No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Adam Schiff on Trump getting charged after he leaves office

Episode Date: June 21, 2020

The actual reason for Trump’s rally in Tulsa gets revealed and Bill Barr fumbles a disastrous attempt to fire the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and install a handpicked successor. Brian also speaks with House Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff about whether Trump should be charged after he leaves office, and Schiff issues a message directly to Mitch McConnell for trying to sabotage police reform legislation in the Senate.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberMusic by WellsyRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to be talking about the actual reason for Trump's rally in Tulsa, Bill Barr's disastrous attempt to fire the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and install a handpick successor, and my interview with House Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, where we discussed whether Trump should be charged after he leaves office and his message directly to Mitch McConnell for trying to sabotage police reform legislation in the Senate. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Well, if the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was supposed to be the official relaunch of Trump's campaign,

that does not bode well for the president. Trump and his team had spent the last week touting the idea that a million people would be showing up to his rally in Tulsa. They said the arena with 19,000 seats would fill up immediately. There was talk of putting another 10,000 in a space next door. They set up an overflow space and promised that Trump would address the crowd of hundreds of thousands of people himself personally. And by the time Trump showed up, that was not the case. The arena itself was maybe half full. Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000.

The outdoor stage was dismantled before Trump even came out to speak. And the Trump campaign was reportedly sending out text to its supporters with the words, There's still space. Remember when Jeb Bush asking his supporters to please clap was the saddest thing to happen to a Republican on the campaign trail? We're talking about a Republican president not being able to turn a president. not being able to turn out 19,000 people in a state that's voted Republican since 1964. Good news for Trump, though, is at least his inauguration crowd size

isn't so embarrassing anymore. Now, as for the other 990,000 people that the campaign spent the week screeching about, it seems that the reason the Trump campaign thought that a million people were going to show up is that a bunch of kids on the social media app, TikTok, plus fans of K-pop, Korean pop, went online and flooded the Trump campaign with hundreds of thousands of ticket requests

with no intention of actually showing up and basically just juice the campaign's numbers. Then they deleted all their posts before they spread to the mainstream internet and the campaign caught wind, meaning that Trump's official relaunch, the political event of the year by what's supposed to be the most sophisticated campaign in history, got played by a bunch of, what, 15-year-olds online,

which I think is just fantastic. I mean, this is straight hubris, right? The campaign was so obsessed with its numbers that it kept posting 800,000, 900,000, a million people coming to the point where even the actual attendees got scared away. Who wants to deal with trying to get one of 19,000 seats among a million people? But that's the thing. The campaign didn't care about logistics. They just want numbers. That's it.

They just want numbers because Trump has one priority and it is warm-blooded bodies. And so when it turned out that those tickets were actually teenagers trolling the campaign, well, what you're left with is a half-empty arena and a week of bad headlines. Aside from that, it might also have something to do with the global pandemic sweeping across the country and this state and city in particular. I don't know, maybe people just didn't want to die, you know? So was the rally of failure? For a guy who's decided that crowd size is the most important indicator of success in life,

by Trump's standards, yeah, it was. And look, I get that this is petty, okay, that's not lost on me. But honestly, if Trump wasn't so frantically obsessed with crowd size, if he wasn't so obnoxious about pointing out how he's never had an empty seat, it wouldn't even be an issue. I think it's a good thing that a million people didn't show up in the middle of a pandemic. And in fact, my only beef here is that 10,000 did anyway, which is still a wholly unacceptable number given Oklahoma's coronavirus surge.

But crowd size aside, I want to talk about why this rally happened. Why is Trump holding a rally in a safe red state that hasn't voted for a Democratic, in a half century with virtually zero electoral significance in the middle of a global pandemic. In a state where cases have gone up 500% in the last three weeks. Few reasons. First off, he's trying to prove to people that the country is ready to reopen. His priority is the economy. That's it.

