No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump and Elon's bromance crashes and burns

Episode Date: June 8, 2025

Trump and Elon finally ensure the break up that everyone predicted. Brian interviews Senator Mark Kelly about the budget bill now being debated in the Senate and Biden’s pardon attorney Liz Oyer about Trump’s spate of recent pardons.Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee 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 talk about the biggest takeaway from the Elon Trump breakup and what it means for all Americans. And I've got two interviews this week. I sit down with Senator Mark Kelly about the budget bill now being debated in the Senate and Biden's pardon attorney, Liz Oyer, about Trump's spate of recent pardons. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. You all know by now that America's dads have broken up and just in time for Pride Month, no less. So first off, I feel like I need to reiterate just how quickly things fell apart. part. This was over the course of like an hour. So Elon initially had come out against the big beautiful bill that would strip health care away from 14 million Americans and cut food assistance to the tune of $300 billion and blow up the deficit. But all of that was fine as far as Elon was

concerned. He was mad, though, because the bill had some anti-EV provisions. And of course, he owns Tesla. And the number one rule for Elon is that Elon has to always be taken care of. So he comes out against the bill. And that's when things devolved because Trump then claimed that Elon has Trump's arrangement syndrome. Elon responds by saying Trump wouldn't have won the election without him. Trump responds by threatening to cut off Elon's government subsidies. Elon responds by saying that the reason Trump wouldn't release the Epstein files is because he was named in them. Steve Bannon comes out and says that Elon should be deported. And then Elon says that Trump should be impeached. Like, the Hindenberg saw this and was like, wow, this deteriorated quickly.

And look, we all expected this, right? These are the world's two thinnest-skinned men. And of course, people who are desperate to be the main character cannot coexist with other people who crave spotlight like it's oxygen. So, at least for now, Elon's out. But here's the thing. As far as Trump is concerned, watching him sour on yet another BFF is nothing new. Trump does this to literally everyone.

He is the most transactional person in the world who expects loyalty like a one-way street. And so the moment you lose your usefulness to him, Trump will cast you aside. He did it with Ronna McDaniel, the former head of the RNC, who he used to scapegoat Republican losses. He did it to Michael Cohen, his longtime lawyer and fixer. Did it to Gordon Sondland, his longtime donor and EU ambassador, to his former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who he called Dumb as a Rock. His other Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who had his security clearance revoked. his former press secretary, Kaylee McInney, who he trashed online,

his former donor and campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos, who he denied even knowing his FBI director, Christopher Ray, who he chose to run the agency in his first term, but then forced out to make way for Cash Patel, to his own vice president, who he was perfectly fine seeing hanged because Pence refused to certify an election that Trump lost, and now he's doing it to the richest person in the world who literally funded his election win in 2024.

The point being that, If Trump has so little loyalty that he can discard all of those people, people who literally worked for him, people who helped him win the election, people who sacrificed their lives and their reputations and oftentimes their livelihoods for him, people who had genuine value to him, if he can discard those people, do you really believe he cares about regular Americans, about the single mom working two jobs to take care of her kids, about a child with cancer who relies on the children's health insurance program to survive, about seniors who need Medicaid for their health care, about a family of four in rural Iowa who relies on food stamps

to eat, if Trump is going to publicly destroy Elon Musk, again, the richest man in the world who ensured he won in 2024, then he is not falling over himself to help anyone who isn't named Donald Trump, as if his big, beautiful bill didn't already make that clear. Trump is going to frame himself as some populist champion, but he's the champion for one person and one person alone. And it's the guy he sees when he looks in the mirror. Next up for my interviews with Senator Kelly and Liz Oyer. No lie is brought to you by Incogni. If you ever search for your name or address on Google,

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speak on with a lot of authority because I work in politics and this space in particular, it's especially important to keep my private information secure. That is why I'm such a big fan of incogni. Right now, you can get 60% off an annual plan by going to incogni.com and use code no lie. That's I-N-C-O-G-N-I.com slash no lie and use code no lie at checkout. I'm joined now by the U.S. Senator from Arizona. Mark Kelly. Thanks so much for taking the time. Ryan, thank you. So we're right now in the midst of an ongoing battle where Trump and Republicans are trying to get this reconciliation bill passed.

