The Daily Beast Podcast - There Might Be a Stupid Explanation for the 7-Hour Gap in Trump’s Phone Logs

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Madison Cawthorn has Republican leaders like Kevin McCarthy deathly afraid that people in his district will start asking him questions using words like “orgy” and “key bump.” Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy, The New Abnormal’s unflappable (seriously—they’re being forced to picture a debaucherous Louie Gohmert and Newt Gingrich) hosts, are ready to parse whether it’s better or worse for him if Cawthorn’s telling the truth. Also on this episode: George Conway, a lawyer and Washington Post contributor, explains why the 7-hour gap in Trump’s White House phone logs may not be so much a conspiracy as good old-fashioned incompetence; and Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, breaks down the legislation she’s pushing to keep election security tight—and why it’s so “frightening” when the call, when it comes to voter fraud, comes from inside the house. 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 fun show we have today. Washington Post contributing columnist George Conway is going to join us, and he's going to talk to us about all the recent Trump legal fuckery. Then we'll talk to Colorado's Secretary of State Jenna Griswalt.

But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly John Fast. Where were you? Do you have seven hours and 37 minutes of missing phone records? that while your supporters Restorming the Capitol, do you have that or now? Have you got seven hours and 37 minutes

to hear about my missing phone records? All I can say is that a lot of stuff can happen in seven hours and 37 minutes. True. You thought Nixon was bad? You know? Like, what's a factor? Let's do seven times Nixon.

Ten times Nixon. Yeah, you could watch Drive My Car, the Oscar nominee to drive my car twice. You could watch The Joker. two and a little bit times. But not more than that. Not the Joker.

I'm sorry, you can watch the new Batman movie. Yes, that too. Yes, that's right. I don't want to be wrong here and get in trouble. Many hours of missing on records, I'm sure he wasn't doing anything nefarious. He was probably just hanging out. I don't, do they still have those? Remember those?

You could call those, like, 9-7-6 numbers. How would I know that? Well, there was like sports phone, and then there were like, I guess there were sex lines. And I've heard. Sure. Where's this going? I don't know. That's the amazing thing is I have no idea where I'm going. That's the beauty of being sick and doing a podcast is you have no idea what you're going to say. But yes, there's the possibility that this was just sloppy record keeping or he didn't really make any calls in those seven hours and 37 minutes.

Those are both possibilities that I believe legally we are required to say our possibilities. But then there's the other possibility of, of criming. Yes. Seven hours and 37 minutes of crime. Yes. That's right. Wouldn't be the first time. That's far more fun to talk about.

No. I think what's interesting, so we don't really know what happened in those seven hours and 37 minutes, but we do know that the president has some burner phones. We don't exactly know their providence or just how burner they burner phones are, but certainly more Trumpy. I mean, like Lincoln is in his grave trying to change his party registration. Is that true, Molly? Because my understanding is that Trump himself said just the other day that he'd never even heard the phrase burner phone before.

Yes, he did. But then John Bolton said that he did, in fact, know about burner phones. Shockingly, that would mean Trump was lying, which we've never seen. So a brave new world. He had to have watched the wire, right? At the very least. I mean, listen, again, like, I hate a situation where we're saying, like, is John Bolton lying or is Donald Trump lying? But I think we can assume that Donald Trump has, like, a longer track record of lying than John Bolton.

Yeah, John Bolton is more of a crazy person than a liar. Warlord. Yeah. Whereas Trump is both. John Bolton is the Tom Cotton of warlording, you know. Like, he's never known a country he didn't want a bomb, you know. Like, he's like, we should go to Roar was Russia, no China. Okay, both.

It's just funny because I think five-year-olds at this point are aware of the phrase burner phone. Like, it's pretty much in our, you know, national vocabulary. I don't think there are too many people that don't know what a burner phone is, regardless of their age or, you know, gender or sexual preference, et cetera. But we know there were calls. during that period. We know he took calls during that period, and we know he made calls during that period. And we also know that he liked to use phones other than his own. So that's the problem, is we don't know if that gap is a lie, you know, in the record keeping or just sloppy bookkeeping,

or if Trump specifically used different phones to keep him out of the record. And I think it's kind of hard to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who apparently tried to flush documents down the toilet and who took a bunch of documents to Mara Lago with him in violation of the Presidential Records Act or whatever. I don't think we should be giving him the benefit of the doubt here, Molly, the way you're, you, I think you're suggesting we should. All I know is that this all sounds very suspicious. So again, we don't know who's lying, probably everyone's lying. But it brings me to another situation where Republicans are lying. I would like to talk to you about Orgy Gate.

