The Daily Beast Podcast - It’s Time to Look at Trump’s Jan. 6 Plans in a New Light

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Did Trump and his team ever really believe the 2020 election was stolen? That’s the wrong question to ask, Talking Points Memo reporter Josh Kovensky says on The New Abnormal. Plus, an interview with Dell Cameron, an investigative reporter for Wired magazine, about the recent Congressional wrangling over proposed changes to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 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 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 Kedden, 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. Our 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 an excellent show we have today.

Talking Points Memos, Josh Kovinsky joins us to talk about the Chesbrough docs and all the details around what he was plotting during the January 6th insurrection. Then we'll talk to Wired's Del Cameron about the backroom deal that looms over a high-stakes U.S. surveillance bill. But first, let's have some fun. So we're going to do something that we never do on this show. And I am just tickled pink. We're going to start with good news, folks. I know, I know. But I'm very happy with my place at birth that is the island of Long, Long Island, has finally

done right by electing former representative Tom Swazi Democrat. He won back his seat from George Santos or Qatarah or. the untalented Mr. Ripley that he is against a crazy woman. Let me tell you something. When I was on Long Island for the Super Bowl, the ads that were running, Andy were insane of Maisie Pillop, cuckoo, like coo, so he handedly won that seat back, and apparently the people of Nassau County woke up. So, bravo to him.

Yeah, I'm going to temper that a little bit. I'm glad Swazi won, mainly because it helps the numbers game, you know, for the Democrats in the House and brings them within, I think it's five seats of the Republicans. He's as Republican light as it gets. And I get it. This is Long Island we're talking about here, which is for people who don't know, and I know there are people who think that all of New York is like deep, deep blue. Long Island and a lot of upstate is basically West Virginia in terms of...

Okay. In terms of... Look, I know that we're both from there, but let's, no, no, let's relax. No, I'm not, I will not relax, ma'am. Calm down, Andy. I mean, in terms of politics, in other words, the only way you're going to get a Democrat in West Virginia is to get someone like Joe Manchin, who basically might as well be a Republican, except that because he's a Democrat, he, again, helps the Democrats with numbers games.

Swazi is, I mean, his entire campaign was about. evil immigrants. And I agree with you, Maisie Pillop. I think the Democrats were very lucky that the Republicans went with her because she was a horrible candidate and seemed to have, you know, a pretty fast and loose definition of the truth. Not quite at the George Santos level, but, you know, sort of along that same slippery slope. I'm not mad that the Democrats put up Swazi and I'm not mad that Swazi won. I'm just saying that we should temper this a little bit because at best he's a centrist. No, no, that is fair. No, go ahead. Yell at me. yell at me, Daniel, like you always do.

But it's true. Because I mean, because when you said West Virginia, I'm like, sir, back pedal. I stand by it. I stand by it. But when I will say this, when I was growing up on Long Island, my representatives were Democrats. But Long Island is that place that I think that people do not understand that was largely middle and working class. People that were taking the train from out east into the city.

to do construction jobs, you know, teachers, nurses, just like very middle of the road. And then Long Island became extremely fucking expensive. And what ends up happening is that they became the folks that were primed for the Republican lies and primed for these, oh, these people stole your job and blah, blah. And now when I go back and visit, the stickers that I see on people's cars, I'm like, who are you people? Right? Like you can't possibly be the same people that I grew up side by side with, which is very wild, but also very indicative of the lies that we told about the American dream and access that you can have. And the fact that you didn't need a college education, you just needed to work hard and you could own a home. And then now you can't afford that same home. And that's like that's the reality. Yeah. I don't know, Daniel. It sounds like you're agreeing with me. You know, in a roundabout way. So I will not agree that Long Island is anything. like West Virginia because I wouldn't go to West Virginia and I go home to Long Island often.

I just look, Long Island is is prime Trump country right now. Yes, it is. Which again, it's not to say, obviously every place has its diversity of political opinion. And I know liberals and leftists who live on Long Island, but I would say almost overwhelmingly, Nassau and Suffolk County are Trump country. So again, I'm glad Swazi won. I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens in November when I think people are forgetting that, you know, or some people anyway, are forgetting that, you know, this is a very

short term for Swazi, because he's just finishing out George Santos's term, and then there's another election, the regular election in November. And if the Republicans get their shit together and nominate someone who's not a crazy person, they have a good chance just on party line of taking that seat back. I mean, Swazi won by, what, seven points. So it's 54-46. It's a nice win, whatever, but that's a little tight considering how bad of a candidate she was. So I hate to throw water on parades. Actually, I just hate parades in general. They're stupid.

Wow. And people who like them should be relocated to. So we hate fun. Okay. Oh, great. No, that's okay. West Virginia or Russia. Somebody's in a mood.

I am. Danielle, when you take a COVID test an hour before taping and it comes up positive, it puts you in a mood. I know. I know. My dear friend, I'm sorry. Nassau County. went for Joseph R. Biden by 9.5%.

I don't believe that. Really? I'm looking at the fucking data. You're like, I'm looking at the data. Data lies. I don't know if you know that, Jesse. I don't know what data you're looking at. Whose election results?

That makes sense, though, for NASA, where I grew up and where Andy grew up is Suffolk County. And Suffolk County, and Suffolk County, has become very, very Republican, where Swazi is, is Nassau, NASA closer to the city, and it's also in some instances wealthier in some areas. And so that doesn't actually shock me. Well, I will tell you, Suffolk County was nearly a tie. It was 200 votes apart. I guarantee you that will not be the case this year. Okay. Okay. I'm not disputing your numbers, Jesse, or I'm not insinuating that you've made them up out of whole cloth, as it were, although I suspect that.

might be the case. Definitely those pictures that are sitting in your text messages. Well. The digs are nice times. Amazing. There we go. So basically, everything I have said thus far is false. Just remember people, I have COVID. You're not allowed to make fun of me.

