The Daily Beast Podcast - George Conway: ‘Any Fair Jury’ Would Convict Trump Now

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

 In this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy discuss Trump’s legal jeopardy with George Conway and whether he will ever be sent to prison, and then check in to discuss the infamous Mar-a-Lago carpet documents. The ultimate question remains, according to Jong-Fast; will Trump ever go to jail? “I can’t guarantee it, but there’s a reasonable likelihood of it,” Washington Post contributing columnist George Conway told Jong-Fast. Then, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) , who represents Virginia's seventh congressional district and who is a former CIA case officer, delves into the image of Mar-a-Lago carpet documents. “I can’t make predictions on what comes next, but certainly as a former Intel officer, I can say that if anyone I ever worked with had a collection of documents like this at their home, there’s no question of what would've happened to them.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. First, we're going to talk to Washington Post contributing columnist George Conway, all about Trump's legal jeopardy. Then we have Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who represents Virginia's 7th District, and she's going to talk to us about her race as well as her wacky opponent.

But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. The great state of Alaska. It's called the pine cone state. I don't think that's right. No, it's not. No, it's definitely not right.

It's called the oil well state. And it went from being represented by a guy who stabbed someone and said lots of racist stuff for many, many years to now, at least for the next four months, being represented by the first Alaska native person to ever win a congressional. seat and she is it and she's a Democrat. Wow. Pretty fucking cool. How did this happen? Maybe it's because the Republican Party keeps nominating really, really bad candidates in this case. And I know, you know, as a feminist, she's one of your favorites, Molly, but Sarah Palin, I think just maybe not the best choice here. This is like the second time in a couple weeks that the Democrats have won a special election. and I'm starting to think, Molly, maybe this means something, but I don't know what.

Nah, clearly not. Certainly not. I mean, what's interesting about this election, you may remember Sarah Palin as being the person played by Tina Faye, who said she could see Alaska from her back porch. Tina Faye was always a much more convincing Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin never was. But one of the things that I think really pissed off the Alaskan voters was that she learned. after job as governor early to go be doing television and being famous. My sense is that they did not want to give her another job. Yeah, I think that's right. I think when you quit on the voters, they don't tend to reward you when you try to, you know, make a comeback and you ask them to.

When you failed and something else. Right. But, you know, you got to give credit to Palin because what she has learned is that as a Republican member of Congress, your whole job can be to go on Fox News and podcast and do and say just incredibly dumb things. It's a lot harder to do that as the governor of state when you're actually, you know, supposed to be in charge or something. She actually did figure out that she was much better suited to being a Republican congressperson than being a governor. But the voters didn't care. I think what's interesting about Sarah Palin is that the Republican Party came down to her level.

So when she, I mean, this is in no way an endorsement of the Republican Party in any way. But when she ran originally as vice president, there was a sense that she and Michelle Bachman were outliers. Right. Sort of hyper, wild, TV-friendly, low-substance politicians. Now that's pretty much what they're all like. Congratulations, Republican Party. Yeah, it turned out, you're right. That's what we, you know, everyone thought back then.

it turns out they weren't outliers, they were Harbingers. But they've sort of, it's sort of the student is now the master type situation where even Palin seems kind of quaint compared to a Marjorie Taylor Green or Lauren Bobert or Matt Gates or any of those wackos. You know, Palin seems like sort of like an old-timey candidate. But you're right. She was like she was the start of all of this. Maybe young people have forgotten that and are not giving.

her her due as sort of the founding mother of today's Republican party. Yes, of terrible candidates. Yes, congratulations. But my understanding is that this election was rigged and it was rigged against Republicans because it was ranked choice voting. Choice voting, which Alaskans were tricked into supporting by themselves. Yes. You know, and we're seeing like Tom Cotton, people like that, they're literally using the word rigged. You know a Republican has lost an election when someone is claiming something

was rigged. Because he didn't mention the race, but he tweeted that there was a rigged election. And immediately, I was just like, oh, well, if you didn't know there was a Republican race tonight, or there was a race tonight that a Republican lost, now you do. Because that's just their go-to now. And at some point, maybe they'll figure out

that it's not the ranked choice voting. It's the rank choices that their candidates are giving voters. Right? Right? Think about it, Molly. Think about it. Think about what I just said.

Think about it. Yeah, I got it a little sort of, yes, very clever. All right. I don't know. It's interesting because I don't want to be too optimistic here, and, you know, I'm not. But it does seem like it's another defeat for the GOP

in this sort of string of defeats. So, I mean, again, We really don't, until we get to those midterms, you know, we don't really know how it's going to go. But it is interesting that this keeps happening and that Republicans keep losing. Yeah. And we should point out, I mean, there were two Republican candidates and one Democratic candidate. So. Hey, Linden, get ranked.

