The Daily Beast Podcast - Fox News Is Really Struggling to Spin the Signal Chat Leak

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Fox News hosts are running out of ways to spin the massive Signal intelligence leak, Matt Gertz of Media Matters tells The New Abnormal hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy. Then, Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower talks about the Trump administration’s escalating legal battles over its efforts to test the limits of presidential power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

What a great show we have for you today. Matt Gert, senior fellow at Meteor Matters, is here to talk about Signalgate, the growing scandal surrounding leaked Trump administration war plans and how Fox News is just struggling to spin it. Then Lawfare, senior editor Anna Bauer, joins us to break down the Trump administration's escalating legal battles, from executive orders targeting law firms to courtroom showdowns over the limits of presidential power. But first, let's have some fun.

Danielle, we are currently clean on OPSEC, and I think that that's very important as we go into this recording, because we're going to be talking about, oh, I don't know, one of the biggest, I would say, operational signal intelligence blunders in, certainly in recent American history. I don't even know how far back you'd have to go to figure this one out. But I'm talking, of course, about the fact that the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to a signal group chat while we were gearing up to drop some lovely bombs in Yemen. There are so many things wrong with this. And maybe we should break them down piece by piece.

A, this shouldn't have been happening over Signal, which is a genuinely a very secure communications app, but it's not where the U.S. government is supposed to do its business. So there's that. There's the fact that a journalist was added to the chat and had access to all of it. There's the small fact that there are parts of the chat that very much seem to describe war crimes. Really, that just scratches the surface of all this. So, Danielle, I'll, I'll look at. live it up to you which of those you want to talk about or all of them and take it away. Fist pump, flag, fire. That's just my response. Because this is audio, I needed to say it, but that's pretty much going to be my go-to coordination of emojis moving forward. Our government

is being run by teenage boys. That was just overtly evident in. in this catastrophic breach of our national security, that funny enough, all of the Republicans, from Mike Johnson to others, are telling us that, you know, people make mistakes, Andy. What they took from it, as Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House said, was that look at our leaders coordinating efforts

and just executing at a top level. What? What are you? talking about. Oh my God. I put this on blue sky the other day and I said the upside of doing a way with any aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion is to really showcase white male incompetence. And the fact that they don't have anyone to blame in this moment for their utter absolute, as Pete Buttigieg said, fuck up. All they'll do is lie. And shrug it off. It's about Mike Walsz saying on Fox News that he's spoken to Elon Musk to figure out how

Jeff Goldberg got in his contacts because he doesn't have any contacts for him. And then it's, you know, it's looking into, oh, he's a liar and is a discredited journalist. And I'm like, so is he a liar and a discredited journalist? Or did this display how you're operating at the top most optimization of your executive work. It can't be both. It can't be both things. And I don't think that we need fucking Elon Musk and a chainsaw to tell us that like you had an oopsie when it came to adding somebody to a group signal chat, like that a fucking, I don't know, elementary school kid can do. The incompetence is wild. And maybe they actually do need people in positions that did earn their position and weren't just play.

there because they were white and men or, you know, in Tulsi Gabbard's case, you know, I just showed up last minute. She said in the Senate confirmation. I never saw a quicker about face, cover your ass moment than that. She's like, if you notice, I didn't say anything. Yeah, we noticed, Tulsi. Yeah, I mean, look, she blatantly lied to Congress about this. She told the House Intelligence Committee that no sources, methods, locations, or war plans

were shared, we can read. And there were absolutely locations mentioned. There were methods mentioned. There were war plans shared. She flat out lied to Congress. That used to mean something. Yeah, perjury. I don't know that it does anymore, but it should be noted for the post-administration trials that I am still holding on to hope will happen. Hannah Jones, the New York Times staff writer and so much more. She posted on Blue Sky the other day. She said, all I keep thinking is about how Pete Hegeseth raised questions of the competency of a black four-star general and Air Force fighter pilot, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegeseth asked, did he get the job, quote, because of his skin color or his skill, we'll never know, but always doubt. And that's

absolutely true that that is what Heg Seth said. And, you know, I sort of, I quoted it. And I said, The thing is with Hegseth, there's no doubt. We know why he got this job. And it wasn't because of his skill. And it was in large part because of his skin color and because of his fealty to Donald Trump. And because I would argue because of his insane and heinous Christian nationalist beliefs. He did not get this job because of his skill. He did not get this job on merit. And this is, is just more proof of that. The fact that he is sitting there in unofficial channels, this being the signal chat, talking about contemporaneously what they're doing in Yemen, when the bombs are falling, all of this stuff. I mean, again, in a sane world,

he never would have been Secretary of Defense. In a slightly less sane world, but still sort of sane, he would be forced to resign over this. In our current world, I don't think that's going to happen. I will be shocked if anyone pays the price for this. Possibly Mike Waltz, who is the one who added Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat. But even that, look, the Trump administration and Trump himself, they know, and Donald Trump has learned this his whole life. All you have to do is lie and all you have to do is do nothing and shit goes away. I really don't see any reason why they can't use that game plan.

