The Daily Beast Podcast - Jr. Was Up to His Ears in the Plot to Steal Daddy the Election

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

the focus on The New Abnormal this week is on Donald Trump Junior, as CNN reporter Zachary Cohen breaks down his reporting on the namesake’s post-election text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows scheming on how to steal the election: “We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021.” Plus University of California Law professor Rick Hasen, the co-director of the university’s Fair Elections and Free Speech Center and the author of Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics—and How to Cure It, explains how “if we had the same polarized politics of today, but the technology of the 1950s, we likely wouldn't have had Jan.  6 and the insurrection and millions of people believing the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.” 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 objective. 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. Zachary Cohen, who's a national security reporter at CNN, is going to come by and talk to us about all those fun Donald Trump Jr. texts that have been going around about the election. Then we're going to talk to Rick Hassan, who's a professor of law and political science at UCI Law and co-director of the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center and the author of Cheap Speech.

And he's going to talk to us about a host of issues. But first, let's have some fun. Andy. Molly. Today, not today, yesterday, the governor of Texas, who is, I want to say the worst Republican elected, even though I know he's not. I know in my heart that there's someone worse than him. I just know it. Like, I don't want to even say that because I don't want to lay down a gauntlet like that.

But clearly, the guy sucked. Yes. Yes. He was very excited to bus a bunch of migrants to D.C. in order to stick it to lawmakers, but really to get on Fox News. And so he got these migrants. He, because taking people interstate without their permission is kidnapping, he had to ask them for permission. And then he also provided food and water. This is not any compliment to him in any way. But most importantly, he dropped them off in front of the building that houses Fox News, NBC, and C-SPAN.

Because what was this really always about? It's because we are living in a performative world and he is a performative boy. I feel like that's the new material girl song. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you for picking up on that, Jess. I just think that Republicans, unless it happens on Fox News, it doesn't happen. Well, that's absolutely true. So, yeah. Look, with their permission, he gave them a free bus ride to Washington, D.C. He fed them and gave them water. And now they're going to go to New York or Miami or wherever they want to go. So I guess good for them. And as long as they didn't want to stay in Texas, which who can blame them at this point, get a free bus.

That's right. It's so interesting because, you know, we are this economy with a super tight labor. Of course. Just to go into the real world here for a minute, we're super tight labor market, constant stories on Fox News, people complaining there's no one to hire. We have to raise wages. Here are the people you can hire. Well, that's the thing.

Ultimately, yeah, this is bad for Texas. Right. But all of this is bad for Texas. Yeah. I'm actually at this point, as long as he's not kidnapping them in for Texas. forcing them to go somewhere else. Like if they want to go to a different state, and again, who the hell can blame them with him as governor? Give them a free ride.

Give them a meal. Give them water. And then they can go, you know, they can go to a state they'd rather be in. And so it's bad for Texas because, you know, as you said, the labor market is ridiculously tight these days. And, you know, I'm sure, by the way, no one in Texas employs illegal migrants. I'm sure that never happens. Oh, certainly never happens. particularly the rich people in Texas.

I'm sure they never, ever do that. So, you know, I'm sure they'll be happy about this. And it's just, you know, so he's doing this performative nonsense to, as you said, you know, make a splash on Fox News because all of this is about running for president. You know, well, I don't know. I guess Abbott's not running for president. But all of it is about raising your standing in the Trump-owned Republican Party. And that means the cruelty is the point, as Adam Serwer said.

and that means doing things that are on the surface, at least very cruel, because it wins you points with the Republican base because they get off on that. It happens to accidentally not be cruel. Exactly. Look, and at least I'm saying that. I hope that's the case, you know, I hope. Right. I mean, that's what they interviewed some of these people and that's what they said too.

Right. And I hope that that's the case for all of them and that they were all, you know, willing participants in this and that they were, you know, they weren't shoved on an un-air-conditioned bus for however long the trek took and whatever. Hours and hours. Yeah, of course. So assuming that all of that is true and they were treated, you know, decently, like human beings, at least, you know, to whatever extent, Abbott is capable of treating people like human beings, then, yeah, I mean, this is ultimately this is going to be bad for his state. I mean, I'm struck by, again, Abbott still has not fixed his power grid. And so it's interesting, but he has made it almost impossible for women to have abortions.

Yeah, well, priorities, Molly. Exactly. I think not letting women have abortions fixes the power grid. I'm pretty sure. That's how well. Yeah. The power grid, it's like the matrix. The power grid is powered by birth.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, again, this is Donald Trump's Republican Party, and we just, you know, all these people are just trying to keep up. No, there's absolutely no doubt about that. And he pretty much gives up the game by dropping them off in front of the building where Fox News has its offices. Like, they're not even hiding it anymore. And it's just, this is, this is who they are. This is who they have always been. Whether they're doing this because they think they need to do it politically or because they're, they're doing it politically, or because they're, this is what's in their heart. It doesn't matter. They're bad people either way.