But also I stand by the fact that I just really think that Long Island has become full on Trump country and particularly Suffolk, but I think even Nassau, I think is trending that way. I don't know. I think that we will see. But what I will say in a pivot in terms of, again, how sometimes I believe that Donald Trump has already won. Right. So we have Senator Chris Murphy, who is now urging Democrats. He was part of the bipartisan negotiations around. an immigration bill and is now urging Democrats to copycat Tom Swazi based on his victory in saying that, quote, Swazi messaged aggressively on the issue running ads that highlighted his support for secure border and legal pathways to citizenship. He flipped the script on his Republican opponent successfully, painting her as an unsurious about border security because of her opposition to the bipartisan border bill and turned, what could have been a devastating political liability into an advantage.

And so I don't know if continuing the path of moving yourself further and further to the right because of the fact that Republicans are over a cliff, that Democrats moving from the left, from the center and closer to the right is how we win. These are the things and the suggestions that are made by Democrats that make me believe that they're not actually paying attention to their own base, and all they're doing is paying attention to the Republican base. Yeah, it's unbelievable, but they do this all the time, and they never learn. Chris Murphy was the leader in giving the Republicans everything they wanted in the border bill. You might remember that bill is the one that the Republicans then refused to pass.

But Chris Murphy sat there and said, we gave them everything they wanted, and they still voted against it. Like, the problem is not that they voted against it. The problem is that you gave them everything they wanted. Correct. And this really is, I think partially what I was trying to say about Long Island is, and I've seen a lot of people who cover Long Island politics say this as well. This race was not a bellwether for anything. This was a specific race. It's good that the Democrat won.

But it was a really unique situation where you had the whole George Santos thing. You had Swazi who had previously represented that district before failing majorly in an attempt to run for governor against a really bad Republican candidate. and the idea that the National Democratic Party is going to look at this and say, see, we need to go further right on immigration. And when they're already giving the Republicans everything they damn well want, that is bad. And that is scary. And that is not the lessons that should be taken from this race. And one of the points I was trying to make in my COVID-addled brain was that I understand why Swazi ran the way he did. because to win on Long Island, I think he had to be fairly far right on immigration. But that should not at all be a blueprint for Democrats across the country.

Nothing that is mimicking Republicanisms should be a blueprint for Democrats. Unless, in fact, what you're mimicking is, like doubling down on the truth, doubling down on facts, like going as hard as you can and recognizing that there is no compromise. Unless that's the framework that they want to work from, great. But otherwise, all they continue to do is chase the Republican Party as if they are going to get their constituents back. And they're not. I mean, what do we continue to put up every fucking election is that white people have not come back to the Democratic Party since like the 1960s? So again, why do you keep chasing their base? I don't understand.

Yeah, it's just, it's incredibly frustrating to watch. Shifting gears. is what I will say. Changing gears, shifting gears, changing lanes. Donald Trump is broke, evidently. And I know that for some people, that's not going to come as a shock and surprise being as how if you listen to this show, Andy and I have consistently said that the only thing that is keeping Donald Trump afloat is his run for the presidency. It is keeping money flowing to his pocket and it is presumably keeping him out of jail. But what's really interesting is that in a newsweek, article that has come out, which is saying essentially that this extends beyond just Donald Trump

trying to make moves around holding onto power and becoming the fascistic dictator that he wants to be, that his push to remove Ronna McDaniel really is not just about getting rid of Romney's niece in the fact that he doesn't like her, but that he wants to, quote, get control of the Treasury. and this comes from Anthony Scaramucci. You all remember him? Oh. The former White House Director of Communications, and he said this on Brokedown Twitter.

Quote, Trump is out of money, which is why he is going hard at Rana Romney so he can take over the RNC Treasury. And then I had to ask myself, self, how much money does the RNC Treasury have right now? Andy, would you like to tell the people? They have a whopping $8 million or did at the end of 2023, I think, which is an unbelievably low amount for a political party to have on hand entering an election year.

$8 million. Who is that paying for? What campaign is that running? Like the last presidential elections, the 2020 presidential election, cost, I think over a billion dollars. And so I'm just curious as to, even if he were, even if Scaramucci, is correct in the fact that, okay, we'll let him take over the treasury there. I don't know if $8 million would even cover all of Donald Trump's legal fees right now. Oh, yeah. I imagine it wouldn't even be

close, would be my guess. I think there's two things going on here. One, I absolutely agree that he wants the money, and that's one of the reasons he wants to take it over. But I also think the other thing is just, you know, the simple thing, he has endorsed his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, to be the new co-chair of the RNC. And this is just textbook authoritarianism. And, you know, it's just you get your family members, you install them in places where they can help you. And this is just the next step in his takeover of the Republican Party. I mean, he's basically taken over everything, I guess, maybe except the official apparatus in the form of the RNC, although it's not like Ronna McDaniel wasn't in his pocket. But what better than to have a family member there who will do your bidding

no matter what it is, she has already vowed that if she's put in office, she says, quote, every single penny at the RNC would go to see Trump back in the White House. The RNC's job is national. And it's, by that I mean, it's involved in state races. It's involved in congressional races. It's involved in local, you know, city and town level campaigns and stuff like that. The idea that she has just come out and said, no, you know, we're just going to, we're going to, we're going to, all the money at my father-in-law. If I'm a Republican running a tight race for Congress or for a

governorship or a state legislator position, I would not be happy about this. The question is we've seen very few Republicans with anywhere near the balls to speak up anytime Trump pulls shit like this or similar stuff. So I don't know that they will now. But this is just, I have to say, I kind of want this to happen because I think it would be very bad for the Republican Party. if it did. The fact that there are no rules in place that, like, you can't have your family member run these different apparatus. You shouldn't have been able to have your family member in your administration. Now he will have his family member inside of the RNC. It's like, when does it stop? And the thing that we have to understand is that Donald Trump, like, literally ran up to the fences,

tore them down every single guardrail, every single political norm for all of us to just be slack-jawed at the fact that this was never written in stone. Like there were never any rules, never any laws around this shit. And he knew it. And so like he's in this instance, he's not doing anything that is, you know, illegal. No. In saying that his daughter-in-law is going to now control the piggy bank of the RNC. Like that's not illegal.