They're already doing the lying part, as you pointed out, Danielle. I think I counted four different excuses that they're using. One is basically a version of Trump's perfect phone call, which, as you alluded to saying, is the party line of, this is a bunch of guys being really competent. And look what they did. We should be celebrating this. And then it ranges from that to Jeffrey Goldberg is a hack, which even if you think that has nothing to do with this, to, you know, Jeffrey Goldberg is a liar.

Well, what is he lying about? As you said, he can't both be lying. and for the transcripts to make, to say that the Trump administration folks are great. And so they can't really get their stories straight. They're doing the, you know, throw all the shit against the wall and see what sticks thing. But Danielle, where do you think we go from here? The thing that I think is very interesting in this one. Well, I mean, so many.

Interesting is not the right word. But the thing that I think is fascinating in this moment is where the public seems to be sitting right now. Like, you're right. In terms of how Trump world has ever dealt with any of their scandals or issues, it has always been denied, deny, deny, and then deflect, deflect, and that has worked. I think that this is something that is different. Over the last, what is it? We are just shy of two months into this administration. And we have watched just like them take a fucking sledgehammer and a chainsaw to our government, each and every day, people feeling less economically stable, less secure. And now, with this latest catastrophe, knowing that we are

just less safe as a nation, right, from any type of outside threat. And I think that this latest poll that was done, because, you know, of course, you have this issue of utilizing the, signal as a platform, which again is fine, but even the Pentagon had issued an email a week prior to this scandal stating unequivocally that signal was not secure, that even folks who are inside of the Pentagon that you are vulnerable, v-a-vis your text messages, signal, and what have you, to foreign actors who are trying to gain information. So it's not, again, as if they were warned, but what this harkens to is back in 2016, when the Republicans made it their campaign motivation around upending Hillary Clinton was around these private email servers.

How can Hillary Clinton be trusted with our national secrets when she doesn't follow protocol? And she's using this private email server. I think it was even Paul Ryan, who at the time was our Speaker of the House, that introduced legislation to deny her access to national intelligence briefings because of her use of a private email server. So now, some years later, a poll is done following this incident by UGov. And guess what? 72% of Americans believe that this incident, this signal gate, this whiskey gate, as I call it, is much more detrimental and serious of an issue than Hillary Clinton's private email server ever was. And yet they used that to place into the people's minds that Hillary Clinton was not to be trusted. But we're supposed to be trusting our national security to a fist pump, flag, fire a motion.

fucking teenage group Scooby-Doo signal chat? It's outrageous. Yeah, it's completely outrageous. And look, there are a variety of reasons why you wouldn't use Signal for something like this. A lot of them pertain to the fact that government records are not supposed to be set to disappear after a month as Mike Waltz has set this chat to. There's an idea. Yeah. And beyond that, Signal is not approved for classified messaging.

It's not government approved for that. It doesn't mean Signal itself is not a secure platform, but it's not approved for that. It's the same reason there are secure platforms that are not HIPAA compliant that doctors are not allowed to use to transmit medical information over. It's not that the platforms aren't secure, but they're not compliant with HIPAA. And these regulations exist for a reason. There's also the fact that if an adversary has control of your phone, if they're in your phone, they can see everything you're doing on Signal, regardless of whether Signal itself is secure, because they're on your phone. So there's just, there's a million reasons you're not supposed to be using it. Before we pivot, I do want to say that there's been a lot of sort of glossing over of something

I mentioned in the intro and that has to do with war crimes. And I just want to point out that these, these chats show that a building was targeted, or a building was bombed where a target's girlfriend lived. And the building, according to the signal chat, was pretty much reduced to rubble. That means that a bunch of non-combatants were... targeted, which is not what you're supposed to be doing. And I think is very clearly a war crime. So I don't want that to get overlooked in the technical minutia and was this the wrong platform. Oh my God, I can't believe they put a journalist on it. All of that is important and needs to be

talked about. But I think we need to also take note of what our country just did. Oh, that is straight facts. And something that will be overlooked. Thank you, Andy. Oh, speaking of things that are terrible and horrible that we shouldn't overlook. Every time that there is some type of scandal that is unfolding in this Trump regime, I always think to myself, what are we missing? What are we missing in this moment that we're all focused on Signalgate? What else is happening that we need to be paying attention to? And I have to tell you that the video of the young woman,

at Tufts University, PhD scholar, Rumsaya Ozturk, who was filmed on video, on her way. She was on the phone with her mother, on her way to break her Ramadan fast, on her way to Iftar, was approached by masked, massed men in broad daylight, who took her by the wrists, multiple men surrounded her all masked, and kidnapped her, in broad daylight. When she asked, can I call the police? Their response was, we are the police. And I don't know about you, Andy, but I don't know about what police are walking around in broad daylight

and playing fucking clothes with masks on. Every time in history, when autocratic, dictators, fascist regimes take hold of a country, what is one of the things that is consistent across the board. It is some form of small militarized group that begins to disappear dissidents. And from Mahmoud Khalil, whose abduction happened at the beginning of March to now Oz Turks abduction that has happened a couple of weeks later. And there are several students that are being hounded in between these two major headline-grabbing incidents. We are in it now. And it is terrifying.