Speaking of bad people, a certain terrifying warlord, Mohammed bin Salman, best friends with Jared Kushner. We learned this week that Jared Kushner got $2 billion investment from the Saudi wealth fund and also perhaps the gas prices that are much higher than they should be and are much higher than the oil price. maybe because of this OPEC price fixing scheme and also MBS's bestie WhatsApp relationship with Jared. Yeah, well, first of all, thank God that at least the Biden administration is fighting back by doing things like approving a $650 million arm cell to Saudi Arabia. I feel like you're being ironic here. I might be being a little sarcastic there. Can we stop sending them weapons?

is can we stop pretending they're our friends? They're not our friends. They've never been our friends. And all they're doing now is making it even more clear. I mean, they're killing journalists. They're cozying up with the most useless people from the Trump administration, i.e. Jared Kushner. They're mocking Joe Biden in his administration. And yet we still, for some reason, they're like, we always refer to them as, you know, there are our partners in the Middle East. Like, they're not. They're absolutely not. And we got to. to stop treating them that way. And it would not surprise me at all if they're helping to keep the prices of oil or gas, you know, if they're making them artificially high. I don't know that they are. That's what OPEC does, though. I mean, that's why they produce less gas when the gas is more,

it's a price-fixing scheme in itself. Yeah, no, absolutely. But what I guess what I'm saying is it wouldn't surprise me if they're additionally doing it to poke us and to poke the Biden administration as sort of a get back for the Khashoggi investigation or whatever. But again, we sold them weapons. We got to stop doing that. It's bad enough to do that. I mean, also they're using them for bad things, so there's that. And then on top of that, they're taking that and then giving us the finger.

So why are we doing this? And then there is the New York AG who is investigating if perhaps the oil companies are inflating there, that there's a price fixing, there's a gas price investigation on the part of the New York A.J. I'm curious what the jurisdiction here is that seems very complicated,

but good for Tish James for trying. I mean, Tish James has been like the bright spot, and Alvin Bragg has been not, as they say. Yeah, so far, anyway, that's for sure about Alvin Bragg. But yeah, I guess the jurisdiction is, you know, part of the supply chain or whatever is based in New York State. So she can she can look into the state supply chain and see if anything questionable is going on. But who, you know, who knows? I mean, look, it's worth an investigation.

It may turn up nothing. There may be nothing to turn up. But I guess what does it hurt to check it out? Right. I don't know. No, I mean, it's a good point. And then we get to the story that is in, that is irritating everyone on the left. More revelations that Diane Feinstein is not at 88 years old.

The spring chicken she once was discuss. Yeah, I don't know why this is irritating. I agree that it is. And like there are, there are people on the left. And by the left, I mean, you know, liberals, not lefties. But there are, there are liberals who are saying, don't, you know, stop. saying this, stop doing. No, if the stories are true and she is, you know, in mental decline, she shouldn't be there. And no one's saying replace her with a Republican. Like, get a young

Democrat, get a young, feisty, you know, energetic Democrat in there in California who can, you know, be the next one of the next faces of the Democratic Party for decades to come. Like, it's got to happen at some point. She's 88 years old, you know, so why not do it when, if it's, if it's, If it's clear that she's in decline, do it now. Get ahead of it. And it's not even ahead of it anymore if the stories are true. But, you know, no one's saying turn the seat over to Republicans. Like, I don't understand the liberals that are angry about this.

Like, you know, this is a, it's a good chance to move the party into the 21st century. Right. And I also think, like, California is a huge state, fifth biggest economy in the world. It's a safe blue seat and you could have someone. Exactly. fabulous there who would be, you know, I mean, there are a lot of really smart legislators in California and then a lot of less smart legislators in California. You could put one of the good ones in that seed. Yeah.

Plus Arnold is floating around and he's been doing good work. Oh, would you stop it? Come on, Molli, you miss him. Democrat. You miss him. Not a Democrat. I don't know. Does the Rock is his.

home, official home California these days? You know what? You're fired. That's it. You're out. The rock. That was a bridge to motherfucking far. Four months and two weeks. That's not fair. But you know what the thing is? They knew that DyeFi was in trouble and you know how they

knew it when she hugged Lindsay Graham? And that's what the picture's up. They're saying she doesn't know who she's talking to. She must have thought he was someone else. This was a way to get out of that. That's what this report is. Yeah. That's the only way that any of this makes sense is she thought he was someone else because anyone else knows that a normal person would never hug Lindsey Graham. She probably thought he was the rock.

Yeah. She definitely thought it was the rock. Senator Vin Diesel. Is he a different person than The Rock? One of the really nice things that Trump, I'm just going to keep doing the show, you guys join me whatever you want. One of the really nice things about Trump is that he's very loyal to people who ruin their careers for him.