So in order for it to happen, it just needs to be the will of the rest of Republicans that basically you're telling anybody else that's running for office, you're on your own. You need to go get your own donors and go pump your own wells because this here is going to be dry for you. Yeah, 100%. But again, it's going to require them to grow a pair or however you want to put it to actually stand up. I highly doubt that the vast majority of them are going to do that. The guy sponsored a coup. in this country, and that didn't stop any of these people from supporting him. So why would this do it? I think ultimately it'll be bad for the Republican Party, particularly if Trump loses in 2024. The part that scares me is, again, it is part of this authoritarian playbook. And look, Democrats' hands aren't clean on this stuff. I mean, JFK had RFK as his attorney general, and that led to RFK Jr. So, you know, that didn't work out well.

Putting them in the apparatus of the party is just, it's just, you know, it's a very North Korea thing to do is what it feels like. All right, Andy, close us out with a bad new abnormal joke and we're done with the main. No, you know what? I'm not going to. Oh, wow. So now when we want you to do it, you won't do it? I see. I see.

You know, it seems like North Korea, which is, Andy. If you look at America, it's kind of the new abnormal. There it is. He's sick, folks, but he's still well enough. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal investigative reporter for Talking Point Memo, Josh Kovensky, who has written a piece as a part of a larger series inside of Talking Points memo entitled The Chesboro Docs. The latest piece that Josh wrote is entitled The Supreme Pressure Campaign.

Trump attorneys gamed out which Supreme Court justices might help them steal the election. Josh, let's just jump right in. The reporting coming out of Talking Points Memo, I mean, I want to say that it's shocking. I need another word for shocking because every single piece of it is insane what the Trump attorneys were planning to do, what they were doing, just scheme after scheme. Can you give us like a 50,000 foot view? of your piece that went up this week, the Supreme Pressure Campaign, and looking at the Supreme Court justices that Chesbrough and others were trying to,

I guess, get on their side. Yeah, thanks, Danielle. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate your kind words about the series we've been running. So basically, I think if you want to look at this in the broadest way possible, you have to think about it as an effort to stalemate Congress. So, you know, basically what it would have been, would have been trying any way possible through the courts, through law,

through whatever kind of legal maneuvering to stop Congress from doing what it was going to do on January 6, which was count the electoral votes and thereby certify Joe Biden's election as president of the United States. So I think the question then is where does the Supreme Court come in? So I think if listeners think back to the 2000 election when Florida was counting the votes and there were questions over who was going to count it and what votes would be counted, that's a very, very, very similar kind of replica for what they were trying to, which what they had in mind for what could have happened in 2020, except in the case of, except in Senate of Florida,

it would have been Congress. So in that situation, you would have had Trump attorneys creating all of these different situations where, you know, Congress would have been unable to count the votes. It wouldn't have been clear which votes would have been counted. And it wouldn't have been clear how to properly count the votes. And then the only actor left standing, the only constitutional actor, as they put it, left standing,

to count the votes to decide the election, would have been the Supreme Court. So I think if you're trying to look at the plan, broadly. That's what they had in mind. Now, you asked about specific Supreme Court justices. Here's where I think we run into the, even the Trump lawyers run into the kind of limits of their own imaginations. On some level, one interesting thing you see from this trove of documents I obtained from, you know, these internal kind of Trump attorney to deliberations, you see them trying to answer exactly that question, try to figure out, you know, who among the justices are going to be on our

side. At one point, you see Trump attorney Ken Chesbrough suggests that the campaign filed a lawsuit in Georgia because Clarence Thomas is the circuit justice. He thinks he'll be more sympathetic. But at another point, you see John Eastman kind of ponder whether or not the court is going to overturn the election in Pennsylvania. And he says that he thinks that Roberts is willing to do so, but only is being held back because he's concerned about the riots angle, referring to whatever riots might happen if the election is in fact overturned.

But, you know, there are a lot of other moments as well where the Trump attorneys themselves recognize just completely how far-fetched this is. I mean, there's a moment where Eastman also, I mean, a couple of days after that, he writes in an email saying, yeah, you know, the most we can hope for is dissent from justices Thomas and Samuel Alito. So, you know, I think there's a kind of mixture here where, you know, half the time when, especially when they're talking to their superiors and they're talking to and they're talking to and also pay them. They are very, you know, bullish on the court. They think that maybe there'll be a justice here or there who will help them, who will rule on their side. But, you know, there are other moments as well, kind of depending on who they're talking to where they're, you know, completely hopeless. The whole idea, it's almost as, and let me show my age by saying that it's like a Scooby-Doo

concocted cartoon plan. Because, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but so tell me that in order to get the Supreme Court to even hear these cases, like to hear this case, you would have to have one of the 60-some-odd cases that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were trying to basically play whack-a-mole with the courts. They had 60-some-odd cases that, were either thrown out or dismissed bringing in this scheme to overturn the election. Those courts would have had to agree to hear. Then there would have been, oh, a ruling. And then they would have had an opportunity to appeal.

So for me, it's like they're trying to play like this leapfrog with the Supreme Court. They are. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is that the story kind of picks up. These stories pick up in December 2020. And they conclude on January 6th. And by that point, you know, as you mentioned, like they'd find out. dozens of cases around the country, and they had lost everywhere, right? So, like, you have to ask yourself, like, what hope do they have of thinking that, you know, the Supreme Court, like the most elite,

highest court in land would have to rule on it if they couldn't even win at the district level or the state level. But this is where the pressure campaign on Mike Pence and Congress comes in, because in the thinking of Ernie's, that was all irrelevant in their minds. Like, the idea was that if you could then just make sure that Congress couldn't act, if you could have Mike Pence, you know, discard the votes, if you could have senators filibuster fee time limits on the count on January 6 itself. We reported that as well. You know, you could then extend January 6th out for days. So January 6th, it wouldn't really end.