She, as far as we have known, have not broken any laws as Mahmoud Khalil did not break any laws. But these students are being picked up, are being disappeared to detention centers and treated like terror threats. I'm outdone, Andy. I am absolutely outdone and terrified in this moment. You mentioned that she didn't break any laws, Danielle, but she did co-write an op-ed for the Tufts Daily,

the student newspaper, which I think we can all agree that in America is the kind of thing that is supposed to get you kidnapped by the government. No, it is absolutely unreal. This woman co-wrote an op-ed that basically called, on the Tufts administration to adopt resolutions that Tufts Senate had voted on that had to do with divestment from Israel. None of that is illegal. I don't care whether you agree with her position or not. None of it is illegal. None of it should be illegal. None of it is grounds for any kind punishment, let alone being kidnapped by a bunch of cowardly,

federal agents who won't show their faces and who, by the way, as you said, they identified themselves as the police. They are not the police. And the mayor of that city has made it clear that they had nothing to do with the local police. So they lied. As you said, there is no way to look at something like this and not instantly draw comparisons to every authoritarian regime pretty much in history, every totalitarian regime in history, you can make Nazi comparisons, you can make Stalinist comparisons, you can make Maoist comparisons, you can make Khmer Rouge comparisons, you can make comparisons to a lot of places in South America. Every single one of the comparisons you are making it to is or was a horrific regime. And this is who we are now. We are a horrific regime. There's just no

getting around it. Every day, something worse happens. And of all, all the horrible, terrible stuff that has happened in the past, what's it been now, like two months? This may be the worst. This may actually be the worst because it involves the brazen kidnapping of a college student in broad daylight and the whisking away of her to some unknown location, which, again, even if she had committed a crime, this is not the way to deal with it. She did not commit a crime. She wrote a fucking op-ed in a college newspaper.

And if you can support this, if you can look at this and say, well, she deserved this, then you are lost and there's no hope for you because you have passed into would have been helping, if not part of the Nazi regime, would have been helping if not part of Stalin's regime. and every other regime that I mentioned, that we widely and correctly hold up as exemplars of the worst of humanity. And that is who you are if you can look at this and shrug your shoulders or look at this and say, that's fine. She deserved it.

We have given up on clearly the Constitution and freedom of speech and freedom of the press. these students are being disappeared for having opinions that are contrary to the Trump regime. And because their opinions are contrary to the regime, they're being labeled as terrorists. This is where it starts. This is not where this ends. And if we don't speak out and say things now and push back against this, then who is to say who will be next on their list? Yeah.

The last thing I want to say is it's not my place. to speak for you, but I think we both agree on this. When we say we, we are not talking about all Americans. There are a lot of us, a lot of you out there who are horrified by this, who are speaking up, who are going to protests or making your opinions known. You are fighting the good fight. And so I just want to make clear when I say we, I'm talking about the we that is represented by the American government right now. And I would like to think, and I do think that this we does not represent all of us. And I just think it's important to note that I don't want anyone to mischaracterize what we mean when we say we. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to

the new abnormal Matt Gertz, who is a senior fellow at Media Matters and just one of the people on social media who I get a lot of info from. And so I'm a big fan. Matt, Signalgate, you've written two pieces. Reza, actually, you've written like three in the last two days. It is a target-rich environment, I would say. Yeah, the entire story as it continues to pour out is wild. But I find what I'm finding interesting now as Jeff Goldberg from the Atlantic, the editor that was added into the signal group chat by Mike Walts, has provided the receipts. Because one of the things that we know about Donald Trump and his regime is that whenever you're caught in a scandal, all you do is lie, lie, lie, deny, deny, deflect, deflect.

And it seems as if Fox, over the course of the last couple of days, Fox News, is having a really difficult time trying to pivot this story in a favorable light because one, there isn't one. But talk to us about what you have been seeing and reporting. on on the last couple of days? I think that's exactly right. This is a level of a scrambling that I have not seen from Fox News in quite some time. They are all over the place trying to cook up some sort of explanation for what happens, some sort of excuse. They realized that the Trump administration stepped in shit and they are doing their best to scrape it off, but it doesn't really seem to be working. You know, in the last couple of days, we'd really seen everything from people saying

on Fox that what the texts that Goldberg had then described but not revealed just show a bunch of hardworking national security officials and you should be proud that they're serving our country to attacks on Goldberg himself to a couple of nights ago a really weird conspiracy theory that maybe Goldberg had like cleverly manipulated Mike Walts into pulling him into those chats. I liked that one because it was an argument that our national security advisor is easily deceived, that it's just really easy to fool the person who's supposed to be advising the president about some of the most dangerous issues surrounding the country. What they all assumed was that or had talked themselves into was that maybe