Oh, okay. All right. So Orgy Gate, I just want to, like, talk about Orgy Gate for a minute. So Orgy Gate started when Madison Cawthorne, Republican of North Carolina, went on a podcast and said that people have invited him to lots of orgies and people have offered me lots of cocaine. Now, I want to remind you that the Republican caucus in the House has been, they've flirted with white nationalism. Two members of the caucus, MTG and representative dentist Gosar, went and spoke at a white nationalist conference.

These people, Gosar did a video, an anime video where he tried to decapitate, right? Didn't he kicker AOC? These people are like some of the worst behaved people in the world. And they are doing some of the most terrifying racist shit. And McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, has been largely, you know, I'll go scold them in the other room. But don't get him started about orgies, because this is the, for some reason,

orgies, not white nationalism, but orgies, that's a bridge too far. Well, there's a couple things here. First of all, I don't like the, I don't like the term orgy gate because it leaves out the key bumps. I think that's not fair. So I think we have to come up with something different.

The difference here is that, as I think I said on the last episode, But by Cawthorne saying this, he was implicating other Republicans. Right. And because he said it was like some of these people that he'd looked up to since he was a kid, which was like, you know, three weeks ago. But, you know, we know he didn't look up to Democrats. So he was talking about Republicans. So by him throwing this out there, what he did was cause of, unlike Marjorie Taylor Green, who just, you know, went and spoke at a white nationalist conference.

That's bad for her. but she didn't say, oh, there were a lot of other Republicans there, too. She would have gotten in trouble for that because that's what this is about. This is about other Republicans being pissed that their names are being brought up. Not that their names are being brought up, but they're basically being smeared or not smeared, if what Carter is saying is true. So they're looking out for number one here. That's all they care about.

You see that in their legislation and you see it in the way they're comporting themselves now. And the fact is, I want this to be true. I absolutely want this to be true because I want the names to come out. And so you could, if you want to take that side, you could say that they're upset about this because it's true. And he's saying things that he's not supposed to say. And it's very much, you know, it's a whole eyes wide shut thing where he's like doing everything but giving away the password. And also, nobody likes a narque. And that's what he is.

But that's the thing. Like just nobody, you know, snitches get stitches. There's a reason that phrase exists. I just would like to interject here. Is it better if he's a liar or is it better if he's telling the truth? Like, I mean, like, which is better for the Republican Party? I think both are bad. For the Republican Party, I guess it's better if he's lying.

If he's a liar, yeah. For me, it's better if he's telling the truth. True. Because that's so much more fun. Yes, good point. You know, as long as I can keep the pictures of the. actual Republicans in an orgy situation out of my head. Gomer's gate. It's good for me.

But we know it's Louis Gomer and Newt Gingrich, right? It's got to be. Oh, God. See, now it's bad for me. Now it's just bad for me. You keep doing that, Molly. You keep bringing up who it is. If you notice that the other two people in this podcast

keep trying to keep that out of their brain. Yeah. Certainly not, Newt Gingrich. It's certainly not Mitch McConnell, as I've said before. There is no way. But it is amazing. And it's funny because you really see how little they cared about the white nationalist stuff. Because this Orgy Gate, Tom Tillis, has already decided that he's going to endorse someone running against Cawthorne.

You have all of these Republicans up in arms. I mean, you have, he's an embarrassment, right? I mean, imagine nobody said this about Gossar, who's like an actual white nationalist. kind of amazing. I mean, I'm sure people have said GOSAR as an embarrassment, but the party has not moved as swiftly on GOSAR. Yeah, or MTG for that matter. I mean, I think she got a, what I'm guessing, was a not all that stirring talking to at most. And then that was absolutely forgotten. It was 100% forgotten. But this is not going on. And look, Cawthorne himself, how many dumbass things has he done since he was elected? I mean, he called Zelensky a thug. I mean, the far right is very into that. They don't like Zelenskyy because he's Jewish and because he's anti-Pudin, and Putin is like the most white nationalist guy around.

No, I agree. It's just that he's done so many things. I mean, didn't he just get caught speeding and his license had been taken away or something like that? No, the guy's bad dude. He's just a bad dude, and he's dumb as a, he's just fucking dumb. I don't even want to compare him to anything. But the good news is, is it looks like it's possible to get rid of him, which we didn't think before was a thing. Well, there are five other Republicans running against him.

That's the problem, yeah. So, I mean, I don't think a Democrat's going to win that seat because they redistricted, but even still, like, he may not win. The Republicans are pulling, they're sort of pulling a Democrats here. And instead of, you know, getting one good candidate or one decent candidate or whatever passes for decent in that party these days, they've got five people. running against him and so people are all endorsing different people and it's just going to end up splitting that whole vote. Yeah. Maybe Ralph Nader could win the seat.