It would just go into the 7th, the 8th, the 9th. Congress would never be able to certify the election. And then the Supreme Court would have to step in to solve the problem. I mean, that was sort of their way of, you know, it was a really kind of brute force tactic. It was about leverage. It wasn't about really making like a coherent argument. And the reason why, you know, Donald Trump doesn't have this. type of leverage with the Supreme Court is because they're seated indefinitely, whether we like it or

not. You know, these nine black robes that are ruling over this country are unmoved by elections, whereas those that are inside of the House need Donald Trump's stamp of approval in order to keep their job, in order to keep their constituency and their base in check. And so this really was just wishful thinking in terms of, can you explain to us the fake electors? Because I think that that is also, we had fake electors in several different states. We have lawsuits going on right now in several different states. But talk to us about how the fake electors were then going to feed into Congress and then how that was going to help extend the chaos of January 6th. Sure. So I think the tricky thing about the fake electors is that there is a world in which maybe

this would be legitimate. And so you can think about a situation in which, let's say, there was some problem in the counting of votes in, you know, let's say Colorado, right? And so that means that, you know, the election in Colorado is genuinely undecided by the time you get into late December. And there's lawsuits over how to resolve this. You know, the Constitution says that by December 14th, the states need to submit their electoral votes. Or they need to convene their electoral slates. So in that situation, it would make sense for both sides to convene, to convene electoral slates in the contingency that one of them ended up winning in the litigation or whatever the controversy was.

The big problem for the Trump people was that they did that even though the election was already decided. There was no conflict, no legitimate conflicts in any of these states by December 14th suggesting that they needed to have a contingency in case they won. And in the emails we reported on and also in allegations made by Jack Smith, you see Trump attorneys filing lawsuits kind of at the last minute in order to create a pretext so they could then have this elector slate go up and then kind of be contingent, but it was a fake contingency. So how does this fit into the broader picture of creating like a legal basis to move the election

to Trump after Joe Biden won? Well, you know, the electors don't just kind of sit around. January 6th, they go and they go to Congress. And the idea is that Congress is supposed to certify the winning slites of electors for each state. So the idea, though, was that if you had these competing slates of electors, you could say, well, look, there's this controversy in these states, in this case, it would have been all of the swing states, plus New Mexico, seven total. And the idea then would have been for all of these Republican members of Congress to kind of feign confusion about which slate was real. You know, is the Trump slate from Georgia real? Is the Biden slate from Georgia real? Is the Wisconsin Biden slate real? Is the Trump slate real?

We just don't know. That's what it would have looked like. Mike Pence would have declined to open up the electoral votes saying that, you know, hey, look, there are these contingent electors from the Trump campaign. I don't know which ones to choose because I can't figure out which ones are real. And that's what would have caused this huge delay. And one of the things that we exclusively reported in this series was what the Trump campaign's thinking was for the period after January 6. So let's say that it worked. Let's say we had had had a situation where on January 6th, the election was not certified when, you know, Mike Pence had not done what he had done and followed the practice of the previous 140 years. Let's say he actually had not opened the electoral votes and not decided

the election. You could have had a situation where, you know, basically the Republicans in Congress would have done, would have been to have all of these hearings on voter fraud, there would have been maybe a commission. There just would have been like all of the bogus claims of voter fraud that had kind of circulated for the months before this. It would have just been, you know, amped up on steroids and broadcasts the entire country by Congress. That's like what it would have happened. I mean, it's just wild. The entire scheme of it all, I mean, you tell me, is any of it anchored in something that is real? When I look back to 2000 and I think about the way that Florida was decided, and I think about how the Supreme Court should have ultimately never have decided that

case anyway, the course of history would have been completely changed if they hadn't. That was a real issue. That was a real issue. We have these pregnant chads and these like, did these people vote or did they not? And so it actually was, and maybe in hindsight, I don't know, maybe that was a dry run. Let me not delve into conspiracy. But when you look at this, was there any aspect of it that was anchored in any truth. So when we listen to politicians now, Republicans say that they still believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. But there is literally no basis in any part of your investigations that have been done that would even give us who live on Earth one even a sense that, oh, maybe he could have won that state or maybe he could have won Wisconsin or maybe he

could have won. Is it any of it anchored in reality? Yeah. I mean, Danielle, one thing I think about here is, like, in life and in politics, I think we're all familiar with situations where somebody has an issue. They kind of bullshit that there's some big problem. You can see they're not really telling the truth, but use that, like, kind of claim that there's some problem to get what they want. Like, I mean, that's kind of what was happening here is they were using, you know, all of these bogus claims about there being fraud in the election to get what they wanted, which was pressure to somehow have Trump stay in power. I would kind of divide this up, though, in the two. You have. You know, they're the insane claims of voter fraud, you know, these kind of, I think Italy Gate is like my favorite one. It's the one where like Mark Meadows was looking into this the last days before January 6th. But the idea was that like, you know, Italian military satellites like zapped a bunch of voting machines away from Trump and into Biden. So it's just like insane. It makes no sense. That's kind of half of it, right? That's the Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell going up and talking about Hugo Chavez. It's crazy. But there's another half of it. which is, I think, more buttoned up.

And that's a lot of what these lawyers we wrote about were arguing. It wasn't the specific claims of voter fraud. What they were saying was that the procedures around the elections that were conducted in 2020 had all been changed to accommodate COVID. Right. There was the heat of the COVID pandemic. And to accommodate that, you know, a lot of states allowed vote drop boxes. They expanded their vote by mail regimes.