And now he's on this speaking tour where he goes to libraries and museums and gives, no, just kidding, he goes to, he sells merchandise in the reddest, most virulently Trumpy areas and complains about all the ways in which people disappointed him. Most recently, his ire has fallen on Huckleberry Hound, Bill Barr. Yeah, so he told, I think it was Sean Hannity, he said that Barr didn't do enough to investigate the voter fraud claims because he was worried about being impeached and that he told Barr that he should go ahead and get impeached, you know, and he said it was great for him and it would be great for, you know, he said, I went up a lot in the polls when I was impeached. But he's saying, well, Barr was too afraid, so afraid of being impeached that he refused to do his job. Right. his job, which was covering for the president. I don't think that's the AG's job. Well, no, but to be fair, we know that Trump thought it was the AG's job and still does to this day.

He's really been so disappointed by his AGs, except he did like hot tub crime machine. So Jefferson Beauregard's dissessions mad at him, right? Because even though he's the one senator to ever support him, you know, he was the first senator to support him. Right. He went out and said, like, you know, I know this guy's a very racist, but look, Red Hat. So that guy, he was mad at him because he recused himself from Russia. Then came in Hot Tub Crime Machine, Matt Whitaker. I forgot about him.

Very, very stupid guy. Like, amazingly stupid. Put him in. His previous jobs had included working at a hot tub company. It was a high-tech hot tub company, Molly. Come on. Oh, okay. Big dick toilets.

Remember big dick toilets? Trust me. Every day when I look at mine, I remember. I went to high school with big dick toilets. I hate myself for having brought this up. If I could go back, if I had a time machine, I would go back and not have brought that out. Yeah. You thought talking about the rock was bad.

Yeah. Look where you took this. Welcome to our worst episode. There was Matt. would occur and then we got Huckleberry Hound and Bill Barr would brought in had had actually really been an AG and not just a hot tub salesman and so there was thinking that maybe he wouldn't be a complete an order disaster he turned out to be even worse than that and now he's been selling a book which Trump called crummy and so false which means that it's absolutely a hundred percent

Well, first of all, Trump didn't read the book. So let's just whatever he says, it doesn't matter. I'm not even sure Bill Barr read the book. That's probably, you're probably right. I mean. And the amazing thing about Barr is he says all these bad things about Trump in his book, and he goes on this tour trying to, you know, this book tour trying to rehabilitate his image.

And then what does he say when he's asked if he would vote for Trump if he were the nominee in 2024? He says yes, he would. Yeah, of course. I mean, why wouldn't he? I mean, just because he wants to, yeah. Yeah. None of these guys learn, I feel bad for, like, it's impossible to feel bad for them when Trump turns on them. No, fuck them.

They deserve it. Yeah, no, 100%. They absolutely deserve it. And, you know, thank you, Bill Barr, I guess, for refusing to get impeached. But no thanks, Bill Barr. Speaking of Donald J. Trump, he's on Sean Hannity. He loves Sean Hannity. Sean Hannity loves him.

They have, some might say, a bromance. I think that's the word for it. We're watching a clip last night. It is pictures of Ukrainians in body bags, right? I mean, some of the worst, I don't know if you saw that footage, it was like mass graves. Yeah. Bodies on the ground. I mean, a horrible destruction, heartbreak.

I mean, civilization being ruined. And over it, you hear Donald Trump. I knew Putin very well, almost as well as I know you, Sean. And you're seeing these images of the body bags. I will tell you, we talked about it. We talked about it a lot. He did want Ukraine. But I said, you're not going into Ukraine.

I'm without speech. Yeah. But it's weird because then later in the episode with Hannity, he did catat, Trump did say he called what's happening in Ukraine a genocide. So it's like. Trump did too? Yeah. So it's like, on the one hand,

he's like, I know Putin very well, you know, we're friendly, all of this. Oh, by the way, yes, he is committing a genocide. But I guess, look, what's a little genocide between friends? I mean, you can't expect your friends to be perfect. And if you're looking for a perfect person to be friends with, you're going to have no friends. I would just like to say the rest of the world is running scared from Vladimir Putin, with the exception of Marie LePan, who recently said she's going to govern, like, Erdogan. which is pretty scary.

But the rest of the world is running scared from Putin, except for Trump, who is so loyal that he has decided that Putin is so famous that he's going to continue name-dropping him. Yeah. He worships Putin. He wants to be Putin.

Basically, he wants to run, to be able to run a country with the same kind of power that Putin runs Russia. And, you know, so he sort of looks up to him. He's sort of like a mentor, I think, is how Trump,

it's like a mentor, protege-related. I think. Zachary Cohen is a national security reporter at CNN. Welcome to the new abnormal, Zach Cohen. I appreciate you guys having me. It's great to be on with you. Let's talk about the text messages, shall we?