The economy goes nowhere without businesses reopening. So Trump figures that if he can get on stage and repeat, just like he does 450 times a day, that the country's reopen, that he can manifest this reality. By the way, not a new strategy. for Trump, repeating some lie to will it into existence. He'd repeat complete and total exoneration from the Mueller probe, when, in reality, the Mueller report literally said that it does not exonerate the president. He'd repeat law and order to try and brand himself as the guy who, oh, I don't know,

didn't commit campaign finance violations and emoluments clause violations, and ten instances of obstruction of justice, and extort a foreign country for dirt on a political opponent, and orchestrate a large-scale cover-up? All of that's to say, Trump's strategy is just to tell a lie, say it lots of times, and pretend that it's real. So that's what we're seeing play out here. You know, Trump will use the bully pulpit of the presidency to tell the entire country that we're open. The goal being to put enough pressure on officials and businesses to actually open.

He knows that if he can whip up enough of a frenzy and convinces supporters that everything should be open, that hopefully those businesses and the states they're in begin to cave and reopen. The point is to lie enough to actually manifest this fall. reality. And what goes hand in glove with the country reopening is pretending that coronavirus is over. It's not. But he's trying to convince you that it is for no reason other than it's politically advantageous for him. By the way, this has been Trump's M.O. since day one, right? Since refusing to let a cruise ship with sick Americans aboard dock in the U.S. because he didn't want his numbers to go up and admitting it. And he said the same thing during the Tulsa

rally, that he didn't want to attest because tests would reveal more cases. Listen. do testing to that extent? You're going to find more people. You're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please. They test and they test. We got tests. People don't know what's going on. We got tests. We got another one over here. So you'll hear this from Adam Schiff in my interview coming up, but Schiff mentions that Trump lies all the time, but every now and then he says something utterly true and revealing only because he doesn't realize how damning it is. And that's what he did here. By literally acknowledging that his only concern is his numbers, not our lives, his numbers,

which is why he spent the first 70 days of the outbreak downplaying this virus. You know, saying that cases would soon be down to zero, that it would go away with the heat, that it would be gone by April, that it would miraculously disappear. He was never interested in putting any work in to contain the spread because even doing that work would undermine his talking point that it didn't exist. So he went all in on his suppression efforts and didn't coordinate a nationwide testing or contact tracing system and didn't invoke the Defense Production Act to make sure we had enough PPE and didn't advocate for social distancing or mask wearing because doing

any of those things, those lifesaving measures would serve as proof that the virus was real and if he acknowledged it was real, then it would threaten his stock market. And there is an election coming up, so of course he wouldn't want to do anything to put the market at risk. An entire cycle of self-serving lies and misinformation that continues to this. day. Even with 120,000 Americans dead, the guy is still following the exact same strategy that landed us here in the first place. By the way, the irony being that until this virus is contained, the economy is going to stay depressed. Maybe some people are going to go out, but definitely not all, and they won't until the cases decline, and cases aren't declining because

of efforts to reopen too soon before cases are contained. It's a vicious cycle that we all saw coming from a mile away. So Trump's own attempts to shoehorn the economy open are what are actually going to ensure that it stays closed the longest. That is our brilliant dealmaker of a president at work. Art of the deal, folks. One more major reason for this rally is that he's also trying to draw a contrast between himself and Joe Biden, right? He's trying to give the impression that Joe is frail and old and hold up in his basement while Trump is not, even though the last couple of weeks. Biden's actually been out giving speeches while we've seen Trump walk down that West Point Military Academy ramp like it was his first day with legs. He couldn't lift a glass of

water to his lips during that same speech. And that re-raised concerns about the fact that Trump made an unannounced visit to Walter Reed Hospital in November of 2019 that he tried to play off as a partial annual physical. Just your run-of-the-mill emergency physical under the cloak of darkness. Who among us, right? And that's the thing. Donald Trump isn't some 35-year-old athlete. You can't be Donald Trump and make the argument that someone else is unhealthy and confused. Have you read a transcript from a Trump speech, like read the words on paper? Those aren't coherent thoughts.

It's just a smattering of words that fall out of his mouth. It is errant synapses firing in his brain with no actual through line. So, like, I get that Trump wants to attack Biden, but maybe failing mental capacity. and frailty, isn't the best argument coming from a 74-year-old obese man who thinks that exercise is bad for you and can't string together more than four words to form a complete sentence. Just a thought. Now, those are all factors for this Tulsa rally, but here is the actual prevailing reason.