So what, so Sam Wang at Princeton, who's quite smart and knows a lot about ranked choice voting, pointed out that the situation, and again, we live in New York City. so we got our terrible mayor through ranked choice voting. So again, we both have very mixed feelings about. Oh, it was rude. It's rude. Exactly. But the way it works with ranked choice is that you're given more credit for being ranked second. So basically what happened was the people voted for Perlin only voted for Palin.

The people who didn't vote for Palin didn't rank her as anything else. Ergo she was knocked out. And this is the way in which ranked choice voting ends up. hurting the extremist candidates because it means you may not get your first choice, but you're able in this system to vote against someone. And so if you had running choice voting with the Republicans in 2015, you would never have had Trump, right? Because, you know, a lot of people would have done Ted Cruz and Marco one and two. Right. But the people who did Marco as one and Ted Cruz as two would have knocked Trump out.

So that's the way in which ranked choice gets rid of extremists. Was that a really good explanation or did you guys already know that? I didn't listen so I can't judge. Yes. No, it was. It was. All I took from that was that if the Republicans had had ranked choice voting in 2015, Jeb Bush would have been president.

That's what I think you were saying. And very likely. Yeah. I don't know how much it's weighted, but it might be that everybody's second choice could win. For sure. My only point was that most races are not ranked choice. So to try to extrapolate from this anything for November is a little difficult. But as you said, this is a good streak that Democrats are on. And that can't be just thrown in the trash because the voting was a little different here, you know, because it's, you know. Right. And Dave Wasserman from political report said the same thing. And he's, I mean, he's really. smart about watching elections. He said you can't pull too much from this. But if you look at what happened in Kansas and you look at what happened in New York 19, we certainly are seeing that Democrats may be

in a better position than we'll see. Though I did talk to a political reporter today who's a real pain of the ass, who I love, but who said this might be the peak for Democrats and that Republicans will come home. But I don't agree. I think he's fucking wrong. I'm sort of known for my fearless punditry and predictions. And I am going to say that what we know now is that we know something is going on. We just don't know what. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think come November, you'll see that I was right.

Yeah, I think that's right. Something's coming. Another thing that happened, which I think may, in fact, be going great for Republicans, is that Trump has continued to fight with the Justice Department. his newest move is trying to make them release different documents to make him look like a criminal. It's going well. It really is. Right?

It is absolutely amazing what is going on here. We've got listeners, you've probably seen the, it's a fairly famous photo, I think, at this point of all the top secret documents laid out on the floor that was part of the, court filing, this was at Mar-a-Lago. So Republicans have decided that they're going to be up in arms about this photo, and they have sort of picked this as they're going to fight the FBI and the Justice Department on this and make it seem like they're out to get Trump or whatever. And we've got Mark Levin saying that having this photo of documents where it clearly says top secret on them is a violation of the Espionage Act and the FBI should be tried for violating the Espionage Act. Anything they can talk about. It's truly amazing. We had one of Trump's lawyers go on Fox News, and they're very upset, and Trump himself is upset, that this photo gives the impression that this is how the documents were found,

that they were just lying on the floor like this, which of course nobody thinks. This is when you take an evidence picture, which we've all seen evidence pictures, before you spread out the evidence, and you take the picture. So we have one of, we have a lawyer, one of Trump's lawyers going on Fox News and saying, I've been in that room,

and the room is very neat, and he has guests in that room, and it's very neat. And it's like, you just admitted that he had guests in a room where there were top secret documents. So it's not the secure facility that, you know, that's one of their claims is that, oh, it was in a very secure place. No, it wasn't. And you have Trump saying the same thing. But originally it was that they, first they planted the evidence. And now it's like, no, I had the top secret documents, but I had the. stacked neatly so it wasn't a crime is apparently the new thing now.

And it's just unreal. Like every day there's this race to come up with the dumbest possible excuse. I mean, clearly this is like social media malpractice, but one point, the GOP account, which is known for the great lengths it does to protect Trump, tweeted out a picture, the picture, the evidence picture with the framed magazines, you know, in the quarter of the picture. And they were like, you have some problem with the framed magazine. And it's like, no, that's not what the pictures of, guys. I mean, I just think they're making it so much worse for him because they can't,

they can't figure out a story that works. Yeah, the worst thing about that tweet that you're talking about, it was the House Judiciary Twitter account, which is run by Jim Jordan because he's the ranking Republican on the committee. It's run by his people. And he's out there. Like, you're on the House Judiciary Committee. I saw that tweet.

The first couple times I saw it, it was screenshoted. And I assumed it was fake. I'm like, there's absolutely no way this is a real tweet. This is right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure enough, it actually was real. And it's like, how can you be on the judiciary committee and tweet something that stupid where there's an entire picture of top secret documents in a hotel office or whatever? And you're going to focus on the fact that there's also a framed cover of Time magazine.