It's right now in the Senate. Trump has realized that the final hurdles to this thing actually getting passed are just a few Republican senators. And so he's really trained his focus on people like Rand Paul and Josh Hawley. Now, Josh Hawley in particular was somebody who presented himself as some champion against these Medicaid cuts. And he had come out numerous times. He wrote an op-ed in the New York Times explaining how against these cuts he was.

He even rightfully pointed to the fact that this bill would cut Medicaid as his reason to come out and speak out. That bill hadn't changed between the time that it was passed in the House and come to the Senate. And yet suddenly, Josh Hawley has come forward and he posted a tweet saying, just had a great talk with President Trump about the big, beautiful bill. He said again, no Medicaid benefit cuts. And so apparently all Josh Hawley needed was some light reassurance from Donald Trump. he switched his entire tune. Can I have your reaction to the fact that, again, that's really all it took for him was just Donald Trump saying it won't. And so despite what all of the data says,

despite what all of the scorekeeping says, despite what all the analysis says, Josh Hawley suddenly doesn't believe that it's going to have any impact on Medicaid. Well, let me just start, Brian, and say that this is a shit sandwich of a bill. It really is. And if it passes, millions of Americans are going to have to eat this. And that's in the form of losing their health care coverage through Medicaid, that's kids, that's pregnant moms, that's upwards of 13 million people. And, you know, who knows what Josh Hawley's going to say tomorrow. He did come out strongly against this.

And I hear what you're saying about the tweet. I haven't spoken to him about it. I plan to see where he really stands on this because he indicated that he did not want to see people kicked off of Medicaid. I don't think he should be taking the president at his word. The president doesn't even seem to understand what's in this legislation. We're seeing this talking point trotted out elsewhere. Russ Vote, Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, is saying the same thing.

And so I think that they're coalescing around this talking point where they are just pretending now that if they say that this bill isn't going to cut Medicaid, that somehow that's going to manifest itself into reality. Can you talk about the fuse that they're giving themselves, this delayed fuse in terms of when this bill would pass versus when the Medicaid cuts would actually occur? Well, first of all, it's not necessarily going to pass. They also have to convince Ron Johnson. And you mentioned Rand Paul, who they, you know, have an issue with the amount that this adds to our debt, deficit and our debt.

It is trillions and trillions of dollars. And eventually, this is going to catch up with us. And we shouldn't be kicking people off of their health care to provide a big tax cut for billionaires. That's just bad policy on both sides. Yeah. And eventually, the tax increases will have to be more if we don't start taxing billionaires at a reasonable rate right now. So, but this bill has all kinds of problems. I mean, there's problems I was working on last week with some of my colleagues that have to do with tax incentives, incentives for renewable energy, solar, wind, hydroelectric that we put in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Those sources of power are 90% of the new energy that we add to the grid in the last couple of years. So we get rid of those tax incentives. We kill those projects. We're not going to be able to expand the amount of energy, and we need this energy. So the bill has all kinds of problems. It's not a done deal that it's going to pass in the Senate. As we look closer and closer at it, as my Republican colleagues especially look at it, I think you'll see people have problems with it.

Digging into the subsidies for renewable energy, clean energy, what does it do if the U.S. retreats on its effort to become a leader in clean energy manufacturing or the adoption of renewable energy in light of the fact that we have other countries, like China that are diving headfirst into trying to be the leader in these spaces, knowing full well the potency that they'll have as we head into this, you know, this new clean energy era. Well, it's just like anything. If we don't do it, our adversaries will move into the vacuum, you know, that we create, whether it's energies or semiconductors or other technology. We've invented most of this stuff and we're the best innovators on the planet.

And if we have good policies that support American industry, especially in areas that also have like an ancillary benefit, we've got a climate problem that is not going away. You know, the Republicans, my Republican colleagues can, you know, say what they want about the science. The science is solid on this. The planet is warming up. I've seen changes in our planet from orbit as I've orbited the Earth. I'm four different missions from my first space flight in 2001 to my fourth one in 2011. I could see some changes specifically over the Amazon and deforestation. And if we don't do something on this issue, it's going to be harder to live on certain places on the planet.