He's alive, right? I think so. I can't believe McCarthy called it unacceptable. I mean, this is like, I mean, think about that. McCarthy calls it unacceptable because of the lying about orgies. Well, which we don't know is lying. But again, this is unacceptable to Kevin McCarthy. because he's afraid that people in his district are going to be going around saying,

is Kevin McCarthy participating in orgies and doing Coke? You know, so this directly has the possibility of affecting him, and that's all he cares about. Right. And I also think that some of what's happening is that they know that the sex stuff, that the sort of QAnon stuff they've used on Democrats, and they don't want it to be. true of Republicans. I think that's absolutely right. And also, you know, Republicans are, you know,

at the least comfortable people with sex and drugs. So it's like if you're going to, if you're going to hit Republicans, you know, like they're the only people left in America who just cannot handle the fact that drugs exist and sex exists. I think you're absolutely right. This gets to the QAnon stuff. And if you think about the people, these sort of presidential wannabes from last week's Justice Jackson hearing, and we talked about this last week, too, they did all sex trafficking and child pornography as a way to sort of smear her. And so it makes sense that McCarthy is really worried about this as something that could hurt him. I do wonder, though, like, there is also this tension in the Republican caucus, which is, like, he thinks he's going to be the speaker. The far right nut jobs don't want him. They want Jim Jordan or someone like that.

So, I mean, this could go into a really big fracas. Well, that's the thing. And, like, Marjorie Taylor Green speaking at a white nationalist convention, like, Kevin McCarthy knows that that's, you know, a decent amount of the Republican base. has no problem with that and actually applauds it. But those same people do not want to hear about drug-fueled orgies because it does. It conjures up the sort of, you know, the Q&ON stuff about all this sex stuff going on in secret in Washington. And, you know, it really does conjure up like an eyes wide shut type situation. And that's the last thing that he wants. And he knows it's the last thing his members want. And so if you're a Republican, well, if you're anybody, I think,

think you don't want Ted B. To have to deny being at an orgy. But in general, you just, you don't want any, you know, you get your presidential candidate in 24 and someone could ask you, you know, Madison Cawthorne said that, you know, blah, blah, blah, were you part of any of these orgies? And then they had to say, no, I was not. And then the headline is, you know, Josh Hawley denies being part of orgies. No, I mean, orgy is, you don't want to touch it.

Well, you do if you're there. Well, right. You do if you're them, but it's not good for your political career. Yeah. You know, guys, we've got 201 episodes to this podcast without having to put a content warning on, but now I have to do that because you said Ted B. He was an orgy next to each other. George Conway is a contributing columnist at the Washington Post.

Welcome to the new abnormal, George Conway. Is it really new anymore? It's abnormal, abnormal. It's the usual abnormal. It's the old abnormal. It's the old abnormal. abnormal. It's the old new abnormal. So first seven hours and 37 minutes. He is basically just trolling Nixon at this point, right? I'm not defending Donald Trump. Right. I don't defend Donald Trump. Certainly not. But I think people may be getting a little ahead of themselves about this

story. And the reason is as follows, I mean, I think there's a lot of suggestion out there that there was essentially an erasure or alteration of records. I would not make that accusation at this point. We simply don't know. And not that Donald Trump would have any moral compunction about it. It's just that these people were not sufficiently organized, they're competent to conduct a cover-up that would require that level of concentration and competence.

And for example, people are saying, oh, there was the story in the, I guess it was the Guardian last night about how, oh, there was a phone call that was made from the White House to, I guess it was Senator Lee. Mike Lay. Right. And it's like, I mean, my understanding is that, you know, any phone in the West Wing, if you picked up the phone and you press the buttons, you don't have to go through the switchboard if you have a phone number. And, of course, he dialed the wrong number because he's an idiot. But, you know, if you do that, then it doesn't go through the switchboard and it shouldn't show up on the law where the switchboard people keep track of who called the president.

The president picks up the phone and says, get me Molly Zhang fast. We wouldn't do that. Then they write say, president spoke with Molly Zhang fast switchboard. So I think, you know, the suggestion that this is necessarily a document destruction issue is not yet founded. And I noticed last night, I was on Chris Hayes show last night. And I watched the early part of it before I went on. And Chris was talking to Adam Schiff about it. And Schiff was not biting on the obstruction aspect. Right.

