Pod Save the World - Adam Schiff on Trump's classified cache

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Ben and Tommy cover the latest on the classified information seized at Mar-a-Lago, the one year anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, assassination attempts connected to Iran, Austin Tice, the former Australian PM’s secret jobs, Kenya’s presidential election, Ukraine, Myanmar, TikTok and disinformation and bears tripping balls. Then Ben talks with Congressman Adam Schiff about possible ramifications of the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, potential national security fallout, and what this tells us about what Trump would do if he won in 2024. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to POTS Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben. The lies about classified information at Mara Lago are flying. They're flying. They're flying fast and furious. Like ketchup covered entrees in the West Wing.

It's like, I'm like seven. Nice one. Nice one. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad that played. We're going to talk about that today, the latest on the classified information recovered from Trump's poolhouse. I think our informed speculation last week was probably not alarmist enough, if we're being honest.

No, I mean, but we were appropriately. waiting, you know, we were very responsible. Now, now today we can speculate. Net your twice, cut once. That's the slogan here. The one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. We're going to talk about Iran and assassination attempts. Some hostage updates, a wild story about the secret work life of the former prime minister of Austria. Elections in Kenya, a big election in Kenya. Some news from Burma and Ukraine and why TikTok has a disinformation problem. And then a tripping bear, hallucinogenic honey. Tripping bear, yeah, yeah. Something we all can get behind.

I didn't realize that honey was out there, but we'll get to it. Apparently, there's some in the U.S. too. And then you just talked with Congressman Adam Schiff, who runs the Intelligence Committee, I believe, timely interview. Very timely. Chairman Schiff runs us through, you know, the potential danger of these documents being down in Marlago, what the role of Congress is, how they're working with DOJ, how they're working with the Director of National Intelligence, try to get to the bottom of it, how this fits into the broader threats of democracy, some of the shady cast characters involved, including. A friend of the podcast, Patel. Yeah, my favorite. And Trump's, shall I say, rather shifty explanations.

I like what you did there for what's going on here. Excellent. Stick around for that because that guy actually knows what he's talking about. Before we get to the news, two things, Ben. I know you love Karyuma Shoams. You know I love Karyuma shoes. Well aware of it now. We are excited to announce that Krookid and Karyuma have collaborated on two awesome pairs of shoes

that listeners of POTS of the World will love. As always, a portion of the proceeds from these shoes and any item you buy in our store goes to vote riders. to a leading organization, focus on helping people vote. So check them out and get your pair at crooked.com slash kicks. Also, Ben, do you want to know what the Gen Z world is up to you,

but you're afraid to ask? Yeah, that's my life every day, actually. Okay. So you're going to love the Dare We Say podcast. This week, two of the three hosts have birthdays. They're turning 21 and 24. I'm going to read you something from the episode description where it says,

the girls reflect on the birthday scaries and the anxieties of getting older. God, what I would give for his and 21st birthday anxiety. It's a great show. What did you do for your 21st birthday? Like as many shots as I could before I fucking fell asleep. New episodes of, dare we say, drop every Thursday,

wherever you get your podcast. So check it out. Okay. Another Russia. Another Russia. So four is out. You don't want to miss this one. Tell us about it.

What's happening here? This is, we begin with Nemtsov. He's in prison. He's been thrown in prison. He gets harassed by, like, Putin's goons when he's out of prison. But then we talk about how he and Navalny team up. It's a great episode because if you're curious about not just Namsab, but Alexei Navalny, he enters the program here. We talked to his chief of staff as well as Jan Namsova.

How did they build the biggest protest movement in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union? Is that 2012? That's in 2012. Hillary did it is what Putin said. Yeah, that's not good. That's slightly different story here. And kind of a high point for the Russian opposition leading obviously to, you know, pretty rough crackdown. But this is a great, I love this. It's actually my favorite episode, I've always like episode four. Every podcast I've ever worked on, I'm like, skip the first three.

I was like, if this is episode one. Yeah, like this is so good. So binge it, listen to it. Watch it if you can somehow pull that off. Yeah, sure. YouTube or something. I don't know. Stare at your phone.

All right. Let's go to Radalago. So the latest news, Ben. So last of the week, we talked about all the kinds of intelligence the president has access to and why keeping that in your basement could be a bad idea. We have since learned that the FBI recovered secret, top secret and TSSCI. out of the like storage closet. TSS stands for top secret sensitive compartmented information. You know, I was thinking about how to contextualize this for listeners, Ben. And I remember back in

2016, Obama did an interview, especially about Hillary's emails. And he said, quote, there's classified and then there's classified. There's stuff that is really top secret, top secret. And there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom or going out over the wire. But it's basically stuff that you could get in open source in the public domain. End of quote. TSCI information. is the really sensitive stuff with a few notable exceptions, which are basically programs or activities that were really, really secret and then they became well known. I think you know what I'm thinking of, but I'm not going to say it for obvious reasons. So some reports even say

there are nuclear secrets in Trump's little stash. The lies have evolved over time, then first the FBI was planting stuff. Now they're claiming Trump had a standing order to declassify every document that he took home with him for some bizarre reason. I have the chance to talk about this at great length on PSA the last couple weeks. What is your take so far about what we've learned and the suggestion that like all of this that that there was a standing order just to make this all okay yeah um as i'm just as quick as i can um because i was pretty stunned actually to see the list of boxes and the numbers of boxes that had not just secret but top secret information and then i was pretty floored to see a box that said top secret scei on it too

just so people know the very quick and dirty i give on this if something's secret it's probably like a report that gives an analytical judgment, you know, the U.S. intelligence community thinks this, but it doesn't get into the weeds of like the methods of collection, right? Or like a timely military thing. It probably shouldn't be secret. Let's be honest. Yeah, a bunch of stuff that's secret shouldn't be secret, but some of it should.

Some should. Now, once you're going to top secret, and there are a bunch of these documents, that is, are intelligence reports or analytical products that are derived from very sensitive methods of collection, right? So let's just say, like, each paragraph could describe, hey, we, here's our assessment and we know this because of X, you know. Right. Let's say we intercepted a phone call from the president of Egypt to his best friend. Hypothetically. Right. Hypothetically. Yeah. And so you're saying, we think Egypt is going to have a rough year next year because here's why. Or a general or something. Yeah. Or, you know, we here's what we assess about the military movements of the PLA, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or, you know, here's this sensitive new.

technology that the U.S. military is developing. Like, this, a top secret document is something that is derived from information, and that's important because I'll come back to that in second, that the U.S. government really doesn't want anybody to know, right? Then top secret SCI secure compartment information is so secret that even if you have a top secret clearance, if you don't have a real reason to know this specific piece of information, you wouldn't get it, right? Remember how we got, I got read into a few compartmented, like code word.