And there was this, these decisions were all made before the election. And there was a period in which the campaigns could have contested these changes in many cases they did contest these changes by lawsuits. So in that sense, it's bogus. But what happened was is after the election was concluded, you had these lawyers come around and say, oh, you didn't conduct the election in the way that it should have been conducted, even though there was all this time they had to challenge, you know, the manner in which the election was conducted. But that is more the angle that these attorneys were taking. It was much less the like, you know, Venezuela stole our election or something. It went much more. You expanded access too much because of COVID. And while it

may have been a real legitimate public health concern. It wasn't a legitimate concern for the purposes of running an election. So I think that's the distinction you have to keep in mind. You know, to the extent that this has become like a litmus test within their Republican Party, I mean, that's just, I don't know if anybody who is like talking about this now in Republican politics, like is paying too close attention to what these differences were for them. It's just important to say that the election was stolen because delegitimizes the current administration. And that's the point, I think.

Even in the emails that you pull out in your piece, too, you can see in the conversations that are happening between Bruce Marks, Chesbrough, and others that, like, they are not even believing what they're doing. So it's like when they're talking about, I think it is in one of the pullout emails, Wisconsin, the Wisconsin parallel. And it's being written one of the reasons Wisconsin is important is that together with Georgia and Arizona, there are more than enough electoral college votes at stake. And then it goes on where, you know, they're going back and forth about, well, you miss all the shots you don't shoot.

It's clear that as they're going back and forth, they recognize that their percentage of winning in these states and convincing the Supreme Court is like 10 to 20 percent. And in somewhere it states that like they're not going to get paid unless they showcase some wins. So this is just like sheer will and bullshit that they're flying on right. now as they're going back and forth over email. And so I'm like, in your investigation, do you get this sense that like they weren't even believing what they were doing? But they were just like, this is how we hold on to power. I think on some level, yeah, it's really hard because I think that their reasoning is motivated by a few things. One is, as you mentioned, like the Trump campaign was offering payment for them to do this, right? And so they were attorneys, they were working

attorneys. They wanted to get paid to do this. A lot of them were true believers, though. I think you, I mean, you can't discount that. Like, I think John Eastman, you know, on some level, he sincerely believes what he says, which is that this is an existential fight for his vision of what America is supposed to be. And even though he, I think he says in the messages and he also ordnily told, you know, Mike Pence's lawyer on January 5th that he recognized the Supreme Court would not rule for him. Like, if your mindset is that, you know, your way of life is under threat that, like, the election is that important that everything that you would.

know and hold dear and love could just die, then, you know, as what Eastman says is that then your obligation is to fight as hard as you can for it, regardless of whether or not you're kind of pushing the envelope of law. So I think at least for him, that's the mindset. I mean, I was struggling with this too, writing it because it's like, you know, you almost want to ask this question, well, does he believe it or not? It's almost beside the point. It's like he just thinks that he just thinks that like American politics are so existential that like it doesn't even matter what's true or not because you have to win. I think that's the mindset. that existential. Their actions and the actions that that administration, the Trump administration,

took over there four years, and then the actions that they took between December and January 6th have shifted how consequential our elections are. I think that now the ante is even upped. And so just with the minute or so that we have left, Josh, like, where do you think that the stakes are in terms of what you've uncovered in this investigation, how far? they were willing to go and the things that we continue to hear now, what do you think the stakes are for 2024? I mean, one thing that always strikes me is that, you know, even the Confederates in 1860 recognized the Lincoln won the election. They just didn't want to be in a country that was governed by Abraham Lincoln. You know, Trump was the first in American history to refuse the will

of the American people. I don't think you can overstate how important that is. I mean, you know, he knew The other people around him knew that he lost. And they still fought tooth and nail to stop the result from following from that, which was him losing power and, you know, the opposing party taking power. He's the only, he's the only president in American history to do that. I don't want to predict the future, but I just kind of think that's enough people understand the stakes. Nobody else has done that. He's the only one. Yeah.

Well, Josh, we thank you so much. You and the team over at Talking Points Memo, folks. It is the Chesboro docs up at the Talking Points memo. Josh's piece, the Supreme Pressure Campaign is up now, and everyone should be checking out this series. Josh, thanks so much for making the time. Really appreciate it and really appreciate your work on this. Thanks for having me, Danielle. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was established in 2008,

and the government calls it a crucial tool in collecting intelligence from hostile foreign adversaries. But Civil Liberties proponents have long said that, among other things, it gives way too much warrantless collection power to the government, a power that is often abused and used to go after Americans for doing things like, you know, protesting. Section 702 expires at the end of the year, and the past few days have seen a flurry of activity in D.C. around it. Del Cameron is an award-winning investigative journalist who covers national security and tech policy for Wired Magazine, and he joins me now to walk us through it. Del, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you. So, Del, I first want to talk about what Section 702 is, and I want to read you the description of it that's posted at DNI.gov. This is the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It says, quote, section 702 permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the U.S. with the compelled assistance of electronic communication service providers to acquire foreign intelligence information. The government uses this information to protect the United States and its allies from hostile foreign adversaries, including terrorists, proliferators, and spies.

This all sounds great, man. What's your problem? Well, the problem, I think, with privacy advocates sort of centers around the term targeted. Yeah. So, you know, the Pentagon, well, really the National Security Agency, which operates under the Pentagon, intercepts hundreds of millions of calls, texts, and emails each year under the Section 702 program. And while only foreign individuals physically located overseas, meeting those two requirements, foreign overseas can be targeted. the government really makes no attempt to filter out messages coming to and from Americans. So, I mean, I think one thing it's important to note is that the people under surveillance that are foreigners aren't necessarily terrorists.