You're going to have more mass migration. You're going to have food supply issues eventually. we've already got issues with insurers in California and Florida, those problems will grow. We have to address this. And if we don't manufacture clean energy here, it'll be done somewhere else. And that technology will be built somewhere else, and then we will have to, eventually we'll have to import it. So why don't we just manufacture it here? Those incentives are in the Inflation Reduction Act.

And some of my Republican colleagues, they get it because if you look at a map of where, these energy projects are, more of them are in red states than they are in blue states. So that's another major issue with the bill. We're trying to address this in having these conversations with Republicans about what the impact is going to be to them and their state. Why do you presume that they make these moves to strip those things out of the bill in the first? Clearly, that wasn't introduced by a Democrat when it was written in the House and passed

out of the House with unanimous support from, Republicans, except for Thomas Massey. But why do you think they put that in there? Because these are folks who, you know, these Republicans will come out and talk about how we need to, we need to restore American ascendancy in light of these threats from China. And yet at the same time, by virtue of what they're doing with clean energy manufacturing and the adoption of renewable energy, we're really just seeding all of that power to China in the future. Yeah, one reason. Money in politics. If there's one thing I could fix be campaign finance reform. John McCain, who used to sit at this desk here, physically, this was his desk when he was a U.S. Senator. I'm in his U.S. Senate seat. McCain Fine

Gold. We tried to reform campaign finance, had some success. He had some success. If I could snap my fingers and fix one thing, it would be that. The amount of money that corporate packs, oil and gas, especially, put into our political system, into campaigns, it magically changes people's view on things. And oil and gas companies don't like the competition from solar and wind and hydro. Solar power is the cheapest power to add to the grid right now. If so, it comes down to just money in politics. That's why they don't like it. Oil and gas companies tend to support Republicans. In terms of this bill kind of making its way through the Senate, I know that you've spoken to your own constituents. Look, you don't live in some liberal bastion. You live in a true purple state.

What have your constituents that I know that you just recently had a town hall in Cochee's County? What are folks in Arizona actually saying about this bill? And I'm especially interested in folks who are not true blue Democrats, but rather maybe people who have voted for Trump, people who have voted for Republicans. Well, I don't ask people who they voted for, right. And I've done three of these Medicaid town halls. Cochise County was the most recent one. I've done Pima County, Maricopa County, Maricopa County's Phoenix, half the population of the state. But I've talked to all kinds of people about, you know, how this affects them personally. There was one woman in Phoenix who had two adopted kids. One had a lot of health care issues and needs.

And when you adopt a kid out of foster care, they're on Medicaid. Her husband was a 20-year-old. veteran, retired Navy, and these kids are on Medicaid, and she was terrified that they're going to lose their Medicaid coverage. And she said to me, she says, she said, you know, it's like the Republicans are burning down my house and there are still people inside. My kids are inside. That's how she feels about this legislation that could potentially kick her kids off of Medicaid and they lose their health care coverage. Another woman named Tara, I think her name was, in Cochise County, who doesn't use Medicaid or food stamps now, but she did when she was a single mom when she was younger. And she says she would not have been able to survive without those benefits.

And now she's a behavioral health counselor, and her patients, a lot of them are on Medicaid. So she doesn't use these benefits anymore, but she recognizes how important because of her own personal experience. So there's a lot of like really scary stories. This isn't about removing like waste in the system. It's not waste, fraud, and abuse. They bring up this fraud comment all the time about the fraud. I want to see the indictments. I mean, Elon Musk talks about fraud.