level CIA programs. I went over to some goons office in the EEOB. They made me write down on a document. When they left, they made me write, sign it again and be like, you forgot this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, let's just say this is not stuff that they want in the basement of Marilago, right? Or any other basement. And so, like, this matters for a bunch of reasons. I'm going to start the declassification thing. It is such utter bullshit, right? And it's bullshit for so many reasons. First of all, it's bullshit because his own stories don't add up. Like, the FBI planted the information, but I had actually already declassified the information that the FBI planted on me, or I didn't know what I was packing, but I had declassified what I didn't

know I was packing. Like, there's just huge contradictions to their justifications. But then the other really important thing, I mentioned this briefly with Congressman Schiff, but he can't just declassify like a bunch of words on a page, right? So like if he has some documents and he says, I know, the way he's describing it's like, these pieces of paper I'm declassifying. The pieces of paper, I remember reading reports, again, and I'm not revealing anything here, like, it could refer to like 30 different methods of collection, right? Like, is he declassifying all of those intelligence programs? So again, to use the hypothetical, if there's some report about country X, you know, and we believe this to be the case because we know that for these reasons, he's not just

declassifying what we believe, he's declassifying all of the programs that informed that piece of paper, right? It doesn't... It's like Michael Scott being like, I declare bankruptcy. It's just, it's over. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way, right? So never mind that he went through no protocol. There's no record of this declassification. If these, if these documents really were declassified, then why can we talk about them now? Like, why, you know, like they're treating them is pretty classified right now. So it just doesn't hold up. And I think it does, like the two giant things that cry out for attention here are the entire system of classification breaks

down if dudes are able to pack it up and take it with them. It's even worse when they're at a place like Mar-a-Lago where like every video I've ever seen from Mar-a-Lago is at a wedding with like 200 drunk people. And, you know, if you think the Chinese or Russian government couldn't somehow figure out how to get somebody into Mar-A-Lago, like you haven't watched enough fucking movies. Yeah, watched the Americans. I mean, it happened. In 2019, they arrested a Chinese National who had like nine thumb drives on her and a bunch of SIM cards and shit. Like that was not on the up and up. I mean, yeah, the current legal framework for classifying documents is executive order 13526, which was an Obama EO in 2009. It is absolutely true that a president can declassify whatever he or she wants with some notable exceptions, including nuclear secrets and anything that names sources and methods within that document.

So those are some pretty big exceptions. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to go through a process. I mean, I remember. Right. You talk to the DNI.

The example I give is we declassified the bin Laden raid. So he could go out and talk about that. or we declassified a pretty awful drone strike that ended up killing an American in Pakistan. And he literally had to have conversations with the DNI and the CIA director before he declassified it. You don't just kind of let people know a few weeks later after you're not in the president. Yeah. On the way out, yeah. And the last thing we see Tommy is like the why.

Well, it's getting to the motive. Yeah. So just one last point. Like the DOJ, if they want to prosecute him, none of this conversation really matters because they can do so under the Espionage Act, which. which they can prosecute you for classified or not. But so to the motive, like why have all this crap. So there's the theories. Chaos theory you mentioned.

Final days were crazy. I took all this stuff. That doesn't explain why he gave back some of it, but not all of it. The second theory that we love. Let's just be clear that we love this is the sort of secrets for the Saudis. Yeah. A lot of people pointing out how sketchy it is that Jared Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudis for his little investment fund.

Maybe these documents are connected. Again, I enjoy that theory very much. but there's no evidence to back it up yet. And also, as you've pointed out... Other than the $2 billion fun that Jared got. But as you've pointed out many times in the show, like Jared has a lot of this information in his head that he could pass along.

He doesn't need these documents. Lastly, this is the one we should dig into, probably. There's some old interviews surfacing with a former Trump aide named Cash Patel, who I believe you talk about with congressmanship later. Cash worked for Devin Nunes, then he went to the Trump NSC. Then he closed out his Trump's single term

as the acting chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense. Cash Patel was mysteriously named representative to Trump's, to the archives for Trump in June and has suggested in interviews with like TPUSA and other really reputable outlets that he is still working to declassified documents related to the Mueller probe that he thinks will like absolve them. New York Times reported today, the FBI has interviewed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy about these files. The reporter also said that Trump, when pressed on this, said it's not theirs, it's mine, but the boxes.

So he's basically a five-year-old. So what do you make of the motive? I just sort of ticked off some of the stuff that's swirling. So, yeah, I mean, first of all, it's none of this is his. It's the property of the U.S. government. Like, you know, it's not like they were Donald Trump's personal, you know, musings. But look, the first thing we should say that up front is that there's no motive that excuses him doing this, right? So let's say he thought they were cool.

Like, that's not a reason to take them. Let's say that he likes to have, like, you know, John Daly in off the pro M golf tour and show him some nuclear documents because he's showing off. That's not a reason. Like, you know, I've heard some people describe that as if it's like the positive, you know, well, maybe he just wanted to show this to some of his buddies. Yeah. It's not a reason.

The North Korea letters ones was always, like, thrown around. I'm sure you and I would love to take a bunch of, uh, yeah, I still know some cool stuff. Like to show people, yeah, like, I, you know, I can't do that. Um, now, to get in the more nefarious ones, like the cash Patel one, which, which we talked to Adam Schiff about a little bit, but essentially is like, could you have taken a bunch of documents related to the Russian investigation that he wanted to use for some purpose, right? Now, first of all, what are these documents, what intelligence collection methods is it derived from, you know, selectively pulling documents out of the millions and millions of pages of documents

that the intelligence community has because you think they make you look good or not going to tell the whole story of the Russian investigation? And again, they're still classified. They're not like, it just shows, in some ways, that's an incredibly damning. motive because it shows that he just treats the U.S. intelligence community, an entire U.S. government for that matter, as just some extension of his personal political interest and not as the national security enterprise that it is. But there's also just could he profit in any way from this? And the Saudi one is the most acute example, but there's all kinds of information that

would be worth a pile of money on the open market here. And, you know, yes, it's an extreme thing to think that Trump may have wanted to profit off this or wanted people in this family to profit off. But like, we know that that's never stopped down Trump before. So the question is like, did he want to do anything with this information? Did he want to, was it leverage on somebody? Like, I was struck by the like. The France part. Exactly. The box about information pertaining to the president of France. I wonder if that's the biggest story in France the last week. You have to suspect that that's freaky for Macron. and, you know, just like catnip for their press corps. Yeah. And the thing is, we don't know. And if there was a very benign explanation, like, why haven't we heard it? You know, like, not to play that, you know, directional card, but like. Yeah, when the file says dirt on the French, yeah, it's not.

If it literally was just like letters from Kim Jong-un, then he could just say, you know what, all of these are my many boxes of love letters from Kim Jong-un. That's clearly not the case. And the stuff that is stamped, again, this is top-secret and top-secret and top-secret. are stamped all over the documents, and those are intelligence community products, usually. They're not, like, White House, you know. Yeah, it's not like a memo. It's not like a memo from him with the chief of staff.

Like, that would be confidential. That would be marked confidential or something, right? Like, so there's no explanation that is a good one. All the explanations, all of them are illegal, like from having this. Even if you mistakenly took them, that's still illegal. And there's a lot of bad ones. And so we really do need to get to the bottom. Did you help Obama steal 30 million documents and bring them to Chicago?