I mean, he was saying, like, we all know they were crappy record keykeepers, but he wasn't making an accusation of obstruction. What's probably going to be the case is that they'll find that he was sitting in his private room next to the Oval and tranceed, watching his people do their thing on his behalf. And he wasn't making phone calls, but people were handing phones to him. Or he was saying, call so-and-so for me and somebody would have a cell phone. if he was talking to anybody, he would just sitting there transfixed. And he wasn't, he wasn't making calls through the switchboard or calls in a way that necessarily would create a record. And he wasn't talking to anybody. There's the, there was, he was like, you know, people were desperate to try to tell him, stop, stop, stop. And they were calling all sorts of people of the White House. I think that might be ending up. That might be the story. It's not, you know, that doesn't mean that any, that this is good. I mean, he was sitting there watching an insurrection. He's president of the United States and he fomented the insurrection. And he fomented the insurrection. and he's sitting there watching gleefully and too busy to talk on the phone using the switchboard at the White House to create a record.

So that's probably what the story is going to be. It's not a great story for Trump, but it's not necessarily that there were people destroying documents in an organized fashion. I mean, you know, I mean, it's not like he walked in the next day and said, hey, so the switchboard operator, hey, give me the phone logs. Do you have them? And he gives it to him and he goes up and flushes the down the toilet or eats them. I don't know. That's not going to be the story. It's not like when he took all those classified documents to Marlago. Who knows? No, no, I don't know. He's malicious and insidious, but he's not that competent. Right. Thank God. So I want to talk about the piece you just wrote, but first I want to talk about the Justice Department expands January 6th probe to look at rally prep and financing. This is something that we had talked a lot about because this is the Merritt Garland, Where Are You, story, right? Yeah. Look, the Merrick Garland, Where Are You Story? I hope.

the answer is, we're working on it. Large criminal investigations involving mob figures or financial institutions, they take forever. Right, right, right, right. Because there are a lot of people, a lot of documents, and now you have emails. Here you've got, it's even worse than that. I mean, it's, I think it's been said to be the largest criminal investigation in the history of the United States. You've got hundreds of people being, you know, who have been charged, in the District of Columbia here in the federal court, and they've got, you know, I don't know, countless hours of video and text messages and Facebook posts and things. I mean, this is just a massive, massive investigation.

And I think I read somewhere the other day that they want to hire like 80 more people to work on it. I mean, this has just been taking a long, long time. And one of the techniques they use is to work their way up from the bottom. And I think that's what they're doing. I mean, will they ultimately get to Trump? I hope so. I hope they think carefully about, you know, his role in all this and they collect all the evidence. But right now, you know, they're working their way now maybe to the middle.

The people between. Right, the alley, Alexander. Exactly. And we'll see what they get. That's not necessarily a terrible strategy because they're in the position right now. And again, I'm not saying this as someone who has any experience, which I don't, in prosecution or in this kind of. Right, but you are a lawyer. Yeah, yeah, I'm just a lawyer and I've watched, you know, scandals.

And you play a lawyer on TV. Yeah, I guess that's right. They have, they're in the position that they can draft. I'm using this as like, you know, the Tour de France kind of term, draft off the January 6th committee. And all this stuff is going to come out from the January 6th committee. This January 6th committee is acquiring a lot of evidence, as we've seen. And we don't even know the extent of it. We're just seeing little pieces of it here and there.

there, and they'll be able to take all of that, and people are going to have to, you know, people are giving depositions and giving statements, and they're locking their stories in, and there's a lot of evidence there that, that some of which we've seen, some of which will be revealed in the January 6th hearings and more, and some of it, and a lot of it, the Justice Department will be able to use someday. And sooner or later, they're going to work their way up, and what's happened is, I mean, if you read, and I have not, you read all these transcripts and filings and these hundreds of cases. that have been filed in the District of Columbia.

And I don't have time to, and I would lose my mind doing it. But some people have. I mean, there's this woman Marcy Wheeler who's on always ranting about how all the TV lawyers don't actually read the filings. Right. Guilty. You know, she's pointing out that in these documents, if we read them closely, the Justice Department is asking questions and pushing theories that would lead them

ultimately to the higher-ups. And for example, she's been pointing out it's not new. They've been asking all these people when they come in for interviews with the FBI, and you see information in FBI arrest warrant affidavits and so on and so forth, and in transcripts of hearings talking about these people, people are being asked, who paid for you to come to Washington and that sort of thing? And what's happened, the new, and so that isn't new. The Justice Department has been looking at this for a while. What's new is we now have some reporting of actual grand jury subpoenas. And those things, you know,

And those things, the grand jury subpoenas aren't public, right? They're supposed to be. Gen jury proceedings are supposed to be secret. There's a rule that says that people in the court release the information. They're in deep trouble or prosecutors. And what happens here is sooner or later the lawyers who represent witnesses before the grand jury, they're actually free to talk. The witnesses are actually free to talk. I got a subpoena.

And sooner or later, the subpoenas get out. And, you know, there's just a lag effect on this stuff. It just takes a while for something for an investigation to percolate out into the public spear. So I don't think it's necessarily fair to say, Merrick Garland, where are you? He may be very well on plan. It's just slow going. And, you know, he has an obligation not to tip his hand. It's not helpful for an investigation.