Let's do it. Give me a sort of sense of how you got to this story and what you think this means. Yeah. So my team and I, my colleagues, Ryan Noble, and Annie Greer, we've really been covering this story, broadly speaking, since January. 7th, 2021. And so we've really documented each, even the incremental evolutions in this investigation, how the committee was formed, you know, the various witnesses that they brought in. And one of the biggest moments in this investigation was when Mark Meadows, even temporarily, the, you know,

former president's been chief of staff, was cooperating with the committee. And in that short time period, he handed over thousands of records, including text messages. Now, he eventually stopped operating and the committee has since voted to refer him on criminal contempt of Congress charges. But that batch of text messages from Mark Meadows really was one of the, and viewed as one of the biggest sort of victories for the committee to date. Now, we haven't heard a lot about Donald Trump Jr. and sort of his role and involvement in the broader effort to overturn the 2020 election. I think this text message that we reported on last week really, is revealing on several fronts, and most notably is the date that it was sent.

You know, November 5th, 2020, the election had not been called for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, and the votes were still being counted. And given that, there's a reasonable assumption that there was no evidence or the Trump team didn't have, you know, significant evidence of widespread voter fraud, and we're still, we still haven't seen them present any of that to date. But this text message shows that even in those earliest days, while the election votes were still being counted, you know, there were high-level people very close to the former president, including his chief of staff and his namesake, his oldest son, were really talking through the details about what would happen over the next two months

in the lead-up to January 6th as far as a strategy to overturn the election. So I think it really shows and really puts an important timestamp on when this strategy was being drawn up, where they were even as the votes were still being counted. Yeah, I think it's very interesting this time period because there were two different sets of text messages, right? They're the Don Jr. text messages. And then there are the Rick Perry text messages. Can you talk about that? You're right.

And the Rick Perry text message was also part of this, you know, this batch of records that Mark Meadows handed over voluntarily to the committee. It's interesting because there does seem to be some overlap between what Rick Perry text messages. Mark Meadows on November 4th, which again, also before the election was called for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, and what Donald Trump Jr. is detailing in his text message. And so they kind of they seem to reinforce each other and reinforce this idea that they needed to figure out a way, either by having Republican state legislators step in and, you know, put forward these alternate slates of what are Donald Trump Jr.'s text message calls Trump electors and either seek to overturn results that way. Seems like a lack of understanding on how elections work, but okay, yes,

continue. What's interesting about Donald Trump Jr.'s text messages, it also looks forward to another possible option. You know, there's that quote, there's multiple paths. We control them all. The sort of backup plan, there was an eye to January 6th as sort of the backup plan where Donald Trump Jr. alludes to a scenario where the House of Representatives can essentially vote to install Donald Trump as president rather than Joe Biden. And so Donald Trump Jr.'s lawyer told us, look, this was given the date that this was sent, and he looks like he was forwarding along someone else's ideas. But we've also learned about a text that came immediately before that from Donald Trump Jr. that says, look, this is what we need to do. Please read it. Please get it to everyone. We need to do it because I'm not sure we're doing it.

So, I mean, clearly putting a stamp of approval on. Right. Putting a stamp of approval. And it also tracks to be almost the same idea that Rick Perry had. Exactly. And so we still don't know. who was the person that essentially was behind this idea. But you're right, there was significant overlap. Wait, you don't think Don Jr. cooked this up on his own? As a nonpartisan journalist, I would not. That is just my own aside.

But go on, yeah. But we do know that there were several people that, including attorneys like John Eastman, who were also pushing similar ideas in this time frame as well. So that's still a line of reporting that is out there in an open question, and who was sort of the architect of this plan. But regardless of that, this text message from Donald Trump Jr. And from Rick Perry shows that they were really already thinking through the details before the votes were counted. Right, which is kind of, it speaks to premeditation, right?

Right. And the fact that at that time, it's inconceivable that they had collected significant evidence of voter fraud by them as the voters. Right, exactly. And so, you know, it really does speak to the intent. And, you know, that's a point the committee is going to likely try to make once it holds public hearings and in its report. I'm not sure if you've ever seen House of Cards. I have. So I was watching it with one of my teenagers.

We've been watching all these shows again and again. And we just were watching House of Cards. And Frank Underwood does almost exactly what Trump World wanted to do. I'm sure that's just totally. Totally a coincidence, right? I honestly, I see the parallel there. The idea, though, that there was clearly the effort was born around this idea of what can we do to keep Donald Trump in office. And that clearly, as reflected in our reporting, not just in this text message, but a reporting about the Japanese investigation writ large, that really is the idea that all these allies, Republican lawmakers, state officials, and even members of Trump's and family, coalesces.

around this singular goal and everything else was born from that. Right. Let's talk about, I actually wrote about this for my newsletter this week. So I wrote about your reporting. You get the opportunity to be interviewed by someone who's written about your reporting, not all that usual. So one of the things that I did was I talked to Joyce Vance about what the legal ramification for junior's texts could be.