Dan, we absolved Dan at the Nashville show. That one had about, you know, I went with him to his new office. I went to work there like the next day. And like, yeah, there were not 30 million pages with us. That wasn't that big enough. I mean, the archives has, it's interesting, actually. The archives has custody of those documents. And they're kind of shared with the post-presidency.

but none of them are like sitting in in Barack Obama's basement. That's too bad. Weird story. It will continue to evolve. It'll be interesting to see if they just wanted the stuff back. If they charge him, what more comes out. I mean,

the thing that sucks about a story like this, well, honestly, in some ways it's really hard on Trump is no one can ever put out the full story of what was taken because by definition you'd be exposing classified information, which means it's very hard for Trump to clear his name. But I think given what we already know, it doesn't seem like that.

that's possible anyway. Yeah, and I think the biggest question ahead of us, you know, with all the caveats that we may not ever know exactly what's in every document, is what DOJ is investigating just the fact that this guy had these documents and they weren't back? Or is DOJ investigating something that he was doing with these documents? Both of those, he's fought. So like both of those, he broke the law and could face really severe consequences, including prison time. But if it's the latter, then we're in a real crisis. Yeah, you better not be selling those to anyone, buddy. Okay, next story.

So we're right around the one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The short answer of sort of the situation there, Ben, it's just very dire. It's incredibly dire. I mean, unfortunately, as we expected, I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago. The Biden administration has ruled out releasing any of the $7 billion of Afghanistan's money that was in the Kabul Bank that was being held on U.S. soil that was seized around that time. they suspended the talks of the Taliban as well. This all came after the operation to take out Al-Qaeda leader. I'm an al-Zawahiri sort of, I mean, I think we both kind of predicted that this might happen.

It's very hard to provide relief to a government. You predicted it. And they cited that reason. Oh, fuck, really? Yeah. Me? I mean, I agree with you. I agreed with you.

Like, here's the thing I think people need to know. Trying to give you credit. The politics of giving money to. a government that was literally just harboring the head of al-Qaeda are obviously very difficult. Everyone should know that I think 80 families of victims of the 9-11 attacks just came out and said you should give back at least half of that money because the humanitarian situation is so dire that kids are starving to death and dying. So like it couldn't be more urgent to get relief to the Afghan people. The government made it so much more difficult. Yeah. I mean I look I

I totally understand the political reality when they're harboring a terrorist like that. I still think, like, not like denying them that money is going to force them to be better. They're not. Okay, if you can't release the money to the Afghan government, I'd like to see them go to every length to use that money for Afghan humanitarian purposes. Because not only there are a lot of Afghans who are being reselled in the United States, not enough, by the way, in the refugee program, they're Afghans all over the world, you know, who fled. And there's a lot of resource needs with Afghans who were stuck in third countries and can't get to places or, you know, Brits are sending them to Rwanda. Like, this would take a lot of creative, you know, bureaucracy and you'd probably have to bust some traditions in terms of what you do with this kind of money.

But if you're not going to return it to the government, I'd really like to see them try to find a way to spend that money for direct Afghan humanitarian and refugee related issues. That's a really good point. It's also we're pointing out that, you know, the Taliban as a, the way they govern is as bad, if not worse than we expected. Girls are not allowed to attend secondary schools. They're being forced to cover their faces in public. Again, millions of Afghan citizens are on the brink of starvation. The only silver lining for Afghans is the fact that they're no longer living in a constant war zone. And it is, you know, I'm reading news reports, but it's reportedly true that especially in rural areas, it's much safer.

The roads are safer. The roads that connect the country is safer because there's not, you know, a literal war zone. But long story short, I mean, Afghanistan needs a ton of help real best. Yeah. Stark. Okay, a couple stories related to Iran Ben. So the first was that author Salman Rushdie was stabbed at an event in Western New York and gravely wounded. Rushdie has been in and out of hiding since 1989 when Ayatollah Khamenei, then the Supreme Leader of Iran issued a fatwa against him calling for his murder. We don't know that Rushdie. attacker attacked him because of the fatwa, but it seems highly likely. It would not surprise me. Second, last week, the Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint against a man in Iran who attempted to pay someone to kill former national security adviser John Bolton in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. I think this guy was not the most sophisticated. He was like DMing him on like Instagram or something.

He was talking to an FBI informant. scary stuff not to belittle it although i think john bolton himself made a joke that like he was mad that the price wasn't higher yeah yeah i mean look nobody wants to see that at all but this didn't feel like it had reached some advanced level of no planning or were you a rushdie fan yes so i i've not read any of his books yeah i'm i i was and in part because um you know i remember that it was like one of the first things i remember following because it's such a crazy story so they put this fatwa on Rushdie after satanic verses comes out. And his translator of his book and the Japanese got killed. Several translators. The one in Italy got attacked. And what was so weird

is that, you know, all this time passed. And Rushdie, who'd been in kind of hiding, had kind of reemerged into society with less security, wasn't in hiding anymore. It's actually a great curb your enthusiasm. Did it curb? Yeah. It's a great career. Was it a fatwa against Larry David, too? Making fun. was, you know, I do think that to put this on the Iranians who came out and denied any responsibility, like, it just shows you how dangerous that kind of ideology is once unleashed that, you know, decades later in a place like a quaint part of Western New York, this could happen. So I think it's one a story about how dangerous and destructive and damaging just

that vein of the Iranian theocratic ideologies, but also it was doubly tragic at a time when journalists and writers are kind of endanger in lots of places that in America, in like one of the kind of most

secure, quaint parts of America at kind of one of these writers conferences that suddenly this could happen, it kind of reinforces this kind of eerie feeling that you get about, you know, after the Jamal Khashoggi murder and, you know, that just, it's dangerous to be a writer now. It's dangerous to have an

opinion now. It's dangerous to be outspoken now. And that people need to fight back and push back against it. Yeah. And not in a whiny cancel culture way, but in like a real, like taking tough position. Yeah, not in like people are going to say mean things. You know, we get like, you know, resistance dad. Shadow banned on Twitter. Like Don Jr. We talked a lot recently about Britney Griner, the WMBA star, who's been held unjustly in Russia for for many months now. The latest there is that Griner's legal team has appealed or verdict. So hopefully that will push forward the talks of a prisoner swap with the U.S. will keep you guys updated on that. But there's no real news there. We did also want to tell you about another hostage named Austin Tice. Austin Tice is a former

Marine. He became a journalist. And he was abducted in Syria literally a decade ago, like 2012. And there were some talks shortly after that happened. I mean, we were in the White House at the time then with the Syrian regime about getting him home. Those stalled over time. They sort of reignited, I think actually Cash Patel of all people. Some of the Trump people went over to Syria to try to have conversations about getting Tice home. They were obviously unsuccessful. But recently, there was some movement on this because the Biden team released a statement saying they know with certainty that Syria has been holding Austin Tice. And I think they believe he is alive.

So there's a long, excellent report on this in McClatchy that everyone should read. But I really just wanted to raise it because kind of raising awareness about these cases is good. it also, you know, read the story. It's just devastating what these issues do to the victims and their families. Imagine losing your kid for a decade. Yeah. I mean, you know, we, we believed he was alive at the end of the Obama administration and would always raise it, not just, you know, in whatever, you know, there wasn't a lot of conduct of Syrians, but we'd raise it with the Russians, given their influence there. And what was interesting is they would never, the Syrian government, it did.

if you follow the pattern throughout this thing, they never say they have him and they never say they don't have him. And it's actually the uncertainty that I like just breaks your heart 10 times more over for the family because there's just this hanging question of whether they have him or not and what condition he might be in. You know, that was a notable statement from the Biden administration that they believe he's being held, but but not much hope that there's some process that could lead to him being freed. and so it's just, yeah, your heart breaks for that family. And it does just show you that there's an opaque nature to, we don't talk much about Syria anymore, but like this is not like a normal government, right? I mean, this is a country that is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths. It's a total pariah state.