Like, everyone is making it worse for Trump, which maybe secretly, maybe that's what they're all trying to do. I don't know. I mean, there certainly are people on the GOP side who understand just how fucked they are, right? There are people on the GOP side, whether or not they admit it, that realize that Trump is a complete liability and they can't add to the base. So the math is if you can't add to the base, you can't win. Right. Every day, more of these things come out, you know, it's you lose voters. So even if, I mean, there's just no math.

in which Trump becomes a better candidate than he was four years ago. Absolutely. And I think you're right. But look, Mitch McConnell clearly realizes that. I think Kevin McCarthy realizes that. But he's too much of an absolute coward to say it publicly. I don't think Jim Jordan realizes that because he's Jim Jordan. No.

But clearly, I mean, if you're a Chuck Grassley, you know this is not going anywhere good. I mean, you can do basic math. Absolutely. But to me, it's more like, you know, the politicians you expect this shit from, but I'm looking at this and I'm seeing like, like journalists. Like I'm seeing Byron York is, you know, he's a conservative, whatever, but he's always been sort of a Let's use journalists in quotes here.

But yes, continue. Yes, fair enough. Fair enough. But he's always sort of been like a, you know, an intellectual or whatever. Brigham used to be a very respected journalist in a way, form or life. And now these guys, they come up with new ways. ways every day to be clown themselves. And I like, what is this? How is it worth it to you? What are you getting from this? I don't understand. You know, whatever reputation you had is completely torched,

and it ain't coming back. You're never going back to having a good reputation because you've sunk that low. It's not even like you could say, well, I made a couple of mistakes. You, you completely went over to the dumb side. And you're just, you're not coming back from that. And, you know, you're now lumped in with the, the idiot politicians like Jim Jordan and Matt Gates and the people like that. And you're part of that crew now, whether you like it or not. And that's it for you. I mean, the problem is they're backed into a corner. There's no world in which they can't get out of Trumpism without alienating the Trumpy base

that they have to have in order to win elections. So they're going to have to figure out, I mean, it's a sort of fascinating situation they put themselves into, right? Trump won't go away. All Trump cares about is bringing up. everybody down. Right. So he's not going to, there's no world in which he's like, oh, okay, I guess I've done enough crime. We'll move, you guys move on to DeSantis. Be well, you know, right? I mean, he's going to bring this all down because he doesn't want to go jail. And also he wants to raise money, you know,

he can make money off of his base. So they find themselves an impossible situation. I mean, well deserved and fuck them. And, you know, they killed democracy on the way there. And the math on this is, there's no way out for them. And even for Descent. who might end up being the heir apparent to Trumpism, there's no way out. Yeah, no, I agree with you. And the thing is, is there a way out for the Republican Party in general? It doesn't really feel like it right now. I mean, things change, obviously.

And, you know, in 2040, when we're all having a right on waterproof paper, you know, on our ballots underwater, the Republican Party may look totally different. But right now, because no non-Trumpie campaign. candidate is going to win. Like the people we're talking about is DeSantis or, you know, it's basically just DeSantis at this point. But Jeb Bush ain't running in 2024, you know. I mean, yeah. There is no way out for them in 2024. And Trump is not going away for all those reasons you mentioned. And also on top of that, I think for the ego reason, like he really doesn't believe he lost in 2020. He can't admit that he ever lost. And the only way he can really prove that is to

win in 2024. So he almost has to run again. They're kind of trapped in this, as you said, they're trapped in this corner. But I know what you're saying about the base, not growing is true, but I'm still in a popular vote, presidential election, they wouldn't have a prayer of winning in an electoral vote. Presidential election, they do have a prayer. And that's scary. They have a prayer, but this situation is it's not getting better for them. It's getting worse. No, agreed. Agreed. And I think that math is. It's not, you know, every time there's another announcement about Trump getting in trouble for something, you will lose some voters. And so you're in a war, just, you're in a theoretically worse position than you were two years ago.

And so I think that is going to be, I think there's got to be people in the Republican Party who are smart enough to realize that that's what's happening. Yeah, they're just, they're just in the minority. George Conway is a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Welcome back to the new abnormal, George Conway. Hello, Molly John Fast. How are you? You know, it's all happening here. Can you explain to us? Is Donald Trump going to jail? Well, I can't guarantee it, but there's a reasonable likelihood of it.

I think it's going to be very difficult for the Justice Department to decline prosecuting him. I mean, I think before any fair jury, he'd have to be convicted based upon what we're seeing. I mean, there's still more evidence that needs to come out and that they'd need to put on, but everything points to him being in a heap of trouble. And we haven't seen everything that the Justice Department has, in particular the evidence that was set forth in the sealed affidavit that was only partially unredacted that describes how the FBI learned or deduced that Trump was still holding

on to documents even after his attorneys had certified to the government that all classified marked documents had been returned. So it's going to get interesting. Is this a case of Trump's attorneys needing attorneys? Well, they absolutely do need attorneys. Bob in particular is very exposed because she is the one who made the representation after they responded with a red world of documents in response to the subpoena, she certified that a diligent search was made for responsive documents and that all responsive documents were produced, which was, as it turned out, false. I'm shockingly so. Right. So the question is, what was the basis for her to make that certification?