They're not necessarily criminals. They can be foreign officials with, you know, benign responsibilities likely. I mean, I couldn't break down the percentage wise of who the targets are. But a lot of Americans make phone calls overseas. A lot of them have relatives overseas. Right. We don't know how many Americans individually are targeted, but we know that. with the FBI conducts hundreds of thousands of queries of this database of this collected intelligence

each year using the names of Americans or U.S. persons. Interesting. So despite what the DNI website says, this does, and this is where groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and people like Senator Ron Wyden, this is where their hackles get raised because a lot of American stuff ends up getting scooped into this electronic net. And as you say, there's no real filter to keep it out. So in effect, it's our own government spying on us. Yeah, I think the key thing to understand, you know, there's a collocation between search and seizure. You know, we say those two words together all the time and

begins to form, like, the idea that it's just, that's one action. And the thing about 702 is it really divorces the two. So the collection of information, the government says that's lawful because it's only targeting foreigners. This information collected on Americans, is collected, they say incidentally. I think of it more in like a military terms of that being sort of the collateral damage of this targeting. People, they're not targeting, getting swept up anyway, but that's legal because they weren't targeting them.

So now that this information is lawfully collected or seized, the government says, well, searching through this database, we don't have any constitutional problems doing that because the information, again, lawfully collected. So it's in our possession. We lawfully own it. now we can look through it sort of whenever we want. And, you know, they have procedures. Congress has certain statutory guidelines for when the agencies can do that. But regardless, yes, they're using intelligence meant to inform foreign policy to look up information on U.S. citizens

and not going to a court and asking permission before they do that. Well, and that's the other thing is that all of this is sort of warrantless. And that's, that's the other thing that sort of raises eyebrows. It's like you're just doing this of your own volition without a court saying, oh, you have probable cause or anything like that. Yeah. And the other thing to note is that under FISA, probable cause doesn't necessarily mean that they would have to go to court to prove evidence of a crime. They do conduct searches of this database based on investigations that are purely looking for that with no foreign element. But you can obtain a warrant under FISA for communications just by showing that an individual is acting as an agent of a foreign power, which means, you know, they're involved representing that government in some way and in doing so

secretly. And these are the so-called FISA courts that you would go to and that, you know, as critics say, are basically rubber stamps? FISA court, I think it's 11 members. They're senior judges from around the country. They meet once a month, generally. I think they have some emergency sessions. They make decisions about the protocols under which this program operates, but they do not review

the individual cases. So if the FBI wants to like search. this database and put your name into it, that FISA court would never really know that or would not have to give its permission before the FBI did so. Gotcha. Understood. I want to talk about the political alignments here because they're really interesting to me anyway. And it feels like you've got basically the more lefty and the more righty folks and organizations

want Section 702, at a minimum, they want to reform the hell out of it, if not get rid of it completely. So you've got sort of the quote-unquote extremists on both. both sides aligned here and the more quote unquote central folks in Congress just want it to be extended as is. That's pretty fair. I think really there are very few people who want to get rid of it all completely. I think there are some, I think, Republicans and the more sort of extreme wing of the party who have said that, who've talked about getting rid of it. But I think that the serious people, including the heads of all of the committee of jurisdiction, which is the

judiciary, not the intelligence, understand that we can't stop, spying on people around the world. There are really legitimate threats, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks are pretty constant targeting critical infrastructure. You know, there are terrorist threats coming across borders. And another thing this is used for is to track fentanyl coming from China, which then crosses over into the U.S. through the Mexican border. Very dangerous drug, despite some of the jokes we now make about it due to the fear of

over sensitivity, police seem to display. But, I mean, yes, it kills a lot of people. I know people who've been killed by it. So we can't turn this off, but there are certain uses of it by the FBI in particular, where they are kind of throwing U.S. person's names in there. And that gives them access to phone calls, the content of phone calls, the content of emails, text messages. And, you know, the Constitution really says that that should require, you know, a police agency to go and get a warrant. That's what the Supreme Court says. But there seems to be, you know, they just have finagled some sort of legal argument.

in this case where they feel like they don't have to do that. So talk about the backroom deals that have been going on around 702 in the past week or two weeks. You had a great quote in a piece you wrote it Wired from a civil liberties expert who said, quote, this is the room where we get fucked. Well, in that story you're talking about, the reason that I kind of ended up using that quote is because there are numerous occasions where these pro-privacy amendments have been attached to bills recently, like last year. there was an amendment in the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act that would have banned

the military from buying people's personal information, basically giving companies money for information instead of showing them a warrant for it. And a year before that, there was an amendment which it didn't even go that far. It just said, we'd like to know if you're doing this and if you're doing it, you should tell us. And those sort of always fell off in conference when, you know, House and Senate leaders start meeting behind and closed doors. We've had privacy enhancements to Section 7 passed by the House on several occasions. Mike Johnson voted himself for a package of some of the strongest reforms to 702 just a handful of years ago. These reforms don't die on the floor. They never do. They die in sort of backrooms. And that's exactly what we saw happen this week. So you have the

Judiciary Committee that wants these warrants, wants the FBI to get warrants. You have the Intelligence Committee that sides largely with the intelligence community, even though it's supposed to be serving in some oversight function. They both had bills, neither of which Johnson would send to the floor. There was talk last month about, well, maybe we do this procedure called Queen of the Hill. It's very obscure where they send both bills to the floor and whichever one gets the most votes wins. It pulled that out. In January, the Intel people and the judiciary people got pulled behind closed doors by Speaker Johnson. We said, we got to hash this out. And they came out with a plan to move forward where they created a base bill, which included everything they could both agree on.