When are the indictments coming? Fraud is against the law. I haven't seen one from the administration yet. So it's all rhetoric and it's all about taking money in the form of food benefits, food stamps, snap, and health care benefits in Medicaid, it's taking money from poor people and giving it to rich people. We've been doing this for decades, and the income inequality in this country is certainly higher than it's ever been before. You've got three of the richest people in the country own more than the bottom 50%, three people, not three percent, three

people more than the bottom 50% it's unsustainable and it's going to bankrupt us because the 37 trillion dollars of debt this is unsustainable you know eventually people will stop buying our bonds or the interest rates will be so high it'll be the largest thing in the in the budget every year so the what we should be doing is is looking for opportunities you know to make the delivery of health care better, but not kick people off of their health care coverage. And at the same time, we need to generate more revenue. And that revenue should come from millionaires and billionaires, not the middle class, not the working class. On that point of the debt becoming unsustainable, or already at the point where it is unsustainable, I believe it's the second biggest or either

the second or the first biggest line item in the government, the interest on the debt. For a political party on the right that has predicated so much of its identity on its purported fiscal conservatism, fiscal responsibility. How are there only one or two senators right now who are coming out against a bill that would add, what is it, $3.8 trillion to the debt over the next decade? Brian, they're only fiscally conservative when there was a Democrat in the White House. So that's like half the time. And the other half of the time, it's tax cuts regardless of the consequences. Right. So, yeah, why only, you know, two in the United States Senate vocally right now? It's because Donald Trump's in the White House. And he wants this. He wants to help out his

rich friends, I guess. Yeah, pretty simple there. In terms of, look, a lot of everybody that's that are your colleagues in the Senate, certainly everybody in the House, these people were around back in 2017 when they last tried to strip health care, last tried to cut the ACA. And they watched what happened in the 2018 midterms. Democrats won the House. by the biggest margin in modern American history, flipped 41 seats. And again, that was on the back of their effort to gut the ACA. Yeah, they weren't even successful, by the way. And it was John McCain putting a stop to it.

And so how do these people not recognize, you know, this was only a handful of years ago, how do they not recognize what happens, what the political consequences are when you try to go after Americans' health care? And they're doing it to a bigger tune right now than they even sought to do back in 2017. Well, I think you've got to see who they're beholden to. They're beholden to Donald Trump. You know, he runs the show for the Republicans. He's the boss.

You know, and to some extent he controls whether or not they have a primary opponent and who's going to win that primary. And they're also beholden to donors. A lot of rich people, a lot of corporate packs. You know, I'm one of the few people. Well, I don't take corporate pack money. Also have all my, you know, assets in a blind, trust, you know, that whole congressional stock trading thing. That needs to be fixed.

John Ossoff and I have legislation on that. I have a public schedule. I'm the only 535 members of Congress. I'm the only person that has taken those three steps. But, you know, this is about who have helped those members get into office. And it's a lot of wealthy Americans and they like tax cuts. And finally, let's finish off with this. You'd mention that this bill isn't a done deal yet. It often does feel futile from the outside because, I mean, us pinning our hopes on, unlike Rand Paul or Ron Johnson doing the right, or Mitch McConnell doing the right thing, it often feels like such a fool's errand. And so, and so this is kind of a two-parter here, but how confident are you that there will be enough Republicans that can do the right

thing in terms of this bill? And what can folks do on the outside who are watching this happen and kind of do feel helpless at the prospect of, you know, health care, food assistance being shipped away from millions upon millions of Americans. Well, I am not confident at all. I think it's more likely that something gets passed out of the Senate. I think we've got a chance to redo 2017 with either a U.S. Senator or when the legislation goes back to the House, a couple House Republicans just don't, you know, vote for the thing. I think that's a possibility. That's not likely. I think what's likely is they fall in line. You mentioned Josh Hawley's comment.

That's the path. Most of them will go down. We need four Republicans in the Senate to kill this thing. I doubt there'll be four. But we'll see. And the second part of your question about what can people do? They can speak out. They can show up.

They need to do something. You know, show up at a protest, make a phone call, send an email. Be loud about this. because you, it might be surprising to people, but we hear them. And Republicans hear them as well. And if there's enough of them, they're going to have to make a decision. Do they stand with their constituents or do they stand with Donald Trump? Perfectly put.