Did someone tell her to make the certification? Did someone tell her that he personally looked for all the documents? We don't have any. So. And if that's so, you know, she would, I mean, I think she's going to have to testify unless she takes the Fifth Amendment because this is, this is a question of crime fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege. She would have to testify that Donald said, we don't tell them we don't have any more, just give them these. And if that's what he says, if that's what he told her to do, and in fact, I have these beautiful documents still left in my office. He, he, he,

He's going to go to jail on the basis of her testimony. But I'm not even sure they need her testimony. I mean, this stuff was in his office. Yeah, I mean, this stuff was in his office. He knew it was there. Hadn't he written in the margins? We don't know whether that means anything because he could have written that marginalia when he received the documents back at the White House.

Okay. You know, writing in the margin, oh, wow. McCrone slept with his teacher. Interesting. Yeah. Is that, hey, half the, is that, I'm working on that. It's getting better, right? I mean, it's not, it's not the best.

We've had other people come here and do impressions. All right, all right. But it's not the worst. It's not the worst. It's not the worst. I would say it's like, you know, I mean, we've definitely had worse. It's me doing an impression of somebody doing an impression of somebody doing an impression of Trump.

Yeah. I mean, Rick Wilson does a very good Bill Clinton. Oh, I always, I was able to do Bill Clinton in way back in the 90s. We have a rule on here, which is Republicans are not allowed to make fight of Bill Clinton, only Democrats. When did we make that rule? All right. Anyway, moving on. So what I'm curious about is, so you have these documents and they're in his office.

One of the things that his people have said again and again as a defense, I mean, again, I think they're really scrambling some of their defenses. Many of their defenses are making it worse for him. But one of the things they say is that the photos were staged. Can you explain to our listeners a little bit about how that's completely hooey? I think that's a legal term. I don't know what they mean by the photos were staged. They found these documents in the office and they put them on the floor to take a photograph of what they have found to show that's where they found. They found them in the office.

They didn't say that that was the condition of the office when they found the documents. But, I mean, if you were trying to document the finding of evidence, I mean, it's not that hard. You just take a picture. You take tons and tons and tons of pictures. And this one was more demonstrative than others, but I'm sure basically they took photographs as they were pulling out the documents from the drawers or the boxes that were there. I don't know what they mean by stage. The documents were either in the office there or they weren't.

They were either in the storage room where they weren't. So they took a picture of the documents. after they put them out and laid them out the show to illustrate. So, so what? It's pretty standard, right? You'd have to ask a Peter Stricker somebody. But yeah, I can't imagine. I mean, if I found some piece of crazy evidence that I was going to turn over the cops,

I would take a photograph of it and hold on to that. And in fact, I had to do that once. So I went on and right after the inauguration, I got home in 2016. got home with the kids late one night. And there was a package in front of, that had been delivered, and I opened it, and it was full of white powder. You know, and I took the, I carefully took the white powder or the thing, and I kind of held it with my hand and walked it out to the driveway and put it down in the middle of the driveway and took a photograph of it, of the envelope, you know, and then called the police. Did you think it was, could have been rice and anthrax? I had no idea, but I certainly would.

wasn't going to take the chance. So I just immediately just, you know, it was in a sealed baggy. And I just took everything, the contents of the envelope and the bag. And I just walked it out to the driveway and just dropped it there and made the phone call. And then, you know, the police came, the local, everybody came, so on and so forth. But that's what you do. You would just, you would take photographs as the point. It should take a photograph of something if you saw something that you were trying to preserve as evidence. I mean, we all do that now. If you saw a plane crash, you'd pull up your camera. Right.

It's just what we do now. And I can't imagine, you know, I'm sure the FBI would have done it 40 years ago, except with a different kind of device. So I don't see what the big deal about the photograph is. On the van, it just shows, you know, it's dramatic because you can actually see, I mean, most of us have never seen top secret classified document cover sheets until that photograph. The reason you can see the cover sheets is, you can see the point of the cover sheets they're meant to scare the bejesus out of you.