this wasn't really that bad that Goldberg was kind of exaggerating what he had. And so they all walked out on the limb on this one. And the Trump administration just sought it right off. You had a bunch of the officials who were on these texts saying in Congress and outside of it that there was no classified information in any of these texts. And then Goldberg, to his credit, said, okay, you said no classified information. I guess that means I can publish these and drop the whole thing the next morning. And that was putting everyone who would defend this in a very bad spot because the texts have language like 1415 strike drones on target. This is when the first bombs will definitely drop in all caps. Just very specific information about the specific weapons platforms that

were being used, about the specific timing of the attack on the Houthis, all being revealed ahead of time, the sort of thing that is just obviously very highly classified, that if it's not very highly classified to reveal the timing of imminent military strikes, like what exactly could be highly classified? And so basically, I mean, we're in a situation where all of the people who defended this on Fox News and elsewhere are just totally screwed. Here's the thing, because I want to dig into one of my favorite, and by favorite, I mean worst personalities on Fox, which is Jesse Waters. In your piece entitled Fox Defense for Negligent Texting of War Plans, Top Trump National Security Officials are incompetent. You dropped in a video of Jesse Waters, again, with this rousing defense of accidents happen when you're taking action.

It was the first kind of pivot that they were doing that look how amazing these top officials are. And like, unlike Biden, as he said, who was quote unquote sleeping, these guys are taking action and that's when accidents happen. This was also mimicked by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and other notable Republicans in Congress. And I'm just wondering, who did they think they were fooling? It's much easier to fool people who agree with you than fool people who disagree with you are kind of neutral. And so maybe they've been able to talk themselves into the idea that these attacks have been remarkably successful and that they've doing something dramatically different from what the Biden administration did. But the reality is, you know, we've been doing missile strikes on the Houthis this entire time.

The Biden administration, the Trump administration, the policy is basically the same, you know, for all the claims. of dramatic success, the individual military strike that Hegset talked about ahead of time might have had some tactical benefits, but they're still doing missile strikes on Yemen today. Like there's no actual change in whether or not various container ships are able to move through that area. And so the idea that this is some sort of rousing success that we should all cheer for and therefore look past the obvious misconduct that happened in the signal chat. I think is kind of ridiculous.

How does it in your mind, the media is handling, and I'm, you know, obviously we're talking specifically about Fox, but in my mind, I guess the assumption that I have, Matt, is that the Fox audience just eats up anything that they say. They just take it in and they take it as fact and they run with it. And so what does it say to you that over the course of the last couple of days that they have made so many pivots. Is it that they believe that their audience no longer trust them? Is that it is over the last two months of the chainsaw that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have taken to our government and two institutions that the facade that Fox has created around Donald Trump is beginning to crumble. And now they feel like they need to do this two step? I think they feel like

on this particular story, they're losing their audience a little bit, that their audience is not really going along with what they're saying. There was a poll out today that found that 60% of Republicans think this scandal is very or somewhat serious. And 74% of all Americans say so, that is a very, very high number. That is higher than the numbers were for the Hillary email scandal or the Biden or Trump documents investigations. My pet theory here is that this is very easy to understand and discuss for most Americans. We've all got our group chats. We have our groups of friends that we, you know, will send messages back and forth. And, you know, this is the sort of thing that is going to be very popular in the group chats. People send it to their friends. They say,

look, wouldn't it be funny if something like this happened to our group chat? And then what happens is the veteran on the group chat says, oh, if I did this, I would go to prison. And then everyone realizes, oh, there's actually like a really bad, damning story about Trump administration malfeasance beneath what starts as kind of an in joke of sorts. That's my little pet theory. I don't know how far I want to take it, but it's the sort of thing where if that's what you're getting from your peer group, you're going to be less likely to buy the explanations that you're hearing from your television set. And I want to go back to what you said with regard to the UGov study that came out, the poll that came out that you were referencing, which is Fox got a lot of mileage out of the Hillary Clinton email story.

All of corporate mainstream media got a lot of mileage out of that in saying that because she used a private email server, how could we possibly trust her with our national security, with the country's secrets? And talking heads or after talking Republican heads came on air for months talking about the email server. And this is where Lock Her Up came from. And so that being said, and this 60% of Republicans now believing that this is more serious than that issue, what do you think that that says to the Jesse Waters and the Ingrams and the folks at Fox who were used to just peddling whatever and not having to do multiple two and three steps in order to force feed their bullshit.

I think what it's telling them is they need to move past this as quickly as possible and hope that the Trump administration can make it go away because otherwise they're really at risk of having more cracks in that right-wing. Media Matrix, more people recognizing that what they're being told isn't actually the truth. On Wednesday, Jeffrey Goldberg put out the actual text messages, and then that night something very funny happened. You had all of these different Fox hosts explaining to their viewers that the text showed that there was nothing really to see here.