It's also not ethical. So the best he can say is, I heard somebody met him, a reporter ran into him at a cocktail party the other day. And they said, well, what's going on with the investigation? And he gave, you know, some bland answer. We are calling the facts and da-da-da-da-lop with the same thing in his speech. And that's what he's supposed to do. And that's entirely proper. Oh, that's super interesting. But I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's going to end up in the United States of America versus Donald J. Trump, which I think it should in a just world in a perfect world. And it may be that they make a reason, post-catorial judgment that that shouldn't be. That shouldn't happen. But I do believe that if Garland meant what he said in his speech on.

I guess it was January 5th or January 6th of this year, they're going to have to take a good, hard look at it. And that was the point of the piece I wrote in the post today. Well, let's talk about the piece you wrote in the post today because you actually based it on an opinion. Correct. Written by a judge. So explain that to our listeners. All right. So what happened was the world's second most infamous lawyer, first being Rudolph William Giuliani, is named John Eastman. He is a law professor and former dean at Chapman University Law School out in Orange County, California. And he became something of the legal architect for January 6th, at least the January 6th part involving the electoral vote count and trying to theorize how you could get Mike Pence to save the day and declare President Trump president for life.

And so... Something we all desire. Yes. So there are these memos that have come out that he wrote that are just off the wall on their bat shit and ultimately Pence rejected these theorizations and did the right thing. And we have, we had the peaceful. We ultimately had a non-peaceful but a complete transfer of power. So he conducted a lot of his work from, you know, his law school office in California. And he used Chapin University email.

and so the January 6th committee subpoenaed Chapman University, and he filed a lawsuit saying, no, no, no, you can't have this stuff. It's all privilege. It's all privilege. It's all privilege. And the January 6th committee, or at least he said 100 documents were privileged, 11 or something. And then the January 6th said, no, it's not. You weren't really his lawyer. You were using the university system and therefore waiving privilege that you had. And then the judge asked, apparently during a conference, he said, well, isn't there a crime fraud exception to the attorney client and work product litigation privileges, and the January 6th committee said, why, yes, there is. And we happen to know that who the criminals are here. And they wrote a brief. And the brief basically said that there was, there was prima facie evidence or sufficient evidence for the court to conclude that

that these emails, or at least some of them, were communications in furtherance of a crime or a fraud. And therefore, the privilege is vitiated. And the judge bought that. So explain that to us. If I act as your lawyer and you want legal advice on how to squirrel money out of the country in violation of U.S. law, tax law, or you want to send it to, you know, you want to send it to Vladimir Putin, I don't know. And I gave you advice on how to minimize your exposure, get away with that, how mechanically to do it so you wouldn't get caught. That would not be covered by the attorney-client privilege because there is an exception for crimes and frauds. I cannot, you know, not only would I be in ethics trouble, but you would not be able to stop me from getting subpoenaed to testify

that, oh yeah, Molly's trying to squirrel money and give it to Vlad. So that's what happened here is that, you know, but mostly the judge found that the documents weren't privileged anyway, because they either weren't communications with Trump or because they weren't really prepared in anticipation of litigation. But he got down to like 11 documents, where there was possibly the work product privilege. And he found most of them were, you know, actually did deal with some litigations out there. But one document was some sort of a memo, I guess that had been written for Giuliani or somebody. And he said this one was in furtherance of a crime.

And he explained what the crimes were. And the crimes were a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1512C, which prohibits people from corruptly trying to, to obstruct an official proceeding, and an official proceeding is defined as including a proceeding in the Congress of the United States. And now Judge Carter, in this opinion, became the 11th judge, in addition to 10 judges here in Washington, who have found that the January 6th electoral vote count is damn straight a proceeding, an official proceeding under this statute. And, you know, that's why a lot of these seditionists have been charged with that. And then he said, you know, under there's another statute, section 371 of the Criminal Code, 18 U.S.C. 371, which deals with

conspiracies to defraud the United States. And 100 years ago, there was a case called Hammershmit against the United States, where Chief Justice Taft, for President Taft, for a unanimous court held that, you know, there's no requirement that a conspiracy to fraud the United States involve stealing money. If you are using deceit or fraudulent means or misrepresentations to interfere with a lawful function of government, that's a violation. And in fact, the people in that case were handing out, I guess, during World War I, they were handing out leaflets of some sort that were deceiving people into thinking that they didn't have to register for the draft and therefore interfering with the draft. And those people went to jail. Well, hey, if you're handing out leaflets to get people not to register for the draft, a few people here or there, is illegal. Why wouldn't getting people to submit fake electoral vote certificates or not to count the electoral votes? Why isn't that also a crime? fact it is. And that was the judge's point. The judge's point was, you know, this is what we saw