Right. That this is something that if you are not supposed to have or touch or look at, you want to leave the room because you might go to jail. It's pretty dramatic to actually see it. And I'm sure that's why the government attached it to the brief. But Trump and his lawyers basically asked for that by filing this stupid motion. It seems like his lawyers keep making everything worse. He makes everything worse because they're doing. what he wants them to do. He wants to go on the offense. The problem is he has no weapons to go on the

offense with, and he has no legal arguments. He has no defense. He only has lies. And there's a limit to what lawyers will say in a pleading that's false. And so he's trying to create an issue by saying, oh, the justice, the justice runs out of control, so we need a special master. Well, okay, if you keep stating these conclusions in your briefs about how this was a terrible search, it was, you know, there was no basis for it. Justice Barton's going to come back and say, here's the basis for it. Right. They're able to do that actually pretty well without releasing any grand jury materials

because a lot of it was just back and forth. And, you know, the search, nobody would know about this search, except for the fact that he put it out there. Right, because he thought it would help him. Yeah, no, that's the amazing thing. I mean, as I've said a couple times on TV the last couple days, the Trump people basically said to the Justice Department, punch us in the face. And that's what they did. They just ask for it. They keep asking for

triggering legally necessary responses by the Justice Department. And every time it happens, something unfortunate comes out for him because the facts and law are against them. And we haven't heard. We haven't heard them articulated offense yet. That's coherent, legally and factually sound. So Trump did hire this former Solicitor General of Florida, who is actually a good lawyer. Yes, he did. Apparently. I don't know what a good lawyer can do for him. That was my question. What can a good lawyer do for him? Nothing. You think it's just too late? The mistakes he made, he already made. The one way he had out of this was to basically turn the documents over a year ago and not jerked the government around.

They wouldn't have prosecuted him, even though you or I, if we had taken this shit home, we'd be in jail. Right. That we would be prosecuted. And we would be prosecuted, even if they'd be prosecuted, even if they'd be prosecuted. The government came to us and said, hey, do you have any documents? And we said, yes, here they are. Oh, my God, classified documents. We'd immediately be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Isn't that why Chelsea Manning ended up in jail? And so many other people. I mean, there's this incredible case last year or the year before. There's a woman who was a Department of Defense employee. She was succunded to the United States Embassy to the Philippines in Manila. And she was writing some kind of a thesis for a graduate degree. And so she used a couple of feces that she had copies of that had classified information, similar kind of thing.

And she brought them home to use as models or sources. And she left them in her bedroom. She held a party for her colleagues at the embassy. and somebody at the party went into her bedroom. I took us to use the bathroom or something and saw the classified documents and reported her. And she had to plead guilty in the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii.

And this stuff, I mean, I doubt that whatever this woman had has any degree of national security implications that remotely would approach something that would be given to the president of the United States that's marked T.S. SCI special access program or HCS for the, you know, human sources and SI and all these markings that are very, very, very, you know, show that these are very, very, very sensitive documents that could get people killed or could gravely harm the security of the United States if they were divulged the wrong people, such as many of the people who apparently traips through

Mar-a-Lago every day. He did this to himself. NARA and the Justice Department cut him a lot of slack. He had the opportunity. He could have given these documents back all at once. In January, he didn't. They subpoenaed him, and he didn't give them all back, and then his people lied. And the question is, to what extent they did it at his behest. They lied about that they had given it all back, and they refused to let the Justice Department look in the storage room in the FBI at that same time. This is a pattern of obstruction here. Again, it doesn't even depend that much anymore on what's actually in the documents. I mean, even if he had the right to declassify them, which he did not.

I mean, he did, he did have the right to declassify them, but only through specified procedures. But even if he had done that, you know, he'd still be on the hook for obstruction because the subpoena this summer called for all documents with bearing classified markings. And these, you know, whether or not they were classified, they had markings. And then they represented that they had produced all of them, which they had not. And then on the classification, they never, ever said, oh, by the way, these documents are declassified. That was something they thought about months later when they produced the original set of 15 boxes and when they produced the Redwell, which they had double taped and secured.

So they were treating the documents as though they were highly sensitive and classified. That was the news cycle where Trump said he could. put his hand on something, yeah. Well, he basically took the position long after the fact that anything he brought up to the private residence was therefore declassified. Well, no, nobody received any notice at that. It didn't happen. It's not a crime when the president does it.

That's what Nixon says. Well, Donald Trump's view is everything I do is right and anything that anyone does to me is wrong. He's the quintessential pathological narcissist and a sociopath. And that's why he behaves the way he behaves. behaves. And sooner or later, these people self-destruct because they cannot help themselves. And this is, you know, some people say, oh, my gosh, he's, he's just going to go down on these, on this, on his, on his document charges when he had, he tried to conduct an insurrection. No, no, it's actually perfect that he, he go down on this if he goes down on this, because it is such

the perfect Trumpian combination of derangement and dumbness that was, it's just quintessentially Trump. This scandal actually is the perfect thing in a way to bring him to the end that he deserves, which is a stay in a federal penit. Now, actually, you could probably get house arrest or something, but it's still, it's still going to be amazing. At some point, Republicans decide this can only hurt us, right? Well, look, any sensible Republican believes that. But the problem is they are terrified of saying that because they're terrified that the, you know, people will attack them for it. They're in the horns of a dilemma. They can't piss off a high percentage of the Republican base, but at the same time, he's making it difficult for them to win elections.