And this strikes me as one of these things where it's actually so high-level. these kind of things that there's not really, the criminal justice system isn't totally set up for this? Right. That remains one of the most significant open questions out there. What will or will not DOJ do at the end of this investigation or about investigating and seriously considering potential criminal charges against anybody, whether it's from the Trump administration or from his family or from his immediate inner circle?

Now, you know, the committee has clearly latched on to this opinion that came from Judge Carter in California in the John Eastman case late last month where the judge wrote that it was more likely than not that former President Trump and John Eastman committed some sort of a crime. And he called it a coup in search for legal theory. And I think it goes back to this idea that, you know, the Don Jr. text and the Rick Perry text is clearly the, or like the beginnings of the search for illegal theory. Now, it really depends on what Merritt Garland, the Attorney General, decides to do or not do. But I think the committee is really applying as much pressure as it can. But at the end of the day, has been very clear that it is not their job to investigate potential crimes. Now, if they happen upon, them over the course of their probe. They've said they would make a referral, but it's clear that they don't see that as part of their mandate. I mean, where do you think the January 6th committee goes now? Are there more texts coming? Give me an estimation of your own speculation. Sure. So we know just from our reporting that, you know, they're up against a little bit of a time crunch here. They said they want to put together the report, which is not going to be written as a report,

but rather they wanted to look as more like a narrative to the American people, really explaining this as a story and as a compelling story. The other component is the public hearings, and they haven't committed to a timeline for when those are going to happen. But in the next month or two, it's widely assumed that that's when we'll start to see public hearings pop up. Now, at the end of the day, those are the two big opportunities for the committee to reveal their findings to the American people in a way that is compelling. clearly lays out the fact of their investigation. It's still up in the air as to what sort of

impacts that'll have and whether the Department of Justice decides to take more action, exactly. There are some text messages, and I read this in your reporting, that say things like see you on signal. What can you do there? Well, and that is interesting, and that is something the committee has repeatedly pointed out, including in its criminal referral hearing for Mark Meadows, that one of the challenges is that there are significant gaps in the record. keeping and in the records that they've gotten from both government agencies, from the White House, and from the just phone cell data of certain individuals. Now, Signal has, you know, an encrypted messaging app, which is really sort of utilized because of its security and its, you know,

its ability to keep conversations private. And in fact, even if the company signal was subpoenaed by a congressional investigator or even by law enforcement, they wouldn't have the data to turn over because that's just, it's decentralized. Right. So that is definitely an open question and definitely something that the committee has a lot of questions about. They want to know what Mark Meadows and whoever was on the other side, what they were talking about on signal and why they made the conscious decision to move to an encrypted platform at that moment. It remains to be seen if they're able to piece those parts of the puzzle together. But we do know that they've been able to sort of triangulate and fill in some of the gaps in the record so far. So by obtaining the cellular data of certain people, I think that the phone records have been revealing in a lot of ways.

I think witness testimony has really been key in terms of filling in the gaps as far as the White House call logs are concerned. Or, you know, we've learned about Donald Trump's call with Vice President Mike Pence on the morning of January 6th, not through the White House call logs or records turned over by the White House, but through a witness. testimony of a former Pence advisor, Keith Kellogg. So that's where a large portion of the help the community is getting is coming from is from this testimony and from additional kind of sources of information. That is so interesting and also super disturbing for any number of reasons. Do you think there are more text messages to come that will be released to the people? We know that Mark Meadows handed over thousands of records, right?

And there are undoubtedly more texts in there. And I think the committee, it's a big part of what the committee is going to put in its presentation, both in the hearings and in its report, kind of in its final product, right? I think they're going to use those tax messages as part of the, as a key tool and a key ingredient in telling the story about what happened, not only on January 6, but in the lead up to it, because it's really one of the most revealing kind of tranches of records that they've received so far. Are there other people who participated whose text messages that we haven't seen yet who you're sort of waiting for? So there's a few individuals. And the committee during Mark Meadows's referral hearing released about a half dozen or so text messages, but didn't attach names to most of them. We know that Mark Meadows was in contact with several Republican members of Congress. you know, the Rick Perry revelation sort of speaks to the fact that he was talking to other prominent

members of the Republican Party. He was clearly talking to the president's oldest son via text message. So there's a number of people, including Congressman Scott Perry, who it'll be interesting to see if he and Mark Meadows were in direct contact at any point during this two-month span after the election or even before. Jeffrey Clark, the Department of Justice official, who the committee has voted to refer for criminal contempt charges, but that vote's not been taken up by the House. So the referral is sort of in limbo. It remains to be seen if there was any connection or direct contact happening there. So I think there's key figures that are of interest to the committee that they want to find out if Mark Meadows was talking directly to them and what about. That's super interesting.