And then yesterday we were going to amend it and then let the full House vote on each of those amendments. So they might put an amendment, attach amendment saying the FBI needs to go get a warrant, and then the whole full House would get to vote on it. The Intel people, led by Chairman Mike Turner, bailed on the hearing and instead just spent the morning trying to convince members about some urgent national security threat that based on my sources turned out to be not that urgent. I think the White House has come out and saying it's not that urgent. And the top Democrat on the Intel Committee, who was initially signed on to this effort to get members to look at this urgent confidential information, released a statement saying

something like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. And, you know, there's concerns floating around, at least in the press. I haven't seen the White House issue any statement, but this information was really sensitive. You know, there's speculation that has to do with Russia and rockets or whatever. But the White House and even the Senate intelligence folks who were opposed to reform to say that, you know, exposing this information could expose a sensitive source, which is a very dangerous and illegal. This is on Wednesday. Congressman Mike Turner put out this thing, as you said, and it became like it was a huge headline for a while. And like, you know, it was CNN breaking news alert and all of that. And you and others instantly were like, oh, this guy's clearly trying to put his finger on the scale in favor of. 702 with no reforms or minimal reforms. Yeah, I mean, that was happening not only, I mean, it was happening earlier in the day.

The FBI grabbed a political reporter and gave them a story about how they'd stopped some vague terrorist threat against the U.S. They provided really no details, but said it was this program is of what allowed us to do this. It was interesting is that the article didn't make clear how any of the privacy reforms would have interfered with that investigation. It didn't, based on my reading of it, it sounded like the FBI could have continued that investigation, even if they would have had to get a warrant for U.S. people. I mean, if there's a foreign element involved, there's also numerous exceptions that have been built into that reform bill that say, you know, if there's really an emergency,

we're not going to stop you from, you know, arresting some terrorists about to blow up the Hoover Dan. That's a fantasy and a scare tactic. Also on Wednesday, and this was, I think, I guess a little after that, there was a, I assume it was a public congressional hearing because I saw you live posting it on Blue Sky. So talk about how that, went, not the live posting, the hearing. Yeah, so I talked a little bit about the base text,

and they're supposed to, the judiciary intel folks, we're going to amend it, both add amendments. And that was the process they'd agreed to behind closed doors with Speaker Johnson. And the judiciary folks showed up to make their case, said, you know, these are the amendments. This is why we think a warrant requirement is necessary. Here's the history of abuse by the FBI and the, you know, litany of errors that it's claimed that have led to, you know, like you said earlier on, Lives Matter protesters being investigated, members of the Senate, congressional parties, fundraisers, all sorts of people that it's the kind of smack of political intelligence or political surveillance, which is something the FBI has, you know, a story history of, you know,

so the judiciary folks were there and they made their case. And right after that, Turner and, you know, the intel folks were supposed to come in and do the same and they just never showed up. What became kind of clear afterwards is they never intended to. Like, they would have had to have filed their amendments or should have filed their amendments online with the Rules Committee ahead of time before that meeting. So the idea that it was like an impromptu decision not to show up at the hearing, I think is untrue. I think that they'd never planned to do it. But I have to assume that by not showing up, you know, if you do that in sports, you forfeit and the other team wins. So I assume we now get to have all the great amendments. Yeah, no. No, I don't have that right.

You know, instead of going to this hearing, Turner went to Johnson's office. That's what I hear. and basically issued a threat, said, if the bill is allowed to proceed as is, you know, we're going to kill it immediately because they come out with a rule for the bill and the House has to vote on the rule and then they vote on the amendments. You know, they're just sort of this tiered process. And one of the things that happens in Congress is with the Rules Committee is it's always a party line vote. So if Republicans, even if they kind of support these efforts at reforming U.S. surveillance,

they're not going to vote against their party in a rule committee and a vote on a rule. So they had the power to just stop to shut the whole thing down and took advantage of it. And today are doing whatever they can to blame anyone else. Shocking. So the upshot of all this is that they're going to have to eventually resurface the road from all the kicking down it of the can that's going on. I don't know about that. I mean, yes. Oh, okay.

Sure. I mean, there's three legislative days left until the government shuts down. They're not in session next week, half of the week after. They're not going to be able to deal with this until after. mid-March, we're reaching the point where this program expires in April, the odds of it just going away, or that's pretty far-fetched. You know, the FBI could apply for a new certification, and even if Congress does nothing, the court could grant it, and then they could continue doing the surveillance for another year into 2025. If Congress just walked away right now, that could

still happen. The thing that I understood monitoring sort of these intelligence votes over the past couple of years is that the threat of having privacy protections, enshrined in the law is bigger than letting a program expire because they can always find ways to keep a program running. They did that with some of the Patriot Act surveillance. The FBI hasn't really lawfully been allowed to engage in that type of surveillance for several years, and yet has still doing so because they just go to grandfather investigations into the program. The federal government also has an authority called 12-3-3-3. The thing to really understand about FISA is that it was created to pull government surveillance and intelligence.

gathering under Congress's authority. If Congress surrenders that authority, that doesn't mean the surveillance stops. It just means that Congress no longer has a say and what's going on. So there are ways for the intelligence community to continue spying without Congress's permission. Awesome. So to maybe use a better sports analogy, they can just run out the clock, basically, and they will end up getting what they want for another year? That is one of the top possibilities that I expect right now. One of the things that the intelligence community was crying about today is that there was an amendment going to be offered that would have prevented the government from buying information that normally, you know, police would have to serve a warrant to obtain.

And instead of warrants, they're just giving companies money and they get the information. And that cuts the judge's judicial review out of the process, which is highly troubling and is widely considered to be a Fourth Amendment loophole. You know, the intelligence folks made a big deal today about how it's not germane to the 702 legislation. So, you know, if you try to attach something to a bill, it's like totally unrelated, you say it's, well, it's not germane to this and you catch it. So they've made a big argument that stopping these purchases is not germane to this issue and shouldn't be included in this bill. But 702 has been reauthorized, was extended by attaching it to a military bill that has nothing to do with 702. It's extended right now by being attached to a bill that's

not germane and almost certainly they're going to try to attach it to a continuing resolution next month to get an additional extension that bill is not germane to 702 either so there's a lot of hypocrisy going on that is kind of hard to follow because it's so weedsy yeah del thank you so much for being here i love your work at wired and i've been following it for a while now and thanks for coming on yeah man i love the podcast thanks for having me on Andy levy Danielle moody Andy levy how are we closing out this glorious week in America. When I say that, you know, give me shit.