Right. He cost them the Senate once. He may easily cost them the Senate again this fall. He certainly, you know, who knows what could happen in the House. I mean, it's likely the Republicans women house. But none of this makes it easy. Oh, well. George Conway, thank you for joining us. It's very sad. Yeah. Thoughts. You're just going to have to go for a long walk and console yourself. Right.

Thoughts. Prayers. Whatever. Yeah, thoughts and prayers, yeah. Thanks for joining us, George Conway. Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger represents Virginia's 7th Congressional District. Welcome to the new abnormal Congresswoman Spanberger. Thanks for having me.

I'm really thrilled to have you. I feel like first we have to talk about the document. Can we talk the Mar-Lago carpet documents? Let's talk about it. I don't understand. You worked in the CIA.

I mean, you allowed to do that? Absolutely not. For me, so I'm a former CIA case officer. I worked handling foreign agents sat across the table from them and cars with them wherever it was that we were collecting this information and promised to keep them safe, to keep their information safe,

recognize the, I, you know, told them the value of the information you're providing to the United States government helps keep us safe and use safe and our countries at peace, you know, depending upon the information and the idea that there might be people overseas who are risking their lives, they're risking imprisonment to provide vital information to the United States government. Now they potentially are worried that their reports might end up on the floor, unsecured, just kind of there for the potential taking is unbelievable to me, quite frankly. I'm just sure you had a lot of Republican colleagues in national security. Are you surprised that they continue to defend this? I mean, do you think there'll be a moment when they stop?

Well, I think, you know, importantly, in CIA, we were nonpartisan, we were mission driven, you know, whether people's political leaning went one way or the other, you know, frankly, I don't, I don't know. But certainly any person who serves in the intelligence community or has served in the intelligence community understands the gravity of what we're witnessing, the gravity of what this means that, I mean, at this point, a private citizen, though a former president, but a private citizen would just have acts of classified documents at his home is stunning. I think increasingly we're starting to hear people or see people go quiet, which I think, sadly, it might get as close as we'll see for some people in terms of,

you know, recognizing the gravity of the circumstances. They'll, you know, move on from defending these actions, move on for saying, but they're just documents and perhaps just stay quiet. But, you know, importantly, documents are the key to everything. So the idea that it's just documents. No, it's classified documents, classified documents, that's indeed in the intelligence this world, what you go after. And there's really kind of no more significant or important thing to get your hands on than classified documents from another country's intelligence services. So it's just stunning. And, you know, in our race, too, you know, I'm running against, the opponents running against me who's called the FBI corrupt and denounce the lawful search warrant called the FBI deep

state. And to just continue to view detail after detail, it's stunning to me. It's stunning to me. that anybody would hold that opinion. I'm at a loss for words, Molly. Party of law and order, ish, right? Was, pretend, yes. Well, and it depends. I mean, law and order, law and order is ensuring that classified documents that are closely controlled.

And, you know, I used to write documents and intel reports that we would classify and classify under the HCS classification because they were coming directly from human sources. I used to read in advance of going out on different operations and different debriefings, various different intel reports that came from all these different sources. The importance that this information be safeguarded, I mean, you know, we, in a SCIF, I worked in a SCIF, a special compartmented information facility, and yet every single day, at the end of the day, every piece of paper had to be locked up in a safe in that SCIF.

Yeah, can we talk about that? Yeah. Because there were SCIF documents that Trump had. Can you explain to our listeners what that means? So a SIPF, a special compartmented information facility. It's basically what you call a room or a building where you go to work. You can't have Fitbits. You can't have phones, certainly not.

You can't have any smartwatch. You go into this space without any sort of ability to push information out and without any risk that a foreign intelligence agency might be able to follow you in or create a listening device for some sort of technology that might be on your person. you go into this space and, you know, and I was a CIA officer, like we worked in these spaces and you work on classified computers and all of your documents that you might have. You might be printing things. You might be writing things. You might have paper, but that paper either goes in the burn bag when you're done with it to literally be incinerated, or it goes

in a locked safe that you control within the SCIF. And then, you know, the types of documents and And what we've seen from that very stunning photo is these are all top secret SCI, so special compartmented information. And then there's various types that's been reported, various types of information, some HCS, and that means it's information that's classified because it came from a human asset. That means a spy, right? Yes, exactly. A foreign agent, someone overseas who, for whatever reason, and, you know, in my dealings

with people who were reporting. It was, you know, someone who took great risk, risk prison, risk death because they wanted to ensure that the United States government had good information about what was happening in their country, sometimes because they wanted to avoid miscommunications or misunderstandings, as tempers might have been flaring between us and that country, sometimes because they had a great respect for the United States and our role of, you know, global leadership in the world. And they wanted to make sure that we were well-informed. about what was happening on the ground in their country or in leadership circles within their government. But HCS information is coming from a person that, you know, if that information falls into the wrong hands,

it can potentially be very identifying for who that person would have been. And not only that, but it, you know, it risks that, obviously, that person getting caught, but it also risks that pipeline of information. And information obtained from human assets, we call them agents at CIA. You know, that's among the most valuable information that you possibly can obtain because it's the plans and intentions. It's the discussions happening in foreign capitals. And it's really valuable to our national security. People could lose their lives because of this.