You had them saying that in the words of Laura Ingraham, when you look at these texts their entirety and more released today, they show a serious and thoughtful group of divisors trying to carry out the clear wishes of Donald Trump. And it's abundantly clear that none of this put national security at risk and there was no risk to our troops. You got Jesse Waters saying the first so-called scandal of the Trump's second term, it's dead in 48 hours. Sean Hannity says there's no classified material released in those texts and they're just, you know,

a one-off text exchange surrounding a successful strike in Yemen with the without any details. But they did something very interesting. They didn't show the texts. The texts are now public. They didn't show the text. They didn't read from the texts. They don't want their viewers to know what the texts say because the actual language in the text is so damning for the administration that it makes their argument look incredibly foolhardy. That's really the situation they're stuck in. They know they can't criticize Donald Trump. And they know that they can't actually defend any of this on the merits. So they need it to go away. They need something else to fill the public discourse. They need to make sure that there are no

investigations of any kind and the whole thing gets swept under the rug. They can move on to something else. Well, what's really interesting is that there are Republicans calling for an investigation in Congress. I am not going to say that these are major cracks. Time will tell. But I think that it's really fascinating that this particular incident, this scandal, which is major, as Pete Buttigieg said, this is a spectacular fuck-up that Republicans now are calling for an investigation. So, Matt, what does that signal to you? Because these Republicans in Congress and both the House and the Senate have been in lock

step with Donald Trump, not to lift their heads up from just following. marching orders. And with this incident, they're saying, no, we actually need to get to the bottom of this. So what does that say to you? I think it kind of depends on how far they're willing to go. Certainly, they're willing to at this point, speak up and say that something was seriously wrong here that needs to be fixed, that needs to be investigated. That's good. It's good to encourage that. But the question is how far they're willing to push. Because certainly, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General made very clear in some recent comments that she has no intention of opening any sort of criminal investigation into anything that happened. FBI director Cash Patel,

similarly, Esben Loth, to do anything about that. You know, we've talked about the Hillary Clinton email server scandal and the Trump and Biden cases, and all three of those involved actual federal criminal investigations that in Trump. Trump's case led to indictments in Clinton's and Biden's cases did not, but they were actually taken seriously. But the reason that Patel and Bondi are in their positions in the first place is that there is absolutely no way they will willingly open any sort of investigation that Donald Trump doesn't want to have happen.

So how far are the Republican critics really willing to push on that aspect? We've also seen a push for an Inspector General investigation from the Defense Department. That I think is also good. Though again, I mean, the problem with that is right now there's an acting inspector general. What happens if Trump puts a flunky up to replace that acting inspector general? Are Republicans really going to stand up and demand a real independent actor to look into this? I think it's too soon to tell. Basically what you're laying out is that their show of defiance may be just that,

just a show of defiance because in every which way that you could seek to move for a quality investigation, it seems as, you know, Donald Trump can just stamp it out and ensure that nothing comes of anything. But I wonder, in terms of public opinion and the public narrative, which we know is incredibly important to Donald Trump and what he has been able to conjure in the public imagination about MAGA and about only having the best people around him and about getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion so that we have white men at the helm once again. Do you think that the public will demand more than what Donald Trump is used to giving them? I think they very well could.

I think trust once lost is very hard to get back. And the fact that a broad swath of the public, including a majority of Republicans, just doesn't trust what the Trump administration is selling on this particular issue, is a real fissure. It is something that can be exploited by the administration's opponents if they can keep this story in the news. If they can find ways to continue to talk about it, if there are lawsuits that could be used to release more information about the portal usage of high-ranking Trump officials or anything like that.

That would certainly help keep the story going in that way. Well, Matt, I thank you for your reporting on this and just in general over at Media Matters for America, keeping us all informed. Really appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me. Lawfare is a nonprofit multimedia publication that calls itself dead. dedicated to hard national security choices. And it's really been living up to this claim in these opening months of the Second Trump administration, publishing excellent piece after excellent piece

at lawfaremedia.org. On top of that, senior editor Anna Bauer has been killing it on social media with her coverage of the growing everyday number of judicial hearings regarding Trump's executive orders along with his threats against law firms. She joins me now. Anna, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. So I want to start off with what I like to call the curious case of the capitulating law firm. And I'm talking about legal giant Paul Weiss. Walk us through this. It started with a Trump executive order aimed specifically at this firm, right? Yeah. So there's an executive order that is one of a series of executive orders that Trump has issued that targets various big law firms. This one in particular, Paul Weiss, is a firm that is

known particularly as a more progressive-leaning firm. It's one of the most powerful firms, arguably, in the world. Again, a corporate law firm that represents a number of clients, including clients that might have contracts with the government. And that's important here because this executive order, among other things, requires the government to review any government contractor. that disclose that they might have business with Paul Weiss. It requires the government to where possible terminate contracts with Paul Weiss. It terminates and initiates a review of security clearances of any attorneys at Paul Weiss. And then also that potentially bars Paul Weiss attorneys from federal buildings.