Also, there aren't going to be Trump text messages. That remains to be seen. We've asked Chairman Benny Thompson if, you know, they, have requested the former president's cell phone records. He suggested they had not yet, but didn't rule out that possibility. So, you know, like everything, the committee, it's hard to sort of parse the truth or the where they are on that because a lot of the investigation is happening behind closed doors. And, you know, we only are learning about the developments through kind of the reporting that's been out there, including ours. So, but I think that's no big question. I think it remains to be seen if they do try to take that step, which obviously would carry some political

consequences, but I think they're still weighing those options. The signal data, that's gone, right? My understanding is that there are, and I'm not an expert in the real technical and our workings of it, but my understanding is there are ways to potentially recover some of that data, whether it was backed up to a cloud or another server. But in large part, that data is considered to be, you know, gone, as you said. So that's a challenging part of all this, too, is if you can't get the messages, if you can't get the messages, you have to try to fill in the gaps some other way. None of this has been subpoenaed, right?

Most of this has been turned over voluntarily because a lot of Trump World has ignored the subpoenas, right? Right. So Mark Meadows did turn over these text messages, including the message from Donald Trump Jr. voluntarily. And a lot of the witness testimony, they perceive that's helped piece together some of the puzzle has also been voluntary. Now, there's also been individuals who have been subpoenaed and had essentially given the committee of the middle finger like Peter Navarro, Dan Skavino, the committee's accused him of essentially using delay tactics to prevent any sort of legitimate cooperation. But other than that, Steve Bannon obviously was referred for criminal contempt of Congress charges for refusing to cooperate. But other than that handful of core individuals, they really have had several people cooperate voluntarily, including Ivanket Trump. and Jared Kushner.

So we still don't know what individuals like Ivanka Trump or what Jerry Kushner told the committee. We know that they were in there for upwards of eight and six hours. Each of them were in the room with investigators for roughly that amount of time. So I think that also will factor into the committee's kind of final presentation once the time comes. Would you say that the people who are this sort of non-celebrity witnesses have participated? That's also an open question. I think there's a lot of sort of.

lesser known individuals who, through public reporting, we've learned, played a pretty prominent role behind the scenes in sort of the various efforts over to turn the election. You know, Phil Waldron is not necessarily a household name, but he has been subpoenaed by the committee. We still don't know if he's come in and testified, but he's sort of an example of kind of a second tier type person who most people may not know based on their name, but, you know, was directly involved in various efforts, including the draft. have executive orders to potentially seize voting machines and some of the more extreme options that were reached very high levels of the Trump orbit at that time. Amazing stuff. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Rick Hassan is a professor of law and political science at UCI Law, co-director of the Fair

Elections and Free Speech Center, an author of cheap speech, how disinformation poisons our politics and how to cure it. Welcome, Brett, to the new abnormal podcast. It's great to be with you. It's great to have you here. So I feel like you were ahead of the curve with your book. Talk to us about misinformation and I mean, how did you get there? Well, you know, I specialized in election law. My last book was called Election Meltdown. And it came out on the day of the Iowa caucuses, which you may remember were a disaster. So you pretty much ahead of the curve on everything. Yeah, I've been called Pression, but, you know, I wish I were wrong about some of these things. The big claim in the book, at least the beginning. beginning is that if we had the same polarized politics of today, but the technology of the 1950s, we likely wouldn't have had January 6th of the insurrection and millions of people believing the

false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Okay, so explain that to us. So what this era of cheap speech does is that it allows for the inexpensive spread of misinformation and disinformation, while at the same time, it's still expensive to produce good quality journalism. People don't want to pay for it and the kind of economic model that newspapers had before where they relied on classified advertising and other kinds of advertising in order to stay in business, that model has collapsed. So local news is struggling, but in this polarized era, people want to hear what's going to make them feel good. And so what ends up happening is voters end up discounting all information. They think it's all misinformation. They can't make the same kind of good choices they used to be

able to make before about what to believe and what not to believe. And when you've got a demagogue like Trump who comes in and says that the election is rigged or stolen, it's a very receptive audience. And so it leads to very volatile politics. I want to talk about that because something Margaret Sullivan has written a lot about. It's something that a lot have people have talked about. It's something I think a lot about. It seems to me, again, that social media has tried to pick up the slack, but has done it in the worst way possible. So it's not just social media, right?

it's also cable news. It's the whole atmosphere and ecosystem. Explain to me about cable news for a minute because social media, there's no fact-checking, there's no basis. Nobody is saying, well, this is debunk. If you had a newspaper run an editorial that was wrong, you would have consequences. There's none of that in social media. I'm curious what you mean by that with cable news.