It's totally dependent on kind of Russia and Iran for anything. It doesn't control its old territory. There are so many unaccounted for people. there, you know, we saw that the Gulf states, the Arab states kind of begin to normalize relations, but to what end, like, what, at some point, this kind of gangster regime, there needs to be a process to address this on what is, you know, looking like the back end of this year and civil war. Another sort of long-term challenge is Myanmar.

The latest news is that Aung San Suu Kyi, who's the democratically elected leader of Myanmar, was sentenced by a military court on four more charges that added another. six years to her previous 11-year sentence. So she is 77 years old. That's the pundit barking in the back. Write that down everybody. The New York Times reported that she's being kept in a 200-square-foot cell that reaches temperatures over 100 degrees during the day. So the military staged this coup back in February of 2021. They sentenced her to prison. There's been this just horrific civil war in fighting. It seems likely that she's going to face even more bogus charges in the coming months. So just, you know, a pretty grim up day been. Yeah. And I'd mentioned before when this came up that, you know,

God forbid, but if Aung San Suu Kyi were to die in custody like that, I mean, whatever a lid remains on that country is going to blow. I should also, I just like personal note, like, you know, having met with Aung San Suu Kyi a few times, like, she was already someone who seemed pretty scarred by her time, largely under house rest, not even in prison. Like the example I give is that she had a real, like, a pop culture obsession.

Like one time we had to bring her a DVD of glory. Like she wanted to watch that movie. Sure. The last time I saw her, actually, she was talking about the crown. But, like, it was, it was like the, it was someone who'd been deprived of, you know what I mean? Like, someone had been deprived of culture of, like, external information at times. Or had been, like, left to rely only on certain number of things. It's just tragic that this, whatever you think is a lot, we've talked about,

Hengxing's a lot of complexity, but for her to be back in that situation is really hard. It's really horrible. Okay, let's turn to Kenya where there was a recent election, a presidential election. William Rudo, who is currently the deputy president of Kenya, was declared the country's next president on Monday. The Kenyan Electoral Commission said Rudo defeated his opponent, Rialo Dhinga, by a margin of 50.49% to 48.5%. But, big butt here, four members of that seven-person commission board said that they could not stand by the results because the process lacked transparency. it seems likely, or I think he may already have challenged. Odinga will challenge the results in court as he did successfully in 2017.

There's serious concerns about potential violence. Rudo ran as this kind of like outsider, common man. He compared Odinga to, you know, sort of somebody who'd been in politics forever or the family and a father, I believe, was the VP. Odingo said that's obviously bullshit. You know, he called Rudo rich and corrupt. Notably, the former president, President Kenyatta, endorsed his longtime opponent, Riala O'Don.

over his own deputy, Rudo, Rudo then won. Ben, I don't know, it seems like there are going to be more efforts to examine these results for irregularities. It'd be interesting to see what the former president, President Kenyatta, says. Hopefully this resolves quickly and peacefully. But, you know, I think we're going to be talking about this for a minute. Yeah, I mean, Kenya, like, you know, hugely important country in East Africa, growing economy really central to any effort to deal with the other problems in East Africa, including

up to places like Ethiopia. Just the backstory is really interesting and relevant to this, which is that, you know, Kenyatta is the son of like the founding father of Kenya. He comes to power in 2008 in a contested election with Odinga in which there was a huge outbreak of ethnic violence that killed thousands of people. And the aftermath of that, by the way, Kenyatta and Rudo were charged by the international criminal court for their role now over. time those charges got dropped, but these same three characters have been in Kenyan politics forever. Forever. Now, importantly, you know, Kenyatta comes from the Kikuyu tribe, the biggest tribe in Kenya, and Odinga comes from the Luo tribe, which has felt marginalized in Kenya our former boss, Barack Obama, comes from a Luo background as well. And so what's

so interesting here is that after the last election, where Odinga said there were irregularities, he got the Supreme Court to call another election, Kenyatta won that election, Kenyana-Odinga had this kind of famous handshake where they reconciled. And then Kenyatta decided, actually, I'd rather this guy who was my, like, sworn political enemy from a different travel background in Kenya, I'm going to endorse him over Rudo, because I'm not worried about Rudo. being corrupt or maybe I'm that worried about Rudo coming after me, you know, or whatever it is.

That was quite a dramatic turn. And so I say all that backstory because right now what you have is a circumstance where they've announced Rudo is the winner. He's a bit more of a wildcard guy. He ran this campaign appealing to like the hustlers. And Kenyatta has not really said much. And the four members of the election commission

that chose not to validate these results are seen as kind of, you know, closer to Kenyatta, right? And so this could go a bunch of ways because it could go into the courts and they could force it into a runoff because if you get under 50 percent, it goes to runoff. They could just, you know, come out and say, No, Rudo is the winner and maybe Odinga accepts that. Odinga challenges it.

Bottom line is the worst-case scenario is there's an effort to challenge this result. There's violence and ethnic violence, a region that already has a bunch of violence around it, suddenly has kind of its anchor state, Kenya in turmoil. So the hope is whatever happens, they get through to the other side. Kenyana is done pretty well as president on a bunch of stuff, you know, not a perfect guy or perfect president. Kenya's been on a pretty good trajectory. You would hate to see that. You know, the economy has been growing even if inequality is an enormous problem. They've tried to play constructive role in some of these regional issues. You'd hate to see all that come

apart here. So this is going to be, this is something to watch for the next, you know, a couple weeks. And hopefully the White House is getting engaged. I mean, you could see like Tony being big toni was just in Africa too. Yeah, he was just earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Not in Kenya, but I mean, they just put out this Africa strategy. Yeah. Whatever Africa strategy you have, if Kenya's not on board, like you've got a problem. You're a tough spot. So that's a very important, serious story that we'll watch. Let's go to a very stupid and weird one. Scott Morrison, the former prime minister of Australia, who may or may not have pooped his pants in a McDonald's restaurant in 1997 may have secretly held three other ministerial positions while serving

Is it three or five? I read three. Okay. But if you think it's five, let's just go with that. So, Ms. Morrison was the prime minister, but he was also the joint minister of health, finances, and resources, just like Biden being the president of the United States, but also joint secretary of the treasury, HHS and like an EPA administrator like role, except even weirder, because

in a presidential system, those people work for you in Australia. system, you're supposed to have some autonomy over your like, your little fiefdom there. The real finance minister apparently only learned last week that he had a joint minister. So the current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is going to investigate all of this. You know, he's part of this new, like more progressive government that's doing great stuff. But Ben, what I'm wondering is if this means that Scott Morrison also pooped his pants at a Burger King Taco Bell and Wendy's. I think that's kind of a logical extension. I couldn't, I mean, you guys flag this, but then I, thank you.

Thank you to some world those who flagged this for me on social media too, because then it sent me down the rabbit hole. If it's five, I want to know what the other two are. I think, yeah, but I just, what is the reason to secretly name yourself a minister? Like, I, was he resume padding? Oh, you're right, five. The Guardian says five. Yeah. We're learning in real time here.