And keep in mind, courthouses themselves are federal buildings. So it does a number of things that really seems to be targeted at affecting the Paul Weiss business bottom line. And again, this is one of a series of these executive orders that we've seen. Paul Weiss was the third law firm that was targeted. There was an earlier, very similar order that targeted a law firm called Perkins Cooey. And then before that, Covington and Burling. So it really seems to be the case that this is. an assault on a number of corporate law firms and that is situated within a kind of larger attack on the integrity of the judicial system and rule of law, including attacks on specific judges who have ruled against the administration and calls for impeachment of those judges. So, yeah, you mentioned Covington and Burling and Perkins Cooey. How did they handle being targeted by Trump as opposed to how Paul White, has handled it. Right. So with Covington, we actually haven't heard much from Covington. They haven't

brought any litigation over that particular order. However, with Perkins Coe, what we saw fairly soon after this order was issued was that Perkins Coe sued. They brought suit in D.C. District Court, and they were represented by Williams and Connolly, which is a D.C. base firm that is quite well known and seem to be one of the early examples, and still today, one of the only examples of real solidarity from a peer firm amongst these targeted firms. And by that, I mean another firm that is, you know, a big law firm that is a kind of a competitor, a potential competitor of Perkins Cooey, but nonetheless stepped up to represent Perkins Cooey in this suit. And the suit, because keep in mind that all of these executive orders in the kind of what you might call the introduction or preamble to them,

they reference the specific reasons why these firms are being targeted. So in the Covington and Burling example, the reasoning is that that firm gave pro bono services to special counsel Jack Smith soon after the end of his tenure as special counsel at a time when Trump, of course, was suggesting that special counsel Smith might be prosecuted once he becomes president. Then in the Paul Weiss and the Perkins Cooey examples, there's references to Mark Pomerantz and Andrew Weissman. Those are both prosecutors who were at one point or another involved in different cases that were investigating or ultimately ended up indicting Trump. And then in the case of Perkins Cooey and Paul Weiss, there are references to attorneys who were rehired by those firms

after those employees were involved in investigations of Trump. And then there was Mark Pomerantz who was involved in the investigation of Trump in New York related to the hush money scheme. And so in these executive orders, there's this kind of references to these employees who are no longer are even at those firms. The choice of representation, that these firms are making in terms of what kind of clients they take on, who they employ. And then there's other references to DEI practices that these firms might use in hiring associates. There's references to the types of interests that they represent or advance in court. And so taking this all together, what Perkins Cuey decided to do was to file suit,

argue that this is, among other things, a First Amendment violation. And then, on the other hand, after Perkins Cooey files suit and a judge issues a temporary restraining order that bars certain sections of this order from being implemented, there's an order that's a very similar to that order against Perkins Cooey. Yet Paul Weiss takes a very different approach. They decide to negotiate with the Trump administration. We have some idea of what the thinking was because of a series of emails that were sent by the chairman of Paul Weiss, Brad Karp, to Paul Weiss Associates in which he explains the deal that was made and his rationale. We also know from a truth social post by Trump what the White House's account of the deal that was made was. But essentially, they come to this agreement in which Trump agrees to rescind the examines. executive order against Paul Weiss. And in exchange, again, among other things, Paul Weiss agrees,

for example, to provide $40 million worth of pro bono services to areas of interests that align with the administration's priorities. And so this is a very different approach that Perkins Cooey chose, in that it was seen widely amongst the legal community as capitulation to what really seemed like a shakedown by the Trump administration, an effort to extort, essentially, as some have put it, this big corporate law firm into coming to heal to the Trump administration. And it really has been widely seen privately by lawyers as shameful. But at the same time, we have yet to see a really unified response from big law and corporate law firms who may very well. And be next on the list of targets by the Trump administration.

So is there any way that this is not capitulation and that it's some kind of 37-dimensional chess move that's actually good? If you're asking me, I look, Brad Carp in one of his emails lays out his rationale, arguing that he has a fiduciary duty to his company to the 3,000-something people who work there, you know, in my view, I think, no, there's no way to not see it as capitulation. I think one thing that's really important to, again, point out here is that this deal was made after a district court judge already entered a temporary restraining order against a very similar order that Trump issued as to Perkins Cooey saying that, you know, based on a preliminary look at the order, that it was

likely unlawful and that Perkins Cooey was likely to succeed on the merits. And I think, too, it's really important to say that, yes, it may very well be the case that Bradcarb rationalizes this as related to the fiduciary duty that he owes to his company and employees. But we're talking about officers of the court who also owe a duty to the rule of law and to upholding the integrity of the judicial system. And this is a frontal assault on the rule of law and on the judicial system. And I think, in my view, that outweighs greatly any kind of, you know, business bottom line that these companies might have. Of course, it's not surprising if you know anything about the culture of big law and how corporate law firms operate that there might be some capitulation. But it nonetheless is disappointing. And I think