Well, think about One American News Network or Newsmax. There is no fact-checking. And so in the 19 days between election day and November 23rd, Donald Trump was able to go to Twitter 400 times and directly make his claim that the election was stolen. And millions of people got that information again and again. In the 1950s, if Trump were lying about the election being stolen, it wouldn't be repeated and it wouldn't be repeated in an unmediated way. So they would be fact-checking.

Now, I'm not saying we should go back to the 1950s. there were a lot of problems with how technology was and how hard it was to get a message out. That's great. But we need to think about tools, both changes in law and changes in policy that can give voters the tools they need to know whether they can trust elections as being legitimate and to make decisions about how to vote that are consistent with their values and their interests and are not as polluted by the kind of disinformation that we see today. Interesting. This is one of these topics where I feel like there's a lot of talk about it, but not a lot of solutions to it. What are your ideas? Well, first of all, the First Amendment is a big limitation on what can be done and what should be done. You know, we wouldn't want to have a speech star who says, I'm going to decide what selection misinformation and just remove it from all platforms, right? Because, you know, just imagine the president you hate the most. That person gets to appoint the speech czar and you can see what kind of problem we would have. So a lot of the solutions are giving voters better information. So for example, one of the things I'm worried about is deepfakes.

Imagine using AI technology to alter a video to make it look like Joe Biden's having a heart attack or that someone has uttered a racial epithet or something like that. And so one of the things I say is that these videos should have to be labeled as altered by social media platforms so that people know that they can't believe their eyes. You know, another thing I suggest, which is outside the realm of law, is that societies of journalists should come up with norms as to what counts as doing bona fide journalism. They should give the good housekeeping seal of approval to those agencies that do the right thing. And then that little checkmark type thing can appear right next to when it says Los Angeles Times or whatever. And you know, okay, this is a reputable source that at least is trying to tell the truth.

So how do you give voters better tools so that they can separate misinformation from the truth? the truth. So a lot of what you're saying is about content moderation on the platform. Right. It is about content moderation on the platform, but some of it is also about privacy. So, for example, one of the things I suggest is that we shouldn't allow Facebook to be able to use data that's collected from, you know, the fact that we go on and share our lives with these cookies and let people know exactly what we think. We should ban the micro-targeting of political ads, which we know are targeted at more vulnerable populations and that can allow for lying and that can create a situation where you're telling one thing to a group of rural white retired workers and other thing to young

Latino women, right? So there are things that social media could do that could improve things. And a lot of this has to be in our hands because I do think that these are private companies. And so we have to pressure them to do the right thing. it actually took Facebook and Twitter too long to de-platform Donald Trump. And with the news that just broke that Elon Musk is potentially going to buy Twitter and put Trump back on the platform, I think that's really dangerous. I don't think we could have a law that says Donald Trump can't speak, but I do think that we as consumers and employees of Twitter can make their views known and put the pressure on to try to not allow someone who has consistently spread election lies and who, encourage violence against the American government to be able to have a place to speak. There clearly is a feeling that big tech on both sides is kind of not behaving like a good actor,

but the right wants big tech to do what they want. The left wants big tech to not, you know, empower this kind of fake speech. I mean, obviously truth should be nonpartisan, but it's not, at least right now. Do you think there's a way to legislate our way out of them? Well, you know, on the right, you mentioned wanting the platforms to act differently, both Texas and Florida passed laws that would require social media platforms to restore Donald Trump. Right, of course. I have a long argument in the book as to why I think that's wrong and that it's unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Just like you can't force the New York Times or Fox News to include a candidate, you shouldn't be able to force a platform to do that. That said, you know, there is a reason to worry about platform bias.

There was a time during the 2020 election where if you went on Instagram and you search for Joe Biden, in addition to getting Joe Biden results, you got positive news about Donald Trump. But if you search for Trump, you didn't get news about Biden. They said it was an accident. Now we hear that Gmail put into junk messages that came from conservative candidates rather than liberal candidates. There is a concern and all of these things seem to be inadvertent. But there's nothing in the law that would stop, say, a search company like Google, from being biased towards one candidate or another.

And I think the solution here, too, is required disclosure. If you're going to tweak your algorithm to help one candidate over another, you need to disclose it. And if we're worried these platforms are too powerful, then the answer is antitrust law. So maybe Google shouldn't be able to also own YouTube and have this whole network of advertising. Maybe a meta shouldn't have Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp.

And so the more we have competition, the better off we're going to be in terms of these platforms not wanting to favor one candidate or another, or at least giving us the ability to shop from one social media platform to another. Interesting. Talk to me about the Supreme Court and how it got so broken and what we can do to fix it. Well, specifically in the context of cheap speech, the court has a kind of outmoded marketplace of ideas approach to the First Amendment, where they expect the truth is going to rise to the top. And whether that was true or not, it's no longer true today.