So I'm also a former intel officer. So, you know, precision language matters. Right. I'll say people can and people have lost their lives when it was realized that they were providing information to the United States government. Right. So depending upon, you know, what information has or has an. been released or what might, you know, have been compromised anytime there is mishandling of classified information. And, you know, in this case with HCS related to human sources, yes, that risks people's lives.

If it's other types of intelligence derived from signals intelligence or derived from technical means, you know, that risks the United States, our technologies, it risks exposing the methods by which we're able to collect information, which is also a great risk to our ability to continue collecting information. In the Times article, it said department officials are not expected to file charges imminently if they ever do. I mean, do you think that's possible? It seems so crazy because the stuff is so top secret. I'm going to have to defer to the DOJ attorneys on this. I think even the documents that they released last night demonstrate such a clear process that they have gone through trying to get the documents back from the former president, issuing a subpoena to ensure that they

could get the documents back in May and now ultimately going before a judge and demonstrating why a cert warrant was necessary for them to be able to continue collecting the information that was within the former president's possession that should not have been in his possession. You know, I can't make predictions on what comes next, but certainly as a former Intel officer, I can say that it's, you know, it's just about, well, if anyone I ever worked with had a collection of documents like this, you know, at their home, there's no question of what would have happened to them. I do think that, you know, what we see in terms of the DNI is going to be doing a full review of the potential ramifications of these documents being not in controlled places, not stored

properly what the risk analysis that they might put forth, I think, will be valuable. And my hope is that while certainly elements of that document that they produce will most certainly have to be classified, I do hope that there's an unclassified version that will be released publicly so that the American public has a general understanding to the extent that's appropriate in an unclassified document of what it means that the former president had these documents and whether or not there is any evidence that there were perhaps real risks that were realized because of the fact that these documents were outside of government control for quite some time. Let's talk about your opponent because you are measured and careful and come from law enforcement.

She comes from law enforcement too, but she's making a name for herself by saying a lot of wild stuff. Yeah. So, I mean, just the greatest example of that would be, you know, as it relates to the moral Lago raid or the lawful search warrant that was executed at the former president's home. She was fundraising off that event. She accused the FBI of being corrupt. She called them deep state. You know, she implored people to donate to her so that she can be part of defending Trump from, you know, what she considered to be just a terrible occurrence.

And, you know, notably, the brave men and women of the FBI are the ones who hold the laws. They investigate terrorism. They investigate robberies and kidnappings and crimes against Americans overseas. I had the opportunity to work with FBI agents, both when I was a former federal agent myself working some narcotic pieces, but then also as a CIA officer, we would coordinate on uncertain things when there was a link back home to the United States, the issues that were risks that were occurring domestically. And notably, the 7th District of Virginia also includes Quantico, which is the FBI's

training facility. So, you know, it's not only her words attacking FBI agents as corrupt and her words that it's accusing them as being part of the deep state. It's not just an attack against our law enforcement agents. It's attack against people who live in our district, people who devote their lives and at times risk their lives to uphold the law and protect their fellow American citizens who are trained in the 7th District of Virginia. And so, you know, these comments are just absolutely stunning to me, sadly, not surprising because she continues to be driven by or demonstrate that she's driven by ideology. But this, you know, follows somewhat recently she had spoken about doubting whether or not women can get pregnant from rape. Right. I was just about to bring that out. She favors a national

ban on abortion, sadly, does not seem to understand the basic biology of pregnancy and certainly demonstrates a pretty significant lack of respect or humanity towards women who are, uh, victims of sexual violence. You represent a pretty swingy district, right? This is pretty close. That's right. You're running against a real MAGA. You're not running against like a normal candidate where you could see suburban voters saying, well, you know, do you feel a little bit lucky that these Trumpy candidates, they just seem so preposterous? Like, I mean, what normal person says, okay, you know, isn't it sort of, like, I mean, you really are on the front lines of running against someone who is, like, beyond Trumpy. That's absolutely true. The way that I look at it is this person actually won a primary.

Now, there was a multi-candidate primary, so there was not a kind of overwhelming mandate. But my opponent didn't win a primary. She was selected as the candidate to run against me. She continues to demonstrate extreme after extreme ideology and total disconnect from, I mean, she defended the January 6th insurrectionist. I forgot to mention that. Right. But to the question about kind of the status of the race, I flipped a district that hadn't elected a Democrat since 1968. I'm used to dealing in hard districts and running tough races.