According to a CNN interview with a Trump political advisor, quote, I guarantee you after Saturday, if everything goes well, he's going to be in a much better mood. He believes that he needs to be out there fighting and he feeds off the energy of the crowds, end quote. This is all for Trump's mood. I mean, couldn't we give him the iPad for an extra hour? Doesn't that usually work? Seriously, when most of us are in a bad mood, we, what, eat a pint of ice cream? Donald Trump is going to sacrifice someone's grandparents. I know it sounds alarmist, but even the roughly 10,000 people who did show up did so in the middle of a pandemic where 120,000 people have already died. In case I'm not being crystal clear here, there are likely people who are alive in

Oklahoma right now, who won't be in a few weeks because Donald Trump needs applause. And on top of that, as if we needed any more confirmation of what's about to happen in Oklahoma because of this rally, as of Saturday morning, before the rally was even set to begin, six members of the Trump campaign advanced staff in Tulsa who were doing logistics for the rally tested positive for coronavirus. I'm not a spiritual person, but do you think the universe is trying to tell us something? Trump's own staff is already infected, already in Tulsa. and likely already spreading it.

If you don't think this is going to be an unmitigated public health disaster, then you're just denying reality. Because what we have is tens of thousands of people crammed into an indoor arena in a state that's seen a 500% increase in positive cases in the last three weeks, in a city that is the epicenter of those cases in the state, to cheer on a guy whose position is to not wear a mask and whose campaign has employed people who already have the virus. If I was trying to get coronavirus, these are the steps I would take.

And yet, it's happening anyway with, you know, no formidable pushback from anyone in an entire political party on the right, because they want Trump to be in a good mood. Remember that for the eulogies. Next up is my interview with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff. And among other topics, we discuss impeachment, but more importantly now, the possibility that's Trump could still be held to account for his criminal behavior after he's out of office. So while it might seem like the guy gets away with everything, just know that that's not necessarily the case. So we have Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, the lead impeachment manager in Trump's impeachment trial, and most importantly, my congressman

here in L.A. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk. That's great to be with you. Thanks for having me. So the Justice and Policing Act, in the bill is an end to qualified immunity. It bans no-knock warrants, fans chokeholds, creates a national registry of misconduct. It makes lynching a federal crime, limits the transfer of military equipment to police departments and much more. But some have called for defunding the police. So my first question is, how do you define, defund the police, and where do you stand on that? Well, what I understand when most people use the expression defunding the police, what they're talking about is reimagining how we might use

the nation's resources, our state and local resources, as an alternative to having the police department do everything, meaning invest more in mental health services and housing services, in job opportunities, invest in the kind of things that obviate the need for people to call the police. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of sense. So I think at the federal and local levels, we should be looking at our budgets, trying to figure out how much of this can be done by other agencies that are more suited to the task. And this, I think, will particularly be an issue locally, where in some cities, even a third of the city revenues go towards policing, whereas if some of those resources are used to house people, are used to educate

people, are used in other ways to provide good access to a range of health care and other services, there will be far fewer calls for law enforcement. I think those kind of reality of priorities make a tremendous amount of sense. Funny enough, we just found out this week that Mitch McConnell says the Senate is going to spend its time this week confirming two more circuit judges while it turns to the Republican police bill next week. So what would your message to Mitch McConnell be? Well, I mean, this is classic McConnell, which is what's going on in the country, the desperate

needs of the American people are very secondary if they even make the list. and this is just for the proof of that. Here we are in the midst of a pandemic, and in the midst of soul-searching in the nation about how to deal with systemic racism and what's his response. Let's confirm a couple more ultra-conservative ideological people for the bench. That, unfortunately, is exactly where he comes from.