it nonetheless is deserving of criticism from the law. wider legal community and demands calls for other firms to stand with firms like Perkins Kui who have decided to fight this. We talked a little about this and Columbia University's similar active capitulation in a previous episode. And one of the things I said, and I'm not the first person to say this, but it seemed obvious that Columbia caving is going to lead to more Trump attacks on universities. And similarly with Paul Weiss, that it's going to lead to more Trump attacks on law firms. And then on Tuesday, we saw another executive order aimed at another law firm, Jener & Block. What was their sin? Yes, Jener and Block is a firm that similarly, I mentioned

earlier that some of these orders are targeted at people that these various firms have employed. So Jener & Block is the latest target of these executive orders that are very similar to the Perkins Qie order and the Paul Weiss order. This order also revoke security. clearances and potentially results in the termination of various contracts, does all the things that those other orders did. And here, what Jenner and Blocks in is that after Andrew Weissman, who previously worked at Jenner before he went on to work for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, he then left the Mueller probe and was rehired by Jenner. He no longer works there. He's a former employee. But this order that Trump signed earlier this week mentions that Andrew Weissman was

rehired after he worked on the Mueller probe. So that is one of Jenner's sense. The order also, again, as some of these others have, alludes to, you know, D.I practices and interests that it seems that Trump believes that Jenner has represented that are antithetical to what. Trump sees as in American interest. And so, yeah, we have yet to see what Jenner's response to this will be. It has not yet filed suit, but I'm sure that there are ongoing conversations amongst the Jenner partners and amongst people there about what to do next. And, you know, they have a choice. Are they going to try to go the Paul Weiss route and capitulate and try to negotiate? or will they stand with firms like Perkins Cooey who have fought these orders?

I will say that in terms of the response from the legal community in the Perkins Cooey case, there is a amicus brief that means friend of the court brief. It's people who aren't party to the suit themselves who try to file a brief that they think might be helpful for the court to review in analyzing the issues in the case. That brief is being organized by a well-known firm called Munger Tolls and Olson. It's the former employer of one Usha Vance, actually, who worked there for a number of years before she became the second lady. But that amicus brief is expected to be filed within the next few weeks. And so one thing that I'm watching for is to see how many corporate law firms actually sign on to that brief and put their names on it.

And I do wonder if perhaps Jenner is going to wait and see how things pan out over the next several weeks in terms of looking to see who signs on to that amicus brief, looking to see if other corporate firms are going to come out and issue statements in solidarity, that kind of thing, because we do know that in the Paul Weiss example, one issue that was cited by Brad Karp in explaining why they decided to negotiate with the Trump administration was that they felt that other firms were not coming out to bat for them. Gotcha. There's just so much to talk about. And in fact, I do want to mention that there's actually a Trump administration litigation tracker over at the Lawfare website. And it is a really long scroll to the bottom. But I want to get into

what you've been doing with live posting a bunch of the judicial hearings that have been caused by various Trump administration activities. There's two things. Correct me if I'm wrong. It doesn't seem to be going particularly well for the administration in the courts. And it feels like we've got a lot of exasperated judges out there. We do. So it's not going particularly well for the Trump administration in the courts. And I want to say that there's there's a perception, I think, or a narrative that's being presented on the right that the reason it's not going well for the Trump administration and the courts is because we have all these activist judges on the bench who are set on ruling against them. And we've seen that one reaction to that narrative has been certain Republicans, you know,

issuing or bringing articles of impeachment against judges whose rulings they dislike, that kind of thing. But what actually is happening in my view as someone who follows these cases day in and day out, goes to the hearings, watches what the judges are saying, how they are acting, what their demeanor is. What we're seeing is that these rulings that are being issued against the Trump administration, and it's not always against the Trump administration. Sometimes judges are also saying that they can't rule against the Trump administration because what they're doing is lawful. But when they do issue these rulings, it's because they looked at the issues and think that it is unlawful. I have not seen any sort of conduct in the way from the bench that fits with what the

right is, you know, suggesting in terms of these judges. In fact, what I will say is that very often the judges give enormous benefit of the doubt and are enormously patient with the Justice Department of attorneys who, in all honesty, across several of these cases, especially as it relates to the cases that are related to Doge and the various activities and access that Doge has had across the federal government. The Justice Department has not been very forthcoming or candid, it seems, about various facts. There's enormous inconsistencies in what the administration and the White House is saying to members of the press and public. And then what is happening in terms of what the Justice Department attorneys are saying in the courtroom to federal judges. And judges have,

to some extent, been quite patient, but it gets to a point where you can only obfuscate for so long when it comes to a federal judge, right? And so judges have become quite exasperated. Some of these orders are things that just seem completely lawless. And so judges are, you know, reacting to to the gall that the administration has in issuing some of these executive orders. And the fact that in some ways, in some of these cases, as it relates to, for example, the firing of federal workers, there are ways the administration could go about that that would be legal. But instead, they're choosing to do it in the, you know, move fast and break things way, which is the unlawful way for the most part. So I think that judges are,