And so at the time now, when we need improved disclosure laws, the ultra-conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court has been signaling that those disclosure laws might be found to violate the First Amendment. So Justice Thomas, who had taken the view that you can't have any limits on money in politics and you can't even require disclosure of those who are spending money on politics, a very libertarian view, has also taken the view that a state law could require, Donald Trump to be listed as, you know, a speaker on Twitter or Facebook, even if Twitter or Facebook don't want him to.

Yes. This is very crazy. And he's also taken the view along with Justice Gorsuch that we should change the libel laws. Remember how Trump called about opening up the libel laws in a way that would make it much harder for journalists to be able to do their job and hold politicians accountable? So it really is a situation where the Supreme Court, just like it is with voting rights and campaign finance, the Supreme Court could be an impediment to what we need to do to assure that we have both free speech and fair elections. This 6-3 Supreme Court, they overturned this Clean Water Act legislation on the shadow docket? I mean, do you think it strikes me, and I am not nearly even close to an expert, nor am I even so great.

but it strikes me that they're out of control. Do you think they're going to keep being out of control like this? I mean, Roberts was always sort of, you know, very concerned with making the court look like it wasn't so partisan, but that seems to be gone. I mean, do you think there's a, there's a sort of a bar here, or do you think this just keeps going? I think it just keeps going. I wrote a piece for Talking Points memo just before the 2016 election saying the most important civil rights issue of our time is the Supreme Court's composition, because so much of our rights depend. on this. And you know, when Justice Scalia died and Obama couldn't replace him, I mean, that was quite a moment. And I think things are going to continue to get worse. And you're right that Roberts

is really an institutionalist, but he's the sixth vote now. And this is a project that the Federal Society has been on since Ed Meese and the Reagan administration. This is the culmination. So on abortion, guns, affirmative action, religious rights in the clash with LBGT rights, The environment, elections, everywhere, there is a lot further down that we can go. We're just starting our dissent. Oh, well, that's very comforting. Thank you so much, Rick, for joining us. I hope you'll come back.

Oh, yeah. It was a great conversation. Happy to talk to you again. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers,

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which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy. Hey, Mom. Who is your five? that guy? My fuck that guy is, it's a bunch of guys. You know how maybe you've heard the Republicans talking about voter fraud and being very angry about all the voter fraud they think is out there that is helping Democrats get elected. You might have heard some of that, Molly. I think they even want to overturn a recent election because of voter fraud and stuff like that that they claim

is happening. Meanwhile, here in the real world, we've had some voter fraud issues lately, but But oddly enough, they have all been on sort of the Republican side, including a couple of residents of the villages in Florida who confessed. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. I know. They confessed to, I guess they each filed two ballots in the election. There were a couple other people in December from the villages who were Republicans who committed some voter fraud. And then there's like this really fun story about, you remember this guy, Mark Meadows. You may remember him.

He's a texting buddy of Don Jr. Donald Trump Jr. Yeah, tell me more. They send emojis and emojis to each other frequently, I'm told. It's very sweet. Yeah. He just lost the right to vote in North Carolina because he got, they found out that he committed voter fraud. This is a guy who was, if I remember. remember correctly, he was the acting chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, I think.

Am I right? Yeah. And he's out there committing voter fraud. So, yeah, voter fraud is a thing. You know, it's not a huge thing, and it's not changing results or anything. But it is a thing, and it's being done by Republicans. And so fuck those guys for committing voter fraud. And, of course, fuck the Republicans in general for claiming that voter fraud is some kind of

big Democratic Party problem. Right. Certainly true. Who is your fuck that guy? Molly. I want to know. I don't want to know. I need to know. I need to know. You see, I feel like you're being I'm not. But actually it's a really serious thing. I know. I know it is. I know it is. I know it's. I know it. I'm not mocking me. Because my, fuck that guy is the white Republican men who are taking away a woman's right to choose. Kentucky, very good governor. Andy Bershires overruled the, uh, Republican legislature.

because they were trying to ban abortion, they went back and were able to enact this bill. Oklahoma is making it so that women can't have abortions. They're outlawing abortions. The governor just signed that bill that will start happening in, actually, I think, sooner. So you have two states now that are going to make abortion illegal. Again, we're waiting for this incredibly conservative Supreme Court to come down. with it, an overturning row decision probably in June really sucks. And then we have in Florida, Ron DeSantis never, you know, he really wants to be on the forefront of all that is shitty.

He has an abortion bill too, not quite as bad as his don't say gay law. You know, when not fighting with Disney and trying to keep children from being able to talk about stuff, he has a 15-week abortion bill. And so for that, I give him a hearty fuck-you yet again. I think he's just my fuck-a-up. I think you should just become my fuck-that-guy at this point for every time. There should be at some point there's like a fuck-that-guy hall of fame and then they're like retired and you can't talk about them anymore,

but they're on the wall. Stop it. 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 and science, will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh,

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