This is, of course, the man that kept open a Supreme Court seat for a year because it would have been filled by Barack Obama. Look, I think that this is part of the real. reason why the Senate is now in play when it hadn't been before. And his job is very much at risk, both in terms of his standing back in Kentucky, but also as the leader of a majority that has been utterly unresponsive to the American people. So I think it's yet again another exhibit in a long line of exhibits for why the majority in the Senate has to change. And by the way, you know, this failure to acknowledge what's happening around the country by Republicans right now comes

from the top. We just heard Trump come out during a press conference and say that the premier civil rights issue in our country right now is school choice. That's after hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets in protests and police reform has taken hold in police departments across the country and everything that we're seeing with, you know, with the Justice and Policing Act as well, the premier civil rights issue facing the country right now, school choice. Well, look, that's what you get from a president who says there are good people on either side of a neo-Nazi rally. Of all the times to have a president lacking in moral compass, this is the worst possible time. When there is a hunger for reform, a hunger for change and to move forward towards a

more perfect union and to confront this original sin of racism that our country has grappled with since its founding, to have a president who simply cannot understand that, doesn't empathize or sympathize with that at all. And if anything, his inclinations are very much in the opposite direction. I think that iconic image now, that really blasphemous image of Donald Trump standing in front of the church, holding a Bible in his hand that he couldn't even explain whose Bible it was after having cleared that area violently from peaceful protesters, it's the worst possible time to have an amoral president. But that's what we have. It means that we all will have to be responsible for our own change in this country. We can't look for leadership coming from

the White House, quite the opposite. But we're going to bring change nonetheless. I think that's a good segue into speaking about Trump and the November election. So we've seen Trump laying the groundwork on an almost daily basis to undermine the election results locally and nationally. Do you personally believe that Trump will accept the results of the election? You know, look, this is a guy who lied about millions of undocumented people voting in an election which he won, at least one in the electoral college. And so you can imagine what he will lie about if and when he loses. Right now, he is already seeking to discredit the votes of millions and millions of Americans who have historically voted by absentee ballot and millions

more who will need to because we're in the middle of a pandemic and the virus is expected to resurge in the fall. So will he contest the results? I think almost certainly if he loses, he will contest the votes of millions, which is why in the Heroes Act we are putting in funding to make sure that people can safely vote during the pandemic, notwithstanding the president's efforts to chill and discourage absentee voting. We want to make sure that there are audits, that there is a paper trail for electronic voting technology, that polling stations are open weeks early before the election so that they're not crowded during a pandemic on election day. But more than that, I think it's incumbent on all of us around the country to register to

vote and for every eligible voter to turn out to vote, either by absentee ballot or in person, we need to make sure this election is not close. That's our best hope to make. To make make this a landslide repudiation of this unethical president. Otherwise, I am concerned that he will dispute the results and that essentially in doing so will invite foreign powers to amplify his false statements and further cause chaos in the United States. And by the way, I think the most ironic part about all of this is that amid Trump's attacks on absentee balloting, he voted absentee.

So I think it's part of the course for the most hypocritical president we've ever seen. Oh, without a doubt. He's the all-time champion. By the way, real quick, what is the likelihood of having the Heroes Act pass through the Senate? Well, you know, I think that certain parts of the Heroes Act, like those sections that try to help people vote during a pandemic, Mitch McConnell will vigorously oppose. It's interesting, both with respect to McConnell, but even more so as well. to the president. The president lies all the time. But now and then, the president will say something utterly true and revealing, mostly because he doesn't realize how damning it is. And on the subject of absentee ballots, he's basically admitted if more Americans vote, he doesn't think he can get

elected. He doesn't think Republicans get elected. That is certainly a sentiment shared by Mitch McConnell. And so those portions of the Heroes Act, I expect they will fight tooth and nail. And we're going to have to fight tooth and nail to make them law. So this won't be easy. There's a divergence over that issue. There's a divergence over the Postal Service, which is another way of the Republicans trying to fight absentee ballots by eviscerating the Postal Service. But there are now substantial differences over the continuation of an unemployment compensation, which people are clearly going to continue to need over additional help for state governments and city governments with McConnell saying, you know, maybe they should just go bankrupt.