I think the reality is these extreme candidates keep getting nominated. They are a part of the American political fabric at this point. And so I think that their ideology, their extreme positions, the fact that anyone would say that they don't think a woman can get pregnant from rape, the idea that any idea that anyone would defend a January 6th insurrectionist who beat police officers or call the FBI corrupt, that may seem utterly offensive to me and you and hopefully the majority of voters within Virginia's 7th district. The reality is that there are people who align with that. Right. And so for me, my goal is to ensure that someone who is so just absolutely ill-equipped to go to Washington,

so extreme, so out of touch with the basic tenets of God. governance and rule of law as a legislator would need to abide that that person never gets anywhere close to Capitol Hill. I am committed to ensuring that the people in my district who have real needs, who depend on a, you know, pragmatic, thoughtful facts and information-driven legislator that I continue serving that role for them, it's my duty to make sure that someone who is bombastic and driven by ideology and a pusher of extreme ideology never gets close to having a vote on half of the people of our district. There must be people in your district who are conservatives who are like just horrified.

Yes, yes. And they've certainly told me so. I mean, I feel like you're living the example of like these candidates who are Trumpy enough so they win their primaries, but completely unelectable in a general, especially in a swing district. You know, and the scary part, though, is we have seen some of these candidates be elected in other places. And that becomes the dire circumstance for the strength of our democracy and for our system. But certainly I have had many people come up to me. And, you know, this predates this

particular election. It's my 2020 re-election and my 2018 initial win where, you know, people will say, I'm a Republican butt. And then the butt is all of the things that they view as being problematic within their party or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And that but is, and I'm voting for you. Or I did vote for you. Just I guess last week I was at an event. And I had three different people say that I'm a Republican butt. And, you know, one of them said, I voted for you in 18, 20, and I'll do it again in 22. You know, I think it's important that especially for principled actual small C conservatives to recognize that there are people who are running away from what the original, you know, what the kind of most recent sort of values of a small C conservative Republican Party, let's say, of the sort of Liz Cheney vein, that the party is so far removed from that at this point in time. And so there are many people who are making choices to vote for across party lines.

And in my case, people who are telling me that, you know, I don't agree with you on everything. But, and then insert all of the reasons why they are voting for me. Thank you. Congresswoman Spamberger. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Andy Levy. Molly John Fis. Who is? You're a fuck that guy. My fuck that guy is not a guy. That's your first clue. She's the wife of a guy. a guy you may be familiar with.

He is one of nine people in Washington who makes very, very big decisions. He has a lifetime appointment. Yes, he is a lifetime appointment. And he does not recuse himself for making decisions, even when said wife has very big ties to some of the stuff related to the things he's ruling on. Anyway, it's Ginny Thomas, also known as Virginia. I could not guess. No, I know. I think you probably had it narrowed down to like four people.

A bunch of months ago, we learned through some emails that she was pushing very hard for the Arizona election results to be overturned and to give them, to take it away from Biden and give it to Trump. And we have now learned via the Washington Post from some new emails that she also sent messages to a couple of lawmakers in Wisconsin, a couple of states. a couple of state senators. And she sent them at, according to the post, virtually the same time. She sent the emails to the Arizona folks.

She was basically trying to do the same exact thing in Wisconsin that she was in Arizona, i.e. overturn the correct election results and give the state to Donald Trump. So, you know, it feels like Ginny's kind of, she's warmed her way out of the spotlight for the past couple months. And I think it's time I'm bringing Ginny back. You know, it's important that we don't forget her and that we don't forget the fact that her husband consistently makes awful rulings as a justice of the Supreme Court and that we keep her in our thoughts. They both, as a couple, I think they need to be in our thoughts daily. I think every day we should take a moment to reflect on the fact that Ginny and Clarence Thomas are doing bad things for this country. Until they die. Yeah, basically.

So Ginny Thomas is my gender neutral fuck that guy. Justin Timberlake brought sexy back, but Andy Levy brought Jiddy back. Yes, exactly. Exactly. We're basically the same. Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Molly. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is?

I do. Who is your fuck that guy? It's the greatest most fun villain fracas going. Peter Thiel, Mr. I can't say anything about him because I don't want to get sued. But that guy, venture capitalist, decided he had the candidates who were going, he decided to try his hand at Republican politics. He had two candidates. J.D. Vance, you'll remember him as having written Hillbilly Ellogy, a mediocre book turned into a mediocre movie. And Blake Masters, who was 11 years old. But still an incredible racist despite being 11 years old.

Those two are Peter Thiel's chosen candidates. So he went to McConnell and McConnell said since you've picked these candidates, you can fund them. Not the business model that Peter Thiel had hoped for. Frockus ensued. Fuck both of those motherfuckers. By the way, I really enjoy Mitch McConnell sticking it to Peter Thiel telling him, you know, you pick the candidates now. you pay for them. But also, it's nice to see them both having a tough time because they really are two of the worst people in the world.

So congratulations, team. Fuck them both. It's not often that people who deserve each other find each other. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to see it and I can't wait to see how it plays out. Yes. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics.

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