Was he patting his resume because he knew he was going to lose? Do you get like some, like some extra salary for it? There was something like minimal rights. thing I think he vetoed one of them on I don't know it's just like Scott Morrison's one of those guys where I have to say the more you learn about this guy like the less you like him the sketcher he is and all these like joint uh you know the most cynical one is Tony Abbott kind of noted blowhard had also made himself like a minister of like but he did it for like women's issues right which is he was a notorious misogynist so I do think

think I like that the Albanese government, in addition to their climate plan, so the most important thing is Australia has rejoined the world in fighting climate change, and we love Australia, and they're such a great ally. But you've got to get to the bottom. I got some more details for it. So this is in the middle of the pandemic. So like, boy, if you're going to seize a bunch of power, interesting time to do it. So, okay, Minister of Health was the 14th of March 2020, finance the 30th of March 2020. April 15th, he did administer. the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, the 6th of May, the Department of Home Affairs, and the Treasury. But didn't tell anybody. That's the craziest thing about this is like that, like, he's like secretly...

Talk about hustle culture. What's this guy doing? And this is not a noted intellect, right? So this is not a man who's like, you know, I really want to plumb the depths of health policy, you know, there's something going on here. And I really implore the Australian government to not just let this one drift by, like exposing the kind of strangeness and potentially. corruption of the Morrison administration is a worthy endeavor. Albanese says, turns out he was the world's first stealth bulldozer because he was pledging to bulldoze the government. That's good. That's pretty good. Yeah. Morrison said he put in place arrangements to the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic

as a break glass in case of emergency safeguard. I don't buy it. So, you know, is that basically like Scott Morrison is his own designated survivor? Yeah. I guess so. What an asshole. What a stupid thing to do. Australia.

We get great content from Australia. I love Australia. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about Ukraine. Because we actually didn't talk about it last week for the first time since the war started, but some important things that happened. So, you know, the New York Times had a report that's just worth reading about the widespread

indiscriminate detention of Ukrainian citizens by Russian forces in areas they occupy. These detainees are often tortured. Many are killed. It's just another war crime to investigate in the future and another reason why this is just such a nightmare. Meanwhile, though, Ben, the Ukrainian military is. going on offense. They attacked the headquarters of the Wagner Group, which is the Putin-linked Russian paramilitary group we talked about before. Couldn't happen to a better group of guys. So, yeah, apparently a Russian journalist accidentally revealed the Wagner Group's location on

telegram, posted a photo that made it, and they had like a street sign in it and geolocated them. Oopsies. Great trade growth there, guys. Yeah, I hope you got a bunch of likes on it. There was even speculation that Prozans, the oligarch, who runs the Wagner Group, was hurt or killed, but I don't think that's been confirmed. That would be massive. That would be huge. He's called Putin's chef, I think, because he supplies them food. Yeah, he was like catering over there at the Kremlin. But he's all the shagable traits. Yeah, all the shady shit that they did in Africa, this guy was finding and, you know, profiting off. These guys are destabilizing countries all over. Also, Ukrainian special forces were somehow able to attack a Russian air base deep inside Russian occupied

Crimea that Ukrainian officials said destroyed nine Russian military planes, which is the worst loss for the Russian military since the war started and just a huge psychological blow to Russians who thought they were safe in Crimea. Shortly before he came in, there was another mysterious explosion at a Russian arms depot deep in Crimea. So clearly they have some partisans deep inside the peninsula who are helping them out. Here's where this gets complicated, Ben. In a speech talking about these incidents, President Zelensky said that Ukraine will continue

fighting to liberate Crimea, which Russia invaded in 2014, basically saying the war's not over until Crimea is liberated. That is a big additional step. It would take a lot. It's an expansion of the war. So in a way, these things are connected, all these things you just talked about, because first of all,

what's happening to Ukrainians in areas that are occupied and these kind of, you know, it's like World War II where we didn't really know how bad it was till after, you know, like in terms of internment camps and displacement.

And I worry that we're just, you know, we're going to learn that as horrible as the indiscriminate bombing of cities has been, that the greater scale of war crimes could be whatever the hell they're doing with all these Ukrainians that they're bringing into Russia. Yeah, I mean, the occasional video that leaks out is just... And it connects to the Zelensky thing, right? And you've made this point before on the pod, which is that part of the reason why he can't compromise away the Donbos, for instance, is it they know that any Ukrainian that is left there

is basically being deported. Living in hell, yeah. And living in hell. And so now, Crimea is a bit of a different story, geographically and for a lot of reasons. I think that part of what this is about is, you know, just them wanting, you know, where the Russians are going inch by inch in the east,

you know, the Ukrainians are focused on the South and kind of creating a military problem for the Russians in Crimea is a way for them to go on offense. And it also, it's kind of signaling because this seems like it's too far to be artillery, even the artillery we've given them. If they have special forces or partisans who are making Russian stuff blow up in Crimea,

it's kind of a message of what would happen anywhere that Russia occupies territory. You know, Russia may be gaining some incremental territory in the East, but they're sending a message like, you're not safe in Crimea. You're not ever going to be safe in Lahonsk or Danansk in the East either. And they've been, the trolling has been, I mean, I saw the explosion today,

day, you know, they don't confirm that they did it, but they say things like, you know, if you're Russian looking to go on vacation somewhere, don't go someplace that is held by occupiers. Yeah, they're like, don't smoke near the Amo Depot or something like that. Yeah, they're being, you know, they've got this kind of pretty like intense Ukrainian humor. But like, I do think it shows that like they're not going, not invading Russia, but attacking Crimea is like the closest thing they can do to that. Yeah. And I don't know that they necessarily believe that they will retake all that territory. But I think they do believe that they can send a message, hey, Karemi is not safe.

It will never be safe. You're not winning territory. You're winning, you know, territory that is going to open up insurgency and death and destruction of your military. That's, you know, that's the message, I think. Yeah. And they'll make them defend it, I think, which takes away resources and other places. A few more quick things, and we'll get to your interview. So there's been a lot of reporting lately about the problem of misinformation on TikTok.

Talk. John Favre did a great offline episode about this with Professor Scott Galloway that's worth checking out. If you want to go deeper into whether the U.S. should basically ban the company here. But misinformation has been running rampant abroad for a long time, the Philippines, Latin America, Europe, Africa, including a lot of disinformation in this Kenyan election we just talked about. In the U.S., it's a lot of lies about election fraud and COVID that have gotten millions of views. And it's raised a bunch of thorny questions, especially since the TikTok algorithm is pretty much a black box. we don't know if misinformation is spreading on these platforms because, you know, there's just a fundamental flaw with all social media, if it's because of something specific to TikTok and its

algorithm, or, you know, more conspiratorily, if a Chinese company like Bite Dance might be forced to manipulate the algorithm by the Chinese government. That kind of meddling could take a bunch of forms. It could be helping, you know, Trump, hurting Biden. It could be more just the Russian model of creating conflict, or it could be more subtle. And it could be, you know, tweaking the algorithm to make people feel depressed or angry or whatever you want. And so ByteDance claims that they keep data about Americans separate from the Chinese government. I don't believe them.

So I don't bet. Like, we talked about this way back in the day when Trump was talking about forcing the sale to Microsoft. Yeah. My thinking this has really changed a lot. I think TikTok's become an invaluable resource for like hundreds of millions of people. They get news there. They get entertainment there. But like more and more news, there's growing evidence of, you know, sort of like side effects,

mental health challenges, et cetera, from all social media. But the Chinese government's behavior has also grown super aggressive. And I just think to myself, okay, let's say back in the day, John Brennan sitting in CIA and someone's like, hey, we could do something that could influence the opinion of 300 million Chinese people. Would you do it? I think the U.S. government probably would, which to me suggested the Chinese government would too.