So it's going to be much more difficult to get the yes than in the CARES Act passage that we've had in previously. But, you know, I expect we will get to a result in July. McConnell is saying that, you know, he's too busy apparently confirming ideologues to the bench to deal with the problems of ordinary Americans right now. Lessing issue facing our country right now, reshaping the judiciary. Reshaping the judiciary and apparently school choice. That's right. By the way, if Trump does refuse to accept the results, are we going to see any Republican, who've thus far been complete doormats for Trump actually push back on him or Trump says jump, they say how high?

It's a good question. I mean, if you were betting on Republican members of the House or Senate to defend the institutions of our democracy, you would have lost a lot of money, time after time after time. Now, some Republicans started to find their voice after Mattis spoke out and Colin Powell spoke out and Admiral Mullen spoke out. But, you know, like in the past, it was fleeting. Most Republicans literally ran away from the camera when they were asked about, for example, the violent put down of these protesters and the whole Trump church stunt. You had a few literally walking off camera, making some token comments of disapproval. So nothing that should give us great confidence at the moment, but whether senators or House members will finally he had called,

to conscience or after the election when they've already been on the ballot and don't feel quite as exposed, they'll be willing to speak out. I don't know. I do think this is something the founders warned about, the excess of factionalism, but perhaps this goes beyond that because this isn't so much about party anymore. It's not about Republicans standing up for GOP ideology. This is a cult of personality around the president and fear. and we have seen thus far a pretty limitless capacity for debasement in the GOP with some profound exceptions like Mitt Romney. If nothing else, at least we will get the eternal disappointment from Susan Collins,

so we have that to look forward to. Yes. Well, that's very reassuring. Yeah. If Democrats take full control of the government in 2020, if we take the White House, the Senate, and we keep the House, is there any chance for an actual overhaul of our system? And what I mean is that is it really sustainable

that Democrats have to win elections by eight or nine points nationally and even then might not have control of government? I mean, it just seems like the whole system is the scales are tipped so far out of our favor. I mean, is this really a sustainable? Well, it shouldn't be sustainable. And there are some things that we can do about it. The National Popular Vote Compact, we have the D.C. statehood bill that's actually coming up for a vote in the House.

Yes. Those, I think, are two the predominant responses and national redistrict reform, I would add to the list. You know, if we can insist on independent commissions like we have in California nationwide, and we can do that without amending the Constitution, then we make at least the popular vote reflect the majority. in the House. The obstacle to that has been these gerrymander districts. So that certainly is a really powerful cure for the anti-popular gerrymander situation in the House. In the Senate, that's a much more difficult problem to deal with. D.C. statehood helps ameliorate this imbalance where, you know, 23% of the population controls something like 60% of the vote in the Senate. I mean, people in D.C. deserves statehood in their own right. They have a larger population than Wyoming. They have about the same as Alaska. And, you know, the time I think is right. I'm glad that Stanley Hoyer is

bringing that bill to the floor and tend to support it. And we are tantalizingly close to having enough states in the compact to effectively nullify this anachronism of the electoral college and make sure that the popular vote also controls who runs the White House. So there are ways to address this, I would hope that we would be as aggressive as possible if we have the opportunity to control of both houses and the White House to make sure that the popular vote actually governs in this country. I want to move over to impeachment a little bit. There were reports during the impeachment trial that Republicans were congratulating you on a job well done, and rightfully so. On the outside to us, it sometimes feels like pro wrestling in the sense

that everybody in Congress has their characters and they're all staunch defenders of their own side. But then we get little inklings of what's behind the curtain and it's clearly not as partisan as sometimes it's made out to be. So is there a universe away from the cameras where Republicans are like, of course Donald Trump is corrupt?