getting exasperated not only with the lack of forthcomingness from the Justice Department attorneys, but also with the fact that the administration is issuing orders that seem plainly lawless at times. And then when the judges compel action on the part of the government, at times, the government then seems to do things that are not exactly in compliance with those orders. Right now, the big question, for example, in one of the cases before Judge Bowsberg, is whether or not the Justice Department violated a court order by migrants continuing to be flown to El Salvador or to a third countries in violation of a court order. So we'll see what happens with that. But yes, you're correct that the judges are very exasperated. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. Go to lawfaremedia.org

to check out, like I said at the beginning, some incredible writing on this. And also, the Trump administration litigation tracker page really is a trip. So I would encourage people to check that out, too. Anna, thanks again. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are you ending this week, Signalgate week with your, fuck that guy. Well, I'm going to turn my fire on some Democrats. And it is Democrats. who are, as we speak, pushing to expire Section 230 of the Communications Act. I've had a lot of guests on this show talking about how necessary Section 230 is to the functioning of the Internet. Just briefly, Section 230 is what allows places like Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit,

pretty much any website that has a comment section, anything like that, it allows these sites to exist because it makes them not liable for the speech that people say on those sites. In other words, if I post something on blue sky and it's defamatory or it has to do with a crime, I am liable for that. Blue sky is not. Without that kind of protection, Blue Sky could not exist. None of these sites could exist. Basically, the internet couldn't exist. But there are a small group of devil Democrats, small but way too big, who have never liked Section 230 and want to get rid of it. And they have decided that now is the time to try to do this again. And I'm talking about Dick Durbin, who has teamed up with Lindsey Graham to introduce this bill. If teaming up with Lindsey Graham is not a sign in

itself that what you're doing is wrong, I don't know what is. Josh Hawley is signing on to this bill. Josh Hawley is one of the worst people in America. If you are Dick Durbin or Sheldon White House or Amy Klobuchar, who are co-sponsoring this bill. If you are Richard Blumenthal, who has discussed joining as a co-sponsor, there's something wrong with y'all. And I don't understand how you don't understand that. And really, you could just look at the company you're keeping, even if you don't understand what it is exactly you're doing here. Just understand that you're teaming with Lindsey Graham and Josh Hawley. That's bad. There is nothing you should be teaming with them on. They are bad, bad people. Mike Maznick, who's been a frequent guest on this show,

and who is the publisher of TechDirt, one of the best tech news sites out there, he posits a, consider this. If Section 230 is gone, RFK Jr. could declare that pro-vaccine information on the internet is misinformation, and it would have to be forced off because places would not be allowed to carry it. This is just one of a million examples. The ways in which this will hurt marginalized groups is unreal. I know we're short on time, so I'm not going to go and it more. Just if you're not educated about Section 230, listeners, please, I beg you to go out and get educated on it and contact these Democrats and ask them what the fuck they are doing and tell them to stop. So fuck those guys. You said it succinctly that anytime that you think that it is a

good idea to introduce legislation or, I don't know, even sit next to Lindsay Graham, I think that you are on the wrong fucking side of an issue. And it doesn't make any. And it doesn't make any sense. But this is the kind of things that Democrats do that are about immediacy and not about the long-term damage that is done. They need to think a lot bigger than the way that they do. And it's just like every time, every time, the narrowness. Fuck those guys. All right, Danielle, finish off this week. Who you got? Who's your fuck that guy? Let me tell you something. It's not the first time that she has been on this list. It will not be the last time that this person is on this list. But the actions that Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem took this week by going on a fascist field trip to the prison

in El Salvador, where the Trump regime had kidnapped and again, federal judge's orders delivered two planes worth of who they deemed to be Venezueling gangsters, but no one actually knows who they are because there was no due process of these people that were swept up by ICE and immediately deported to one of the worst prisons in the world. Christy Gnome thought that it would be a great idea to play fascist Barbie and dress up and head over to El Salvador to film a fucking video in front of a prison cell filled with men who have shaved heads, who are all dressed, put in some type of white shirts and shorts, so that she can look big and tough. It was, Andy, one of the most disgusting fucking videos I have ever seen. I cannot believe that we are living in this moment where someone, not just someone, but a group of people thought that this was a good idea, that this is who America is now underneath this racist, fascist regime, that again, they don't want to provide Judge Boseberg who.

is presiding over this case of these planes that left the United States that he told to return. And they say now, oh, no, no, no. It's presidential secrets. So we can't possibly give up the information of the data of who's on this plane or who authorized this or what have you. So they won't follow the judge's orders. But Chrissy Nome can absolutely just head over there for this stunt. It is disgusting. It is offensive.

And if I'm Judge Bosberg, I'm bringing her ass into the courts as well as everyone that has allowed this humanitarian catastrophe to happen. For that reason and so many other fucking reasons, she is my fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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