And I think we should probably act accordingly. So, yeah, I've always, I've had, I've been kind of pretty freaked out about this for a little while since I started thinking about this after that Trump thing. And because it's not the risk of, you know, data. It's the risk of, of influence operations. Now, because here's what we know. We know that the algorithms that run TikTok, you know, are, you know, are. fully under Chinese custody. And around that sale, and this is what we talked about at the time, what the Chinese would

not agree to do is anything that tipped the sale to 50.1% ownership outside of China. So they wanted those algorithms to stay in China. Yeah, they didn't. Second, like, I'm not a huge TikTok presence out there, but it is the one major social media platform where the content that you consume is the least determined. by what you select to follow, right? So, you know, it's not like, you know, Twitter, Instagram where all the Instagram's changing and to become more like TikTok. That may become moot. But like, you know, in TikTok, you pick maybe the first thing, but, you know, the algorithm

feeds you. Yeah, it monitors your behavior, but yes, of course. It managed your behavior, but like you don't necessarily know what the ninth video you already see is, right? Now, what have we seen China do? What do we know we've seen them do before, right? In Taiwan, for instance, where they push a lot of disinformation. They are, they're much more subtle than the Russians, right? But so, like, they would do things like around, they wanted to drive wedge from the U.S. and Taiwan. And so we've seen them push information that the U.S. was denying vaccines from getting to Taiwan when, in fact, China was. Or we've seen them push disinformation that, you know, anything that suggests that the U.S. is unreliable, they really, they juice into Taiwan, right?

Like, we, so here's what, we know the Chinese do this. We know that they turn the dial around propaganda disinformation purposes when it suits their interests. We know that this algorithm is controlled inside of China where there's really, there's, there's no, there's no real distinction between a private company and the Chinese government. And by the way, that's not me saying it. The Chinese Communist Party has taken steps to make that clear. They've been brutalizing all this taxi. Jack Ma, like the most powerful taxeo, like just got disappeared, right? So if you think that somehow there's not a risk that TikTok could be used for influence purposes,

you're just not paying attention to, and that's not to mean that everything on TikTok is disinformation. I'm not saying that, look, there's a bunch of distance. We've been very critical of Facebook. No, it just means it's a risk. There's a huge risk. Yeah, it just means there's a risk. And we had to have eyes open about the risk. I would say that like if there was a platform that was designed to fill people with anxiety

about, you know, their appearance or their, like, I don't know, TikTok would be like, if I were designing a laboratory, something would allow me to try to control younger generations of a foreign population, like I would design TikTok, not to be, not to be overly long as. You know, and I don't think they designed it, but I think, like, they found something that's been pretty effective. Last two things. One, Ben, a brown bear cub in Turkey somehow managed to eat enough honey, something called bitter honey that is made by bees that feed on rhododendin flowers and it carries this neurotoxin

that makes you trip balls and basically i just wanted to flag this because i want everyone to google this tripping bear and see the photos of this dude sitting in the back of a truck just off his rocker with his arm up looking like a human being looking like he was getting a ride to go see the dead and co or something just like tripping face uh the bear is fine he's been released back into the wild it literally looks like a dudes that i see on the walk up to the deaden company show at the Hollywood Bowl here. I mean, just like laid out. Those people that didn't even make it to the show, because they just had to stop, they just stop and be alone with their trip for a little while. Doing nitrous in the parking lot. Yeah. But yeah, like wishing the bear, like, hopefully that was

one of those trips that he solved some problems. Do you think maybe he worked some shit out? Maybe that bear had some, some trauma in this past or some unresolved issues. Maybe you watched that Michael Pollandotte. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully he woke up, you know, and was feeling like, okay, that was a rough experience, but like, I see things a little clearly now, you know? Do you think that bear chases that honey high, like the rest of its life just like, where's this fucking shit? Do you think that bear's going up to other bears? I mean like, hey, do you get any that honey? Yeah, score some bitter honey.

The post story on this had like a bunch of history on it. It went back to the ancient Greeks. And there's one historian who said the Persian army left a bunch of this honey out, had a bunch of Roman soldiers eat it. They started tripping balls and then they just slaughtered them, which is like less of a good time. That's interesting. Admittedly not as fun.

Yeah, that's interesting. Last story, before you interview with Adam Schiff, Domino's the Pizza Place, formerly shut down operations in Italy. A CNN report on this absolute tragedy said, quote, the Milan-based company faced unprecedented competition from local restaurants that started using services

such as Glovo, Justi, Deliveroo during the blah, blah, blah. Do you think the people who started Italian dominoes had ever been to Italy before they just... They were too much competition for pizza? I think that was a good idea. I mean, look, I ate a lot of dominoes, particularly when I was in college, usually after like two in the morning.

if I also had available to me the full wealth of pizza that is Italy, like I'm not sure the first thing that would occur to me is Domnos. That's the funniest, like, yeah. I mean, did Pizza Hut and Papa John's, like, try to bust into the Italian markets? Yeah, like, I hope not.

Bucca to Beppo. It's always like a little, I always feel kind of bad about being an American when you're in, like, Paris and you see like a KFC or something or McDonald's or, like, whenever you're in one of these, like, culinary.

Our greatest exports. It's not that we don't have good food, but like, that's not... That ain't it. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. Okay, enough of this. Although the New Yorker was good. The Domino's member of the New Yorker?

No. What was that? The type of pizza? Back in the day. Yeah, they had in New York. Is it square? It's just a little bigger, frankly. Okay, got it.

Which is what you're looking for. You're looking for bulk. Yeah, as much as dough as possible. All right, enough of this idiocy. We're going to take a quick break. And then you will hear Ben's interview with Congressman Adam Schiff about the Intelligence Committee, what the Congress is doing about all these secret talks, squirled away in Mar-a-Lago.

So let's stick around for that. I am very pleased to welcome back to Pod Save the World, Adam Schiff, a congressman from here in Los Angeles since 2001. He is the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. I should also note, he is the author of Midnight in Washington, how we almost lost our democracy and still could, which I understand was just released on paperback. I got my hard copy. It's a great book.

Everybody should get it. but it's out in paperback now. It is just came out today. Well, that's good. Congratulations on that. Everybody should pick it up. It's incredibly relevant in addition to being a great story. We're at, I don't know what chapter of the crisis of democracy related to Donald Trump

we're in now, but we're clearly in some new phase since the search of Mar-a-Lago. And obviously, you're in the middle of this as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. There's so many angles of this story, Congressman. I just, I want to start by just ask. asking, okay, we're now in a situation where they're clearly like the wheels of justice in motion. DOJ has taken custody of this material. What is the role of Congress now? The role of Congress and the role in the Intelligence Committee and trying to get to the bottom of what happened and what damage there might have been in national security?

Well, our primary concern on the Intelligence Committee is the fact that you had highly classified information in a very insecure location, some of which was marked top secret compartmented information, and what that often means, sensitive compartmental information, what it often means is that it would, if revealed, cause grave damage to national security because it would reveal sources or methods of gathering intelligence. So if it's a human source, it could put their life at risk, if it's a technical source, that technical source could be disabled, which means that not only is the information in those documents compromised, but future information we might get from the same source may drive completely.