Of course he extorted Ukraine for dirt on his political opponent. Of course he orchestrated a large-scale cover-up. Yes. You know, and I used to get that feedback a lot more than I do now. they made me into such a boogeyman on Fox that I think in the House members don't confide, the Republicans don't confide in me the way they used to. But we did get a lot of feedback from Republican senators, much of it, some of it direct and some of it filtered through. They would pass on their feedback to Democratic senators who would pass it on to those of us that were House

managers. What I found most remarkable was most of the Republican senators had not watched the hearings in the House. All they knew of the president's misconduct was that what they would see on Fox. Which is that there were migrant caravans coming up from Mexico. Exactly, exactly. And so when they started to hear the evidence

during the trial, they would acknowledge, you know, I think, how surprised they were by how overwhelming it was. And it got to the point late in the trial where Lamar Alexander, I think, had one of the Sunday shows and they don't remember exactly what he had to say,

but it was something along the lines of when he tried to justify voting against hearing from witnesses, the House already proved its case 15 ways. Do we need them to prove it 16 ways? And then other senators who were not even, you know, that courageous, if you can call that courage, would say essentially there are lots of people in the Senate who feel like Lamar Alexander. I don't have the courage to say what he did, even as paltry as that was, but I agree with him. And so, you know, they pretty much acknowledged the facts of his. corruption and his abuse of power. But other than Mitt Romney, on the GOP side, none of them had the courage of their convictions. You know, I do want to say, though, that I thought Doug Jones

and Joe Manchin showed extraordinary courage. And their states are probably even more difficult in some ways than Utah when it comes to this president. So there were some real profiles and courage that came out of that trial. And I ended up feeling quite uplifted by seeing these examples of courage, that maybe the founders had it right when they thought that people possess sufficient virtue to be self-governing, that we didn't need to be ruled by a despot. But we'll have a better sense of that in the fall. Not like anything, you know, that has to do with our democracy, has any impact on Donald Trump, but at least Romney voting for impeachment deprived him of the talking point of being

able to say that it was a partisan impeachment. So that's even more beneficial. Yes. In fact, it became the first impeachment in history where a senator of the president's own party voted to remove that president from office. So he got his place in history, as damning as that place is. And of course, I think since the trial, when we've gotten to see just how much damage he was capable of, I think there are any number of senators who must feel even more ashamed that they didn't have the courage. that Romney did. Did you hear from anyone around the country who said that your work during the impeachment trial changed their mind or their vote with regard to Trump? You know, I certainly heard from people around the country that the trial and the hearings in the House opened their eyes to the extent of the president's abuses. Hard to tell, you know, where they were before the hearings, but I think it certainly

either convinced them or ratified views. they'd already had about the president. But I, you know, what I have discovered over the course of the Trump presidency, really, is how much people live in their own information worlds and how many people rely on Fox completely for their information. And people will stop me in an airport and someone will come up to me and say, are you Adam Schiff, I just want to shake your hand, you're my hero. And then someone else will hear that person come up to me and say,

well, you're not my hero, you lie all the time. Why do you lie all the time? And I realize, okay, I know what you're watching and I know what you're watching. And it's obviously not the same thing. And there are occasional moments where you can break through to people who've been propagandized by watching Fox Prime Time, but you need to spend sustained time with them to do it. And it's very difficult. So in the special counsel report, Mueller basically laid out evidence that Trump engaged in conduct that could have been charged as obstruction of justice or witness tampering, but because he was bound by DOJ policy that says you can't indict a sitting president, nothing happened. So with that said, there's no policy preventing him from being indicted

after he leaves office. So do you think we'll see any type of accountability? And do you think that would be a good idea? You know, that's a good and I think very hard question that I hope that Joe Biden will have to answer. And that is, there's without a doubt, liability, even criminal liability of people within the Trump administration, including Donald Trump. If you look at, for example, the campaign finance fraud scheme that Michael Cohen was involved in, the Justice Department argued successfully that Michael Cohen should go to jail for participating in this campaign fraud scheme in which he was coordinated and directed by someone named Individual One. Of course, individual one is the president.