Trump and Eastman do fits these statutes like a glove when you look at whether they are acting corruptly or acting fraudulently. They were because look at all the different ways that Donald Trump was told that he lost. He was told this by the cybersecurity and infrastructure agency or whatever it's called of the Department of Homeland Security. He was told by Attorney General Barr. He was told by a deputy attorney general, then, who later became acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen. He was told by acting deputy attorney general Donahue. He was told by the White House counsel. He was told by Secretary of State Raffinsberger in Georgia. He lost 60 friggin lawsuits in federal state courts throughout the nation. I mean, you know, he knew he, he knew he

lost, and therefore everything he did was a fraud. It was based a lie. It was corrupt within the meaning of Section 1512, and it was fraudulent within the meaning of the conspiracy statute, 371. And he found this, you know, all he had to do is make these findings on the basis of a paper record by a preponderance of the evidence. And my point in my piece is, well, all right, this is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Of course, we haven't seen all the proof because you have to conduct a grand jury investigation and the January 6th investigation is going on. But proof that satisfies a federal judge by a preponderance of the evidence, in other words, more likely than not, is way more than you need to be, if you're a federal prosecutor, to commence a criminal investigation.

Okay. All you need is some basis to believe there may have been a crime and, hey, you can crank up a grand jury. In fact, you should if it's a serious enough potential crime. So to me, it's just that The Justice Department has to take a look, a hard look at whether or not to charge Donald John Trump is virtually compelled now, now that you've got a federal judge cogently, and there's no magic to what he did. It was just, he just lined up the facts and lined up the law. And you have, you have just like this could be a crime. And if the proof, the burden of proof in a criminal case were prontent of the evidence, he'd be guilty. Right. So this is like almost the same as a criminal referral. I mean, it's not that, but this is sort of a judge saying something to the effect of that.

It's not his job to do that, and he wasn't doing it. But in the last page of his opinion, he basically just said, look, you know, if these guys, if these guys succeeded in doing what they were trying to do, meaning Eastman and Trump, they would have ended the peaceful transfer of power under the United States Constitution. And that's why he called it. He said, this was a coup. that the judge actually used these words, and I lead off my piece with these words, this was a coup in search of a legal theory. And it is, you know, judges do that in their opinion. Sometimes they'll point out stuff that somebody should take a look at and prosecute it. And, you know, he did that here, not because that was his job to do, but in the course of answering the questions that were presented to him about the validity of the subpoenas and the applicability of the subpoenas and the privileges involved, he stumbled on this question and answered it. Right, exactly. You and I agree to disagree on some Supreme Court stuff, but I just want to know what's your take on Thomas now? Oh. With this sort of, should he recuse where, what do you think?

I think that there has been the commission of a political equivalent of a war crime, the war crime being no husband should ever be held to account for what his wife says or does. and the people who have been who have been out there going after Justice Thomas should be rounded up. Tell me what you really think. I just did. I just did. Why do you censor yourself so? No, I didn't know what. But do you think you should have to recuse for January 6th? To be serious.

You know, I was just making a joke there, right? No, I had no idea. Honestly, I thought maybe, you know. Well, I didn't know how it would go. Continue. Do you think you should be held responsible everything Matt Greenfield does? Yes, clearly. My poor husband. You know, I can't make a judgment as to whether it was proper for him to sit on that case that he did sit on because we don't actually know what he knew. But he didn't have to sign his dissent on the shadow docket and he did. Yeah, but I can't make a recuse of judgment as to that because there's no way of knowing exactly what he knows, yeah. Ginny said to Clarence about anything.

Right. And in his defense, I have pointed out on Twitter, and I don't think this is a shit, even the most rabid leftist should be objection to this. It's like, we don't actually, there shouldn't have been any reason to expect Ginny Thomas's emails or communications to have been the subject of the litigation before the Supreme Court because there's just no fricking basis in even the most fervent, wild lawyering to assume that anybody would claim executive privilege for communications between the White House and Virginia Thomas because she's just not, there's just a private citizen. So yeah, she's a private

citizen. Right. Exactly. I mean, if Joe Biden emails Molly Jong-Fast, that's that, that shouldn't be the basis of. I'm getting a lot of emails here. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm trying to get you in trouble. I'm trying to get you in trouble. And then I'm going to take over your podcast. That's hope that happens. Yeah. So anyway, I can't say that he should have recused him. I can't. I can't say now that given what was these 29 emails that were out there, it sort of creates at least a significant appearance problem. And depending on the exact presentation of the issue, you know, it probably would be better for him to sit some of these things out. But it's hard to make that judgment without knowing exactly what the issue is in the form it comes up into the

Supreme Court. But yeah, there's an appearance issue and he really needs to, for the sake of, for his own sake and for the sake of the rule of law and the reputation of the Supreme Court, he's got to be really careful now. It's just not a, you know, and it's generally speaking, it's just not a great look that the spouse of a Supreme Court justice is encouraging a coup. It's not great. Yes. There are like actual problems of the Supreme Court right now. Oh, so you say.