I am going to choose as my fuck that guy. Anytime we have to talk about him, we say this, we try not to be too local with this, what we cover, because we have a lot of listeners in other states and in places like Stad and Nome, Alaska. But I got to go with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, because he is now, well, New York City is, but at his behest as mayor, is now suing social media companies, the companies that own TikTok, Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, Snapchat,

YouTube, saying that they are causing a spike in mental health issues among young people. Gothamist.com reports that the lawsuit was filed in California Superior Court, which is what you want to see from New York City. Adams at a press conference said, quote, of learning confidence and resilience, they kids, are being exposed to content that often leads to insecurity and depression. And he said the features that keep young people clicking in these dark corners of social media have fueled an alarming rise and online bullying, depression, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation. Look, I don't think all of that is true. I think maybe some of that is true. None of these suits, and we've seen this, so many different states are trying ways to do this,

whether it's they're trying ways to put an age limit on who can go on the internet, which is just going to keep on getting shot down as unconstitutional demota. How many times they keep trying it? And then they're going to try the lawsuit approach, which, look, it maybe worked for groups like the NRA. So who knows? But it just seems like Eric Adams will do anything to avoid being a good mayor and to avoid doing the right thing. he will lie about and exaggerate the numbers involved in migrants coming to New York, which a new study just came out that showed that it is not the dire drain on our economy that Mayor Adams would like you to believe. And he will say, yeah, I've got to cut libraries. And so,

you know, a lot of New York City libraries are now no longer open on Sundays. But he'll always find ways to bump up the NYPD's budget. This is a different issue, but it's the same. It's the same principle. It's like he's distracting me with a shiny object. He's dangling the keys so that we're all like, oh, well, yeah, the kids are not doing great because of social media. And instead of dealing with the things that actually need to be done in the city, and instead of doing things like, I don't know, funding libraries to keep them open every day, which might actually help kids, this is what he's wasting time and money on. He is a god-awful mayor. And I am very close to missing de Blasio, which is, I, could not imagine that string of words ever coming out of my mouth a couple of years ago. But boy, it's getting there. So fuck that guy. Every opportunity that he gets to do the right thing, he's like, no, I'm good. It's just so shocking.

When is his term up? It has to be soon, right? Like, we need... We're halfway through. We're only halfway through? God, I feel like he's been mayor for a hundred years. I feel like my fact checks are fucking gray today. Oh my God.

Fuck that guy and fuck these hundred years of his administration. All right, Daniel, close us out. Who you got? So here's the thing. I haven't talked about this idiot in a long time. So welcome back to fuck that guy. Fuck that girl. Fuck that idiot.

Marjorie Taylor Green. You know, let me just say this before I say what she did recently. The fact that somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green is a representative of Congress just speaks volumes about how far our country has fallen. This woman is dumb as a brick. This is a woman that believes that space lasers were controlled by Jewish people. This is a woman who when she has never met a false accusation she didn't fall in love with. She's a woman who has called another woman a bitch on the floor of Congress and almost got into a brawl. She is so devoid of class and common sense.

It is astounding and speaks volumes to who her constituents are, that you would look at this woman and say, yes, she represents me, my values and the policies that I want in my country. It's just beyond. So it should become as no surprise then that she is once again taken to referring to the LGBTQ community as groomers and has taken up with, the Libs of TikTok founder who is now an advisory of a state library, and I believe it is in Oklahoma. And she is convinced that LGBTQ people and their woke ideology is, quote, grooming

and sexualizing your kids. And it's just, I don't know, if you were to run a tally on the amount of pedophiles that have come out of the Republican Party as of late, people who, who, have been arrested, people who are being investigated. I want to mention that none of them are drag queens, none of them are queer, and it's always the people that are pointing and shouting the loudest that had the most to hide. And that is the entirety of the Republican Party,

but I'd love to say that Marjorie Taylor Green is an outlier, but she is not. She is indicative of who they all are, which is hateful, homophobic, transphobic, disgusting hate mongerers whose rhetoric will get people killed, will have people harmed, but they don't care. So, you know, for that reason, Marjorie Taylor Green, this week and every Godforsaken week is my fuck that guy. Yeah. And, you know, you're talking about getting people killed. And the whole thing about this is that Marjorie Taylor Green is backing and defending the account

known as Libs of TikTok. It's a Chaya Rijik. Racheck. I never. remember how to pronounce her last name, who, I mean, there have been various studies, and I remember talking about this with a guest a month ago, but a new study just came out showing that a lot of the time when lives of TikTok posts stuff about a drag show is going to be happening here, or, you know, this school has some queer-themed books, bomb threats end up happening. And this has happened dozens of times. And she naturally will take no responsibility for this. And look, literally nobody is saying that she has ever, specifically said go bomb this place. She hasn't. Do I think she's upset that there are bomb threats being

called to these places? No, I don't. That is simply my opinion and therefore unactionable in a court of law. Thank you for the asterisk. But the fact is, like, this was who Marjorie Tellegreen was defending. And you're damn right, it's going to get people killed. And it's already going down that path. And they don't care. They may not call for people to be killed and they may sit back when people do get killed or when there are threats of violence and they would say, whoa, whoa, I never said that. But we all know what you mean and we all know what you want and we all know you'd be happy if shit like that did happen. Again, this is my opinion and therefore inactionable in a court of law.

It is absolutely going to get someone killed. And not only do they not care, in my opinion, Danielle, that's what they want. Yeah, in your opinion and it, you know, you can't be sued for that. Neither can I. No. There you have it. Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys.

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