So what is the argument that someone who is coordinated and directed in a scheme should go to jail, but the person who did the directing and did the coordinating should escape accountability? That's a hard argument to make. But I think it will fall upon Joe Biden and whoever serves as Attorney General to have to weigh those equities and decide to what degree to hold accountable people in the Trump administration who have violated the law, and I don't envy the difficulty of that decision. What was the most memorable moment for you during the impeachment trial? You know, one thing I will say that impressed me about the conduct of the senators during the trial

is they listened very intently to everything that was said. And I know there was some commentary that, oh, and people were walking around, or drinking milk or whatever, if I had to sit still for, you know, eight to ten hours a day, I would be getting up to walk around too. But as I was making the argument to these GOP senators about how this president has no decency, how he doesn't know right from wrong, how a man with no moral compass will never find his way, you know, saying about the worst things you could say about a president without having your words taken down, I don't recall a single senator shaking their head, no, no, he would never do that, or I don't know who you're describing, that's not

the Donald Trump we know. They know exactly who this man is. They know just how immoral, unethical, and untruthful he is. They know that he will throw them under the bus in a wink of an eye, should it be to his advantage. There is no misunderstanding of what kind of a unethical species is in the Oval Office, which of course makes their cowardice in the face of that all the more inexplicable. But it goes back to your earlier question. They know exactly who we're dealing with and they just don't have the backbone to stand up to him. It goes to show the power of the threat of a Donald Trump tweet over Republicans. Yes. Yes. So what is next for you? Would you ever consider a run for Senate or for president, will we see, you know, an Adam shift descending

the escalator in the Golden Tower moment? Oh, God. The fact that that has to be, the fact that that is just our, our schema now for how presidents declare, just this Simpsons-esque, you know, dissent in the Golden Tower is just a... The Simpsons did predict this moment. You know, I don't know, to be candid. It's hard for me to think beyond the next day or even remember what month it is at the moment. But I've got a pretty full plate, just trying to do my part to hold the Republic together until this nightmare is over.

And I think at that point, I'll try to figure out what the future looks like. But right now I'm happy to be running for re-election and doing everything I can to strengthen our House majority, flip the Senate, and throw the bum out of the Oval Office. And last question, what do you miss most since quarantine started, aside from hope and joy, the promise of a future? You know, I really miss being around other people. And that's really hard. You know, I think for people who gravitate to elective positions,

one of the things that you love are just being around us. others and and hearing their stories. And so it's like complete sensory deprivation to be in isolation this way. You know, my constituent interactions over the last few months have consisted of delivering food, working at food banks, and protesting. But I look forward to the day when I can meet my constituents for coffee again and I can go out to eat again. And my constituents are are feeling economically secure again. So I guess I miss all those things. You know, at the same time, I have every confidence we'll get through this. We're a resilient country. We will survive Donald Trump. We will survive this pandemic and we will recover economically. And I really do hope mass

protests give me reason for optimism that as we build back, we'll build back a stronger, more just, more equitable America. Well, I do just want to take this time to personally thank you for the job that you did during the trial. At the risk of your service, getting, you know, lost amid all the name calling and the tweets and the botched pandemic response and the recession and everything else, for everyone willing to acknowledge reality, you were a hero up there. And, you know, as a constituent in your district, as a Democrat, and as an American, you know,

I couldn't be prouder to call you a representative. So thank you. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And I'll look forward to seeing you back in WeHo someday soon. In the meantime, stay healthy and stay safe. Thank you so much. And thanks for taking the time.

That was Adam Schiff. Woo! You got a woof of approval for my dog. Thanks again to Congressman Adam Schiff. I want to switch Geeters to Attorney General Bill Barr here. And look, Barr's glaring dishonesty is no secret, right? lied about tear-gassing peaceful protesters, American citizens on camera in front of the entire nation.

He lied about the Mueller report before it was released. He lied about dropping the Flynn case. He lied about Ukraine. But something happened this past weekend that may just take the cake. On Friday night, Barr announced the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jeffrey Berman, whose office has been involved in prosecuting members of Trump's inner circle, was resigning. And that Jay Clayton, the chairman of the SEC, would apparently replace.

him. Clayton, I should mention here, has zero prosecutorial experience. He does, however, have experience defending Deutsche Bank in a $10 billion money laundering scam with Moscow. That bank also just so happened to loan billions of dollars to Trump's company and firms controlled by Jared Kushner. Nice little web that I'm totally sure leads to nothing suspicious whatsoever. So Barr wants to replace Berman with this guy, Jay Clayton. But Berman came out and basically denied the move. He released a statement of visit. someone saying, quote, I have not resigned and have no intention of resigning my position, and added that he'd only learned he was stepping down from a Justice Department news release.