Right. But I mean, there's certainly a lot of people questioning it's legitimacy. One problem with the modern Supreme Court is just people. You know, they expect too much from it. Now, originally it was the liberals, and now it's the conservatives and the liberals, and everybody wants the Supreme Court to reach the results that they want. And if it's not, it's political. And it's just, we've just, it's degenerated over the years.

That's why we have these, these confirmation hearings that are ridiculous on both sides. All right. Thank you so much, George Conway. I hope you'll come back. Yeah. Jenna Griswold is Colorado's Secretary of State. Welcome to New Abnormal. Secretary of State, Jenna Griswold.

Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. So I want you to tell, because I'm like very obsessed with what, how important these state level roles are. So first I want you to explain to our listeners what exactly a Secretary of State does and how important it is. Most Secretary as a state are the people who oversee elections for our states. Which is why Trumpism has become so obsessed with them. Exactly. You know, Donald Trump tried to get the Georgia Secretary of State to just casually find him 11,000 vote, which he refused to do. And that's exactly why we're seeing these extremists run for these seats and try to kick those of us who believe in upholding free and fair elections out of office. Yeah. And that's a real thing. And so I'd love for you to talk because your state actually has someone who was running for Secretary of State who recently got arrested.

Arrested, I think, two times, Molly. Can you? So Tina Peters was a DeMesa County clerk, right? Yep. I think you'd need to explain to us what a county clerk does. So a county clerk in Colorado is the county elected official who actually executes the election. As Secretary of State, I oversee the elections. I make sure that the voters have access to safe and secure elections, provide support to the counties,

and intervene when necessary. So this clerk, working, if you can believe it, with the My Pillow Guy in QAnon, compromised her voting equipment, took copies of all the hard drives, everything on the servers, allowed the release of the passwords to the motherboard, and did it all trying in an attempt to prove conspiracies about the 2020 election. Wow. She also accepted flights on Mike Lindell's plane. She also has a legal defense fund. It's not a lawsuit, but has a complaint in front of the Colorado Ethics Commission for illegal receipt of gifts. And that is a pretty big deal. So she's been arrested twice and then you are actually introducing legislation. Can you explain this legislation to us? Yeah. So Tina has two different charges against her. She's been indicted for compromising voting equipment. And is she still running for Secretary of State?

She absolutely is, and she has a lot of support from Mike Lindell. She announced her candidacy on Steve Bannon's show. She has a support of the billionaire CEO of Overstock.com. So not only is she running, but we have to take her very seriously. Even though she's indicted. Absolutely. I was the first Democrat to win the seat in 60 years. So it's a hard race. But on top of that, there's super PACs that can come in. So that's unlimited money, often darker. money to support these candidates. And we know that she is one of the darlings of the extreme right. And the extreme right is also as part of their national strategy trying to take these seats. Right. So we're working really hard. You know, we're on the right side of history. But also she's indicted. I don't understand if you're indicted how you can run for office. Well, yeah, that's that's allowed in this state of Colorado. Okay. So explain the two legislations you're trying to bring to the floor. Yeah. So my first legislative priority got signed into law yesterday,

and that's prohibiting open carry within 100 feet of a drop box, election, where elections are actually happening, where voters are. So you can't bring guns to elections and intimidate people. You should not be open carrying, intimidating people. Voters and election workers, there have been just an increased level of the drill around elections. So that's passed. done. I'm also running a bill, which is the nation's first legislation to disincentivize insider attack like in Mesa County. So explain that to us. If you compromise voting equipment or allow unauthorized access, you're going to go to jail. It's going to be a felony. We're putting into law whistleblower protections. There was a whistleblower in Mesa County. They should be, you know,

protected. We're requiring swipe-ins to all the rooms with voting equipment. We're requiring. We're requiring 24-7 video surveillance every single day of the year on all voting equipment and doing a host of other things to disincentivize this new wave of insider threats where election officials actually compromise from within and to protect folks who are doing the right thing. You would think that these people who are so obsessed, quote unquote, with election integrity would support this, do they? I will say we have bipartisan support of this legislation with a senator and the Colorado state legislature, but also from the county clerks who are majority Republican in the state of Colorado. But that's separate from the folks who are repeating conspiracies saying, oh, there must have been something wrong, really in a baseless way.