We'll leave it there. Senator Kelly, appreciate your time. Thanks so much. All right. Thank you, Brian. No lie is brought to you by Shopify. So interestingly enough, before I even got involved in politics, I had a few. different jobs, including a greeting card company that I started. I also was a personal

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Turn those dreams into... and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for our $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash BTC. Go to Shopify.com slash BTC. I'm joined now by the pardon attorney under President Biden. Liz Oyer, thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me out, Brian. So the issue of pardons has absolutely been in the news lately as Donald Trump has ramped up

his spate of pardons. And that's owed in large parts of the fact that Ed Martin, who was the former acting deputy U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., has moved from that post where he was was an interim, where he was an interim U.S. attorney and obviously couldn't, couldn't get, couldn't get confirmed to a full term over to the pardon attorney office where you worked. And so what has Ed Martin done to the office that you previously worked at? Well, Ed Martin is one of the most political figures in the Trump administration. He has replaced me in a position that historically has always been held by a career employee of the Department of Justice, someone who is

not a political appointee. I was not a presidential appointee. I was a career, meaning that the intent was that I would serve under any president. And that is what I fully expected to do until I was fired in March and replaced by Ed Martin, who has really very much politicized the pardon function. And can you talk about some of these pardons that have been recommended, obviously, by Ed Martin, and that have been carried out by Donald Trump. And I'm talking specifically, some names that have been in the news lately have been the Crisleys who had a reality TV show, and then you've got Paul Walzac, Scott Jenkins. Can you talk about some of these folks and what it means that these were the ones who got pardons? The president has been pardoning people who have not

applied through the ordinary process. There is a longstanding established process where the Department of Justice vets applicants. But what's happening right now is seems to be that there is a pardon economy. People are seeking to lobby for their pardons and hiring. high-price lobbyists and lawyers to access the president, jump the line, and get their applications on the desk. Most of these people have been celebrities, political officials, people who are supporters of MAGA and President Trump, who have been successful in this process. And you've named some of the notable ones. The Crisleys are a reality TV couple whose daughter has been aggressively lobbying for a pardon, including by trying to paint her parents as victims.

of Biden's Justice Department and the weaponization of justice in the same vein as President Trump. But actually, they were prosecuted in a case that was initiated under President Trump when he was originally the president. So it's sort of a bizarre set of circumstances. They also committed a large-scale financial fraud, which is an unusual profile of a type of case to pardon. You mentioned the Grimm case. Grimm is one of eight corrupt public officials who have received a pardon from President Trump to date during his second term in office. That's also very unusual that people who abuse their political office and abused the public trust would receive a presidential pardon. His case is actually not the most egregious. There are others. I think that

are more stunning. There's a corrupt sheriff in Virginia who was selling badges for cash who received a full pardon. There's an elected official in Nevada named Michelle Fiore, who actually actually embezzled money from a police memorial fund and used it for plastic surgery who received a full pardon from President Trump. So these are not the types of people that traditionally would be considered for that type of relief, but because they are supporters and boosters of President Trump, they're having success under the Ed Martin pardon regime. Can you talk about Paul Walsack in particular? Because I think that one was perhaps the most egregious that we've seen during this administration. Yeah, Walsack's case is really a shocking one. It's, it's,

a case in which he presided over a nursing home company. Essentially, he ran medical care facilities and he skimmed money off the tops of the page checks of his doctors and nurses. He, in total, committed a fraud in the amount of almost $11 million. He then argued to try to stay out of jail. And the judge who sentenced him told him, wealth is not a get out of jail free card in this country. Little did he know. Right, right, exactly. So I'm sentencing you to 18 months in prison, You've got to pay back the money that you stole. Literally days later, Trump swooped in and granted Walsack a full pardon, which means no jail. And it also wipes out his obligation to repay that money that he stole. Trump is sending the exact opposite message of the one that the judge wanted to send. He's sending the message that wealth can be a get-out-of-jail-free card as long as you use your wealth to support President Trump. And that's exactly what we saw happen in the Walsack case. It has come out that Walsack's mother attending a million-dollar-a-plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago just days before he received that pardon. Well, you know, what I think is so egregious about this case, too, is that the whole basis,