He said he would stay in the position until the U.S. Senate confirms a replacement. Then Bill Barr shot back, declaring that, in fact, Trump had made the decision to remove Berman from his post and accused Berman of choosing, quote, public spectacle over public service. He added, quote, by operation of law, the Deputy United States Attorney Audrey Strauss will become the acting United States attorney, and I anticipate that she will serve in that capacity until a replacement successor is in place, meaning that apparently Barr had dropped his push

for Jay Clayton to fill the role. And then, minutes later, when asked about this, Trump comes out and says this. So that's all up to the Attorney General. Attorney General Barr is working on that. That's his department, not my department. But we have a very capable Attorney General. So that's really up to him.

I'm not involved. that he's not involved, meaning Trump didn't fire Berman, meaning Bill Barr lied to illegally remove a U.S. attorney from his post. Of course, the flip side of that is Trump did move to have him fired. He was just too cowardly to own up to it because of the obvious shitty optics, and so he decided to abandon Barr. But in doing so, he prevented Barr from actually being able to carry out the firing in the first place since it's Trump who needs to do it.

And yet even still, for some reason that I don't think, fully understand. Berman came out and said, quote, in light of Barr's decision to respect the normal operation of law and have deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss become acting U.S. attorney, I will be leaving the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York effective immediately. Even though the Attorney General doesn't have the right to fire him, and Trump came out and said that he didn't make the call. The likely reason is that it was because Barr relented on replacing him with Jay Clayton and instead allowed Audrey Strauss, who's Berman's deputy, to take over, and Strauss is highly capable and respected, so Berman figured that the office would

be in good hands with her, as opposed to some lackey handpick for obvious reasons by Bill Barr. But the takeaway here from this entire roller coaster is that there is no floor with Bill Barr. If you're not yet convinced of Barr's depravity, consider what he did here. He put out a press release saying that Berman agreed to resign when he did no such thing, proving that Barr lied. Then he claimed that Trump wanted Berman fired, only to have Trump claim that he never fired the guy, proving again that Barr lied, all the while accusing Berman of creating a spectacle. I mean, of all the corrupt sycophants in this administration, Bill Barr is at the bottom of the heap.

By the way, why target this office? This is the office that prosecuted Michael Cohen. Cohen handled the hush money payouts for Trump's affairs. But if Cohen was successfully prosecuted for making the payments and he did it at the direction of Trump, then how do you argue that the person directing the illegal activity that Cohen himself was locked up for shouldn't also be in prison. So if that investigation is still ongoing and Michael Cohen is cooperating, then that bodes really poorly for Trump.

SDNY is also currently investigating Rudy Giuliani for his role in Trump's Ukraine extortion scheme. And so whatever the reason, you have to ask yourself, why would Barr risk a huge outcry, only five months before the election, by trying to oust this U.S. attorney. Whatever they know he was about to come out with must have been. scared them even more than the blowback. And the blowback has been severe. So whatever it is they know is probably pretty bad. And I just want to be clear here, this blatant corruption is on Bill Barr, absolutely. But it is also the direct result of a Republican Senate too collectively

scared of a mean Trump tweet. When Senate Republicans refused to hold Trump accountable during his impeachment trial, they sent a message loud and clear that this administration wouldn't face any accountability. And so this is what happens. This is the direct result of Republican cowardice. So what happens now? As of this recording, it looks like Audrey Strauss is taking over at SDNY, which is a hell of a lot better than Jake Clayton taking over. But Congress should still call Bill Barr to testify immediately.

And if he doesn't show up, then issue a subpoena. And if he refuses to comply, then hold him in contempt of Congress. And if an impeachment inquiry needs to be opened up, then do it. If we're not going to use the levers of government available to us in the face of outright corruption, then what are we even doing? That's it for this week. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and recorded in Los Angeles, California.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.