So we want to get a damage assessment. We want to know what, if anything, we can determine about whether those materials got into the wrong hands, but also what risk has been presented that may need to be mitigated now. And I see you all have asked for a damage assessment from the Director of National Intelligence about what potential risk there could be from the compromising nature of where these documents were. What do you expect from the DNI on what timeline? Well, I hope that they can conduct that very soon. We'd also like to see the documents themselves,

but it's fairly routine that when the intelligence community determines that documents or other materials may have been compromised, they want to figure out what steps do we need to take to protect either our sources or to protect our technical means, what kind of modifications do we have to make, what kind of blowback in some cases do we have to prepare for if it involves allies or other nations that are not hostile actors, but nonetheless, we have a deep interest in. So we would like to get briefed as soon as that review is completed, and I would have to expect they'll undertake that review very quickly.

And do you think, I mean, this is such a strange circumstance where this is an enormous story with huge ramifications for, you know, our national security, our intelligence community. But it's very complicated when we don't really know what's in these documents. Do you think we'll get to a point where at a minimum people like yourself who are elected representatives of American people can have a look at what was taken? Do you think there's any capacity to describe for people so that we're not just going off of leaks and specifically? speculation, kind of what the nature of these documents are, like how much transparency can be brought to a circumstance in which the underlying material itself is classified? Well, my guess is the more damaging their release might be, the less we're going to be able to say about them, even after we have a chance to review them. But, you know, I would hope

that we'll be able to at least make a general statement to the public about the nature of what the former president had and what impacts it might have had on our security. You know, it was interesting to read the government's filing, opposing the disclosure of an affidavit that went along with the search warrant. That affidavit is, you know, usually signed by an FBI agent. It summarizes the evidence that led to the search. And they felt very strongly, the Department of Justice, that the disclosure of that would not only impede the investigation, but also potentially lead witnesses to be threatened and, you know,

sadly given the response to the search and people putting on an armored vest and going to FBI, an FBI office to shoot people, those fears seem all too well-founded. But hopefully we'll be able to provide as much information as we can to the public. You know, I will say that the one concern I have just having had experience like this where there's classified information, involved, but also criminal investigation involved, is we would normally get the information right away from the Director of National Intelligence. But when the Department of Justice is involved, and it's a criminal investigation, sometimes they're very reluctant to share much with Congress. I understand that reluctance because of the confidentiality of the investigations. But here,

obviously, we have a paramount interest in maintaining the sanctity of those materials. Yeah, but there's, I want to get into the why of it all in a second, why he took these documents. But before we even get there, you know, looking back on the last several years of Trump investigations, one of the challenges we found, particularly in the Mueller investigation, was, you know, the absence of being able to be transparent about the severity of things that had taken place, allowed Trump and a lot of his enablers to fill a lot of space with a lot of disinformation, misinformation, you know, kind of wild charges back and forth. Is there a worry here that, that, you know, playing it by the book and taking the time, pulling the threads behind

closed doors could at the same time allow that space to be filled by the type of hyperbolic incitement, frankly, that we're seeing leading to people threatening FBI agents or public officials. How do you balance the understandable national security imperative for some discretion, the legal process taking its time with the kind of reality of post-Trump politics where that time can be used for pretty nefarious ends? Yeah, it's a great question. And we can see that the Department of Justice has wrestled with exactly that. On the one hand, hand, they leaned in to disclosure of the search warrant and the inventory of what was seized.

That's unusual. That's not common to make that kind of thing public and to make it public so soon after research. And yet they drew the line at the release of the affidavit, which would cause real harm to their investigation. I think we're going to have to try to make the same judgments. That is, we don't want to disclose more about these documents if indeed that they would uh... gravely damaged national security and drive sources if they were disclosed uh... but we can count on any uh... anything that isn't disclosed being exploited by the former president to make unfounded claims

uh... don't trump is shown time and time again and this was reinforced uh... after this search that he is willing to tear down the country along with him he feels like he's going down in any way he is willing to tear down uh... our house uh... around him and And you can only imagine if the mere execution of the search warrant has him inciting people to attack the FBI literally, what he would do if the Justice Department moved closer and closer to potential charges regarding this or regarding January 6th or any other misconduct that the president may have been involved in. Yeah, I mean, he's got a lot of irons in the fire right now. I do want to just, you know, I know we can't speculate too much here, but you obviously have the experience of being someone who's in the center of the intelligence community, but also, you know, experience as a prosecutor. There's been so much focus on what's in the documents and, you know, arguments about declassification, which we can get to in a second. But to me, the big glaring question is why anybody would take boxes of classified documents with them? You know, what intent did he have?

in taking those documents. And obviously with President Trump, who seems to constantly put personal profit and interest above the country, that worries me as much as I worry about the lack of security around these documents in Mar-a-Lago. Do you have any sense at this point, as someone has looked at things from an intelligence perspective and a prosecutorial perspective, are these concerns just about getting some boxes back and having them be secure or about whether we're really looking at The DOJ is really looking at why and for what purpose the former president might have decided to pack up a bunch of boxes of some of the most sensitive information, at least from a classification standpoint, that we can have in the U.S. government.

You know, it's really hard to say, you know, just knowing what we do of Donald Trump's personality and his greed, certainly, you know, things like the love letters from Kim Jong-un. You can see him wanting to possess to display at Mar-a-Lago or to exploit financially in some way. In terms of the classified documents, the only clue I think we have seen about them, and all I know is the basis of what we've seen in public reporting, is Devinanis's former staff member, Cash Patel, who arose like kind of an evil zealig of the Trump administration, said publicly that there were documents that they took relating to the Russia investigation. And, you know, I do recall that John Ratcliffe, the former DNI, Trump's former DNI,

who terribly politicized the intelligence community. You might recall, he declassified documents right before one of the presidential or vice presidential debates so that Trump or Pence could use them in the debate. I mean, it was the most destructive use of intelligence, abuse of intelligence I've ever seen. So it may be that there were more documents along the lines of what they declassified in advance of those debates that Trump or others thought it was advantage. for him to keep. But we simply don't know. But that was a clue that was given by Cash Patel. Not someone I would tend to rely on, but there may be a certain logic there.

Yeah, I was going to ask about Cash Patel. I mean, because, yeah, he kind of emerged as Trump's representative, apparently, on these documents, and by no means a good faith actor. What does it say about what, I mean, there's so many angles of this, but one is, that worries me, is the kind of people that Trump would, if he tried to get back into the White House, that he would try to bring with him and put in charge of things. You know, like we had Cash Patel and Rick Grinnell and people like that kind of ascending, you know, like the last people standing who would do whatever he wanted at the very end there. And we see part of the outcome is like boxes of classified documents or leaving the White House. I mean, what does this tell us about what a sequel to the Trump presidency

could look like? You know, it's a great point. we saw over the four years the Trump presidency is anyone of any stature, anyone of any independence or independent thought, Trump got rid of. You know, in the case of Secretary Mattis, of course, he resigned, others were forced out, and they were inevitably replaced by worse and worse and worse. And I think that what we can expect, should he be given the levers of power again, is that he would start out with people who are utterly willing to do anything he wanted, no matter how violative of the public trust or even the law. I shudder to think of where we would go from where we were.