the whole purported basis for passing this budget bill that strips, you know, health care away from 14 million people, food stamps away to the tune of $300 billion, is that there's all of this, there's all of this purported fraud happening with Medicaid and other earned benefit programs. and, of course, they haven't brought any forward, but in this instance, this is what that fraud looks like. And so you've got Donald Trump pardoning somebody who committed the exact crime that he's claiming we need to do all of these cuts

because those people are so dangerous, so egregious, that we have to strip health care away from 14 million people. That's how deep-seated and egregious this criminality is. And yet the guy who's actually doing it gets a free pass. Yeah, that's exactly right. a really important point. There's no principle to any of this. This is just purely transactional. And in this case, Trump was able to cut a deal with the mother of Paul Walsack, where he got a million dollars for her to attend this dinner. And he was willing to dole out a full pardon in exchange

for that. That is really the definition of corruption. Another similar case kind of to what we were just talking about, where you've got somebody who committed the exact crime that Republicans are pretending or are using as a base. basis for their own cuts is you've got, you've got Russ Ulbricht, who was granted a pardon. He oversaw Silk Road, which is this underground marketplace, and fentanyl was sold on this marketplace. So this is, again, a justification by the Trump administration to, for example, ratchet up this trade war.

And they said all of this fentanyl is coming across the Mexican and Canadian border. And so we have to engage in this, you know, in this big tariff regime that the Trump administration is putting forward. But then you've got a guy who is actually trafficking in this stuff or enabling, facilitating the trafficking of this stuff. And he also gets a pardon from the Trump administration. Yeah. What is so hypocritical about this is that Ross Ulbricht was running an underground black market empire that was trafficking in huge amounts of illegal drugs. And at his trial, the government proved that there were six overdose down. specifically linked to drugs that were purchased on the Silk Road marketplace, including the death of a teenager who overdosed on drugs that were purchased on the Silk Road.

So the idea that they're now pardoning Ulbricht, it's just, it demonstrates that it's all total hypocrisy. There are no real principles governing any of this. I will say that Ross Ulberg's life sentence was a very harsh sentence. It's a very steep sentence. And we do have a problem in this country with over-incarceration. but this is a serious case and the pardon that was extended is not consistent with other priorities that the president has publicly espoused. There was also evidence presented at Albrecht's trial that he attempted to solicit some murders in addition. So it was really a pretty complex case

with a lot of bad facts going on in the background. But the reason that he got this pardon is because Trump cut a deal with the libertarians that if he were elected with their support, he would pardon Ross Ulbricht. They believe that he was sentenced to harshly. And so, again, this is totally transactional. There are no principles underlying any of it. It is just a business deal. Trump is literally using the powers of the presidency to enrich himself and to bolster his own political support, which really, again, it's just, it's corrupt. Are there any limits to what Trump would be able to do with the pardon power? Or is it plenary? And he has, you know, full control of who he pardons and there's no checks to his power whatsoever.

The pardon power is a totally unfettered, unchecked presidential power under the Constitution. It actually derives from the powers of a king and it's intended to be used for mercy. It's intended to be used for good. But it gives the president total discretion to pardon whomever he chooses for whatever reason he deems appropriate. And to exercise that power for good requires that the person wielding it actually has good intentions, and we're seeing that that's not the case here. It's a challenging situation that we're in because there's really nothing that can be done to rein in the president's use of the clemency power short of a constitutional amendment. But I do think that we have seen such corrupt and inappropriate uses

of the pardon power in the first few months of his presidency that we ought to be having a serious conversation about whether some constitutional reform is appropriate to limit the president's pardon power in some way. And I want to dig into exactly that in just a moment. But a quick question first, has there ever been a check to a presidential pardon? Has there ever been anybody who was granted a pardon or granted clemency? And for some reason, it wasn't allowed to go through? So once a clemency is granted, it cannot be undone once the president has signed off on it. What we have seen with some of Trump's early pardons, the pardons he granted in the last administration, is that some of those individuals are now back in prison on new charges. There is a reason why there's a process that normally runs through the Department of Justice for reviewing candidates for pardons.

