephen Miller, these two men spent four years out of office very carefully, studying the levers of the power of government, building the coalitions that they needed to build in order to get this done, raising the money that they needed to raise in order to enact the immigration policies that they want. So I guess the question is we know what he wants. We know they've worked hard over the last four years to try and get as much of this agenda through as they can. How much of this can

do? How far can they go? Based on the nine months we've seen so far, I think, a lot farther than what someone like a Steve Vladick at Georgetown Law that I spoke to for this story might have expected. And there are a few reasons for that. I mean, the first reason is that Congress, in particular the Republican majority, has put up nary a whimper, any kind of defense to the extremely aggressive posture that the Trump White House, in a particular OMB director, vote have taken. Russ Vote has essentially said to Congress, we are going to short-circuit the entire appropriations process, the power of the purse. Congress's number one job priority. by freezing billions of dollars, by rescinding billions of dollars, by essentially jamming up the whole

government funding process. That is not how Schoolhouse Rock taught us the Constitution in the federal government is supposed to work, and yet that is what Russ vote has done, and Congress has not really put up much of a fight. And then if you look at the way this administration has been succeeding in court so far, in the lower court's mixed record, at the Supreme Court, much more success so far. And so I think there is a level of surprise, even among legal scholars who thought that, you know, Russ' vote would have a better chance of succeeding, given all the preparation, a little bit of surprise at how aggressive the administration has been, how little opposition from within the Republican Party there has been, and how successful they've been

at the courts. And again, we're just nine months into this administration. Andy, just one quick question. So he's had all this time to do all this planning. These initial layoffs and during the shutdown, I think there were 4,000 or something like that, it included a bunch of people at the Centers for Disease Control, who then had to be hired back because they were deemed essential. So how thought out is all of this? I mean, how specific and detailed and really thought through are all these layoffs?

That surprised me that it seemed kind of slipshod. Yeah, it surprised me a little bit as well. I think what you're seeing is a bit of a disconnect between what someone like Russ vote at the top wants, which is find me as many cuts to the federal workforce as you. can. Again, this is someone who, as we reported last year, wants to put federal workers, quote unquote, in trauma. He wants to traumatize them so they don't want to come to work. They don't want to work for the federal government, and they leave. So there is that sort of top level goal. But clearly, the implementation at the lower levels is rocky in some places. Or the people

implementing votes directives are moving too quickly or aren't quite sure who they're firing because, Yes, CDC workers fired and then brought back. But a lot of other really critical parts of the government have been hit hard here. And based on the reporting we have have not been brought back. Special education programs, the Department of Education, cyber security work at the Department of Homeland Security. I mean, there is a lot of really critical government capacity work only the government can do that is being wiped out in this shutdown.

And again, by all indications, it is not being restored in the way. way that CDC has. Investigative reporter at ProPublica, Andy Kroll, thank you so much. His new reporting on Russell Vote is available to read online at ProPublica and the New Yorker right now. He's also author of the book entitled Death on W Street. So look for that. And coming up next, one of our next guest says Republicans are becoming the party of big

government. David Drucker joins us ahead with his latest piece. Plus, actor and comedian Nick Offerman will join the table. He has some new advice for parents who are tired of their children looking at screens all day. Morning Joe is back in a moment. Welcome back. their live shot of Chicago at 5.49 a.m. Central time. And a judge in that city yesterday ruled that immigration enforcement officers must wear body cameras after seeing videos of confrontations with

protesters. U.S. District Judge Sarah Ellis said she was startled by videos of recent clashes on Chicago streets that have led to the use of tear gas. The Department of Justice pushed back on the ruling, calling it an example of, quote, judicial activism. Encounters like this have occurred several times since the Trump administration sent a surge of ICE agents to Chicago. That operation, dubbed Midway Blitz, has led to more than 1,000 arrests since September. The judge has summoned the field director

of the enforcement push to appear in court there on Monday. And as ICE continues to push into major American cities, including Chicago, we're hearing more stories of U.S. citizens getting caught up in those operations. The federal government does not track the number of citizens who have been held by immigration agents, but someone else does. A new report by the nonprofit news organization, ProPublica, states that number is approaching 200 Americans. The important reporting details the nightmare scenarios that some citizens have found themselves in as the Trump administration continues to ramp up its immigration efforts. Joining us now, the author of that report,

Nicole Foy, she reports on immigration and labor for ProPublica. Nicole, thank you so much for being here. It's extremely important reporting. Why don't you walk us through to start just your methodology here? How did you arrive at this number? Nearly 200 U.S. citizens been detained, and why do you also think it's an undercount? Yeah, so since the very beginning of the Trump administration, we've been a hearing reports and many people may have seen a story or two or a video of U.S. citizens being detained or reporting a very uncomfortable extended questioning where they had to find some way to prove their citizenship. Ever since the beginning of the administration, I have been checking and tracking how often

this happens. And what I've found so far is that in the first nine months, around 50 citizens have been stopped and questioned, sometimes even detained for days, because of their ICE officers had questions about their citizenship. But an even bigger number are being detained as these immigration sweeps and operations are moving into cities and encountering a lot of resistance from those residents, whether at protests or people simply trying to stop their neighbors and their loved ones from being taken away. More than 130 of those cases are things that we've tracked. But it's very much an undercount because of just, like, personally, I had to stop early October in order to get

this story ready for publication. Much of what you're seeing coming out of Chicago in Portland, where there is an enormous immigration presence right now and many, many stories every single day about U.S. citizens being detained, being tackled, being tear gassed, as we saw in this clip. It's going to take a while for even more stories to surface. Number likely, significantly higher than what we know now. So, Nicole, in your report, you detail some of the ordeals that American citizens have gone through, and you wrote this. When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn't be concerned.

If the officers learned that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, Kevin O'Rote, they promptly let the individual go. But that is far from the reality that many U.S. citizens have experienced. Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and even shot by immigration agents. They've had their neared on. They've been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained. them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department

of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam watched. Your reporting also notes that 20 children have been detained, two of them who have cancer. Tell us more about these conditions. Yeah, I think one of the things that I wanted to highlight in this story is that there is kind of clearly from the Supreme Court, but also among others, that there's an idealized version of what happens when a citizen encounters an immigration agent. You show your papers, check it out, everything's fine. That is far from the reality of what's happening. And especially as you're seeing a number of U.S. citizen children

who are being detained and even deported with their undocumented parents, there have been several cases of people who have run from immigration agents and have been tackled. There's a 79-year-old car wash owner who, he says, was trying to just show his officers who were raiding his car wash. He had papers that his, you know, trying to defend his workers. And you can see on video as he's pretty brutally tackled and taken to the ground. There's just not a lot of protections right now for citizens who are watching these sweeps come through these communities and don't always know how to respond. And because of that, many of them are being detained on accusations of assaulting officers,

accusations of obstructing or resisting in some way. Even though many times we see those charges completely dropped, but it's often too late. Someone's been tackled. They've had a concussion. They've spent three days in a detention center where their family members couldn't find them. The consequences are a lot more severe than an uncomfortable conversation. And we see in the polls that this immigration policy pretty unpopular,

the line has been, well, you know, people voted for Trump to be tough on immigration, but they didn't vote for this. Well, whether that's true or not, the president and his team are doing this and they're only accelerating it. The important reporting available to read online now, ProPublicas, Nicole Foy. Nicole, thank you very much. Thank you.