If you look at the Justice Department, Bill Barr and others are trying to reinvent their reputations these days, I'm glad Bill Barr finally got to a point where he wouldn't cross the line anymore, but he crossed a lot of lines before he got there. And so who would go there next? well, if Bill Barr wouldn't take that final step of agreeing to make false claims of fraud about the election, well, then the next Attorney General Trump would pick would do that. So I think it's part of the reason why that man can never be allowed to build your power again. Yeah.

And one other Cash Patel adjacent question I wanted to ask you is, you know, he's been at the forefront of making this case that Trump, you know, could magically declassify whatever. he wanted, wherever he wanted. Put aside that there's a lot of internal logic to this argument because they seem to simultaneously be arguing, oh, maybe they didn't know what he'd taken in these boxes that were packed, but if he did take classified documents, he must have declassified them. As a functional matter, as someone who's handled these documents like you have, if you're talking about top secret documents, one thing I think that hasn't got a lot of discussion is that it's not like the documents themselves are the only thing you have to declassify. The documents presumably would

either be describing or derived from pretty sensitive methods of collection and programs of collection that you might have to declassify as well, right? Because you're not just declassifying the printed words on the page. To take him in face value, he would probably have had to declassify all of the intelligence collection that went into those documents. I mean, do you see any validity whatsoever to this idea that he somehow magically declassified these things when they came into his residence or when they were packed up to Marlaga? Well, I don't see any validity to it. And of course, Cash Patel will say whatever Donald Trump wants him to say.

But, you know, I think the reality is in a normal world and a normal administration, where the normal president dedicated to national security, if they thought there was a public purpose to disclosure of classified information, they would go through the process where that is identified for the intent. intelligence community, the intelligence community then goes through the same assessment, really, that would look a lot like a damaged assessment to determine, well, what impact would it have on sources and methods, what impact would have on future collection, what impact would it have on friends or adversaries, and then that information would be used by the

president to determine, okay, in that case, it doesn't make sense to declassified, or maybe it still does. There's no evidence that any of that went on or that there's any paper work to back that up, all you have is Cash Patel blindly saying it. That ain't enough. It's certainly not enough to protect the country. And with respect to certain restricted information, the president simply can't willy-nilly say it anyway. And a former president certainly has no power to retroactively declassify things. Finally, I'll just say, we've seen a shifting, endless series of uh... explanations rationalizations defenses excuses uh... the documents were planted by the fbi the former president suggested or they could have had

them uh... if they wanted them when they were subpoenaed and didn't uh... apparently turn them over uh... and uh... and then just uh... this being one of the latest that oh no uh... he had such a work ethic that he needed to bring the documents home to study well is he still studying them in marilago uh... anyone who's seen anything about the president's work ethic uh... see how sensible that idea is. Yeah, they were planted by the FBI, but he had somehow declassified them before they were

planted, but none of it makes sense. All right, last question I want to ask you, and it ties into your book being out. I mean, we've had this conversation, and you've been obviously so publicly outspoken about the danger to democracy for years. You know, we're at this phase now where, you know, there's some good things happening, right? It's been a good month for the passage of important legislation that seems like the Dobbs decision has kind of enlarged the number of Americans who are kind of seized with the reality

that there's kind of a minority trying to impose its will on the majority. And yet, you know, we also see election deniers embedded into state legislatures, really extreme candidates put forward for the U.S. Senate or governorships, threats, really importantly threats to public officials to the FBI, literal acts of violence taking place, I'm sure, huge volume of threats. coming into, you know, to local law enforcement and federal law enforcement. And it, you know, feels pretty unsteady out there. I mean, where, where are you right now in terms of, um, the current challenge to our democracy and what the most important things are that we can focus on, um, in the coming months here to continue to weather these, this turbulent period

we're in. I, you know, I wrote about this in a new afterward for the book. Um, a year and a half after January 6th, we're now tragically more vulnerable than we were as a democracy on that day. Democracy is more vulnerable at home, and with the war in Ukraine, now it is more vulnerable around the world as well. They have taken that big lie and run with it to usher in a new generation of Jim Crow laws, to change the elections infrastructure. State legislatures are taking steps to try to make it easier to overturn the next election on another baseless claim of fraud. And so I think we find ourselves in an even more precarious position. Had Ken McCarthy been the Speaker in 2020, he would have overturned the election.

It's one of the reasons why these midterms, it's no exaggeration to say that our democracy is on the ballot. should we not hold the House and Trump run and lose again, they will overturn the election. The election deniers among the Republican candidates are a majority of the Republican candidates for the House around the country. They have been winning GOP primaries. I do think that Dobbs' decision was very revealing to the American people of just the extreme nature, the extreme reactionary nature of today's GOP. And, you know, I'm pleased to see that in the wake of that decision and with all of the positive things we've been able to accomplish on our side in Congress, that the polling has really changed in the last 10 weeks to the point now where essentially it is a wash. And for the party

and power in the White House in the midterm, the first midterm, to be a parody with the other party is a remarkable thing. And we hope that the trend will continue. And as we go into the election, Democrats will be favored to hold the House. But democracy may very well turn on the result. Yeah, well, that's an important note to end on. And I'm sure our listeners share that, including our listeners around the world, who recognize how much is at stake with the survival and resilience of American democracy. Well, thanks for all you're doing and look forward to checking in with you again as this story obviously will continue to develop. Great to be with you. Thank you for all your good work. Thank you, Adam Schiff. Thanks to the bitter honey. If anyone has some. Yeah.

I mean, I'm not above trying. Send it over. I mean, it's just honey, right? We're in Hollywood. We're in California. I think everything's legal here now, right? I mean, some of the psilocybin stuff is, I think, in like, Colorado. Yeah. Jokes aside, the Michael Pollan. Ketamine stuff. Book and Netflix series on this is really good. Yeah, yeah. About the use of hallucinogens. It's actually the next thing.

We've had the legalization boom on marijuana. I think this is coming down the pike is the next thing. This bear may be a pioneer. This bear is going to be spokes for it. I mean, there's all this research before, basically there's all this really interesting research about mental health benefits of ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin. And then everyone flipped out when their kids turned into hippies in the 60s and they made it all Schedule 1 and they banned it and they did away with all this this really great research

and now people are like that was stupid thanks for Reagan yeah yeah thanks Reagan thanks for again thanks war on drugs you know how's that going I think war on drugs is one of the dumbest fucking things ever happened in the history of the world I don't think we don't talk about it enough how dumb it was oh no we just threw people in prison and now we're like illegally like you know ingesting stuff here in California everyone should Google um I think it was Nixon's chief of staff who said their enemies were essentially black people and anti-war advocates and the war on drugs allowed them to target both. And put them in prison.

Yeah. That's the whole goal. That's great. Well. Said it on the record. Yeah. Meanwhile, they've been, you know, eating this honey and turkey for thousands of years. Thousands of years.

Turned out fun. And this bear like he looked like he was doing okay. He's had a blast. He had a great time. Talk to you guys next week. But it's lonely. Like, you couldn't find anybody a trip with them. Yeah, he needed a buddy.

Yeah. Honestly. The mistake this bear made. It's a little hard when you're alone. That's a good note. Not that I know. I'm just saying. Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Potse of the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,

and Amelia Montuth upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.