It's so that they can be appropriately vetted. In Trump's first term in office, the Department of Justice was not allowed to do the type of vetting that typically occurs. and as a result, some people got through the pardon process that really were not deserving or appropriate candidates. There is an individual named Jonathan Braun in New York who has been arrested four or five times already since he was pardoned by Trump during the first administration. He actually received a commutations or reduction of his sentence. And now he is back in prison after having been arrested for assaulting a child and for assaulting and groping a nanny who worked for him. So he's somebody who's really an excellent example of why these types of pardons are

dangerous and inappropriate. Now, you'd mentioned before that some type of constitutional amendment or reforms are needed. What do you think that should look like? Because on one hand, you do have this power that was granted in the Constitution and that most presidents have wielded responsibly and that could serve as a helpful tool in the face of a criminal justice system that may often be either erroneous in its decisions or too harsh in the sentences that it hands down. And we saw a lot of President Obama wielded it especially responsibly in terms of who he opted to give a second chance to. And so I don't want to just throw the baby out with the bathwater. But at the same time, clearly this administration is showing that some reforms are

needed. And so what do you think having served in the position you served in those reforms should look like. I came into the role of pardon attorney as a big believer in second chances and a big believer in the power of clemency to do good. You're absolutely right that that power was at its height under President Obama who used the clemency power in a disciplined and principled way to reduce the sentences of thousands of people who were serving outdated, overly lengthy, mandatory minimum sentences, mostly for nonviolent drug offenses. So that's a great example of how clemency can be used to reduce some of the harms of mass incarceration in this country. But when clemency can be used for political objectives or for financial objectives, as we're seeing now, that's dangerous

and destructive to our system of justice. So in my view, we need to be considering some reforms that limit the purposes for which clemency can be granted and that require some real vetting by objective non-political parties like the folks in the office of the partner attorney who are ordinarily entrusted to do that vetting. There are so many deserving people out there who really would benefit appropriately from second chances through clemency. But those hooks are all being overlooked right now in favor of these politically connected individuals or those who have shown loyalty to the president and his causes. And that's really unfortunate for us all. Liz, when you see somebody like former Democratic Senator Bob Menendez go on Twitter and make

these very overt, blatant, transparent pleas for Donald Trump to pardon him by talking about the weaponization of government and whatnot, what's your reaction to seeing stuff like that, where it's very clear what he's trying to do. And it's also obviously clear that Trump has shown a proclivity to do it. Yeah, it really illustrates how. much power the president has been able to amass through just the promise of clemency, through the possibility of clemency. Everyone who has any type of criminal conviction now knows that if they pander to the president, they have a shot of being considered for clemency. So the president's essentially amassing an army of people who are willing to do whatever it takes

for him with the hope of getting clemency. We saw the same thing in the case of Eric Adams, although Adams didn't need clemency because he was never convicted. The Justice Department dismissed the charges against him because he demonstrated that he was willing to do the president's bidding. It's a very dangerous precedent to set, and it really helps to empower the president to do illegitimate things and to seek political retribution against enemies, to grant favors to friends. It's just not the type of justice system that we want in this. this country or that we've ever had in this country. It's very dangerous and very, very alarming. Yeah, and what's most hypocritical about it is that this administration came into office under this pretense that they were going to restore law and order and that they were railing against

these purported two tiers of justice when, in fact, Donald Trump has benefited from another tier of justice throughout the entirety of the 2024 campaign cycle by virtue of being able to evade conviction for, you know, three out of the four cases that he was charged in. And of course, now, you know, you've got him just pardoning anybody who's willing to give him some money or he can derive some political benefit from. Liz, how can folks who are watching right now read more from you? Well, I have a substack now called Lawyer-Oyer, and I'm writing a lot about Trump's pardons and also other issues of concern at the Department of Justice. So I would encourage folks to subscribe to lawyer-oier. I've tried to do a deep dive on some of these recent pardons with some more information for those who are

interested. I'm also on Instagram and TikTok, again, as lawyer-oier and trying to educate folks about what's happening in the Department of Justice right now and how the pardon power is being misused. Excellent. Well, I'm going to put the link to your substack right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. If you're listening on the podcast, I'll put it in the show notes. Liz, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for having me on, Brian. Really appreciate the conversation. Thanks again to Senator Kelly and Liz Oyer. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera.

If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more.