Right. Those types of people, extremists peddling the big lie, do not support things like this. And in the irony of the whole thing is the big lie, which allegedly is about election integrity, is actually making our elections less secure. because people are compromising voting equipment or breaching security rules from within trying to prove these conspiracies. It's such a like crazy situation. And then you have other stuff, right? You have Republican state, Republican state county clerks who are suing you. Yeah. So a lawsuit was filed on conspiracies last fall. It actually just had a procedural step yesterday. where a large part of the lawsuit was dismissed by a judge. But that's exactly right. So, you know, lawsuits alleging conspiracies and ultimately will win those types of lawsuits.

But what they do is further disinformation. People who are trying to undermine confidence, trying to suppress the vote, trying to destabilize American elections, are using these lawsuits as a publicity tool. So they'll file a baseless lawsuit, send out a bunch of press releases. People who are consuming that information end up thinking, well, gosh, something must be wrong. And even if the lawsuit is tossed out, it's already doing harm to confidence. Right, which is the goal, which is why they do it that way. Yeah, you know, I think we can conceptualize what's happening in this country as a continuation of the 2020 attempted coup.

It failed. The actions have not stopped. We are seeing the big lie being used to push voter suppression to destabilize American elections through insider attacks and election workers just feeling unsafe and stepping down. And also as an attack on confidence, the more that people hear lies, the more likely they are to believe them. And I think we're seeing the groundwork so that the next time an extreme elected official or candidate does not want to accept the results of a free and fair election that will be easier for them to try to take their seats no matter. the results, which is very frightening for the future of this country. And it underscores the need to make sure that election deniers do not become secretary's estate in that we continue to have free and fair elections for all Republican, independent, and Democratic voters in this country. Colorado is kind of like you have people like Joe Noghous, who's this very moderate Democrat,

and then you have people like Lauren Boatbert, who's a complete lunatic. explain to me a little bit about how is that playing out? Well, Colorado is the nation's gold standard for election access and security, but we've also become a ground zero for these insider threats and conspiracies because a lot of the folks peddling the big lie and trying to incentivize people to compromise voting equipment are physically here. Colorado is just a really interesting place. You know, like I mentioned, I was the first Democrat to win this seat in 60 years. I think we are still a purple state, and it's really important to run really hard, especially for this seat, because democracy is on the ballot in 2022.

I mean, it's just kind of crazy. So talk to me about what else you're doing to secure elections. To be very clear, even with the insider threats, it would not have actually affected the actual election. Because we have so many redundancies of security. And as Secretary of State, I've increased access, but also vastly increased the security of our election infrastructure. In Colorado is considered one of the safest places in the nation to vote. But with that said, we never stop. So on top of, you know, making sure there's not open carry to intimidate people, running legislation to stop these insider threat,

I'm also running legislation to protect election personnel, making it illegal to docs or retaliate against election workers. We have multi-layers of security. Colorado voters vote on a piece of paper. We do risk limiting bipartisan audits. So the list of security goes on and on. Folks should feel very confident voting in Colorado. But with that said, we always have to innovate. And when there's new threats, we have to take them seriously and lean in and put new laws on the books and new practices.

Jen, this was amazing. Thank you so much for coming on, and we really appreciate your time. Absolutely. Thank you for inviting me, and thank you for covering these really crucial issues. 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, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right.

Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly JongFest. Who's your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is an entire broadcast network's news division. It's going to be the central broadcasting system, probably better known to you as CBS, Molly.

CBS News decided that they really needed to have Mick Mulvaney, former, you may remember him from the Trump administration. Yes, I do. Yes. They have decided that they needed to hire him and pay him money to be an on-air contributor. This comes on the heels of the co-president of CBS News a couple of weeks ago said that they needed to hire more Republicans because they had to prepare for what he termed the quote-unquote likely Democratic midterm wipeout. So he went straight from that to hiring Mick Mulvaney, who was a, I believe Trump's chief of staff at one point. Yeah, that's amazing. Who gave us such gems as saying that the media was covering COVID.

because it wanted to bring down President Trump. He defended Trump's perfect phone call to Vladimir Zelensky when he refused to send weapons until he got blackmail material on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden from Zelensky. This is the guy they have decided America needs to hear from on their news broadcasts. And look, CBS is not alone here, setting Fox News aside, which is like a direct pipeline. CNN has hired plenty of former Trump. officials. And, you know, even before that, they've hired former CIA directors who have lied to the American people and stuff like that. So this is, you know, it's unfortunately a common thing

in television news. But this one, there's actually some backlash to, apparently, among CBS News employees. So we'll see where that goes. Who knows. But for now, it is a big old fuck that guy to CBS News for hiring an inveterate liar and former Trump administration official, but I repeat myself as a paid commentator. Yeah, I mean, that it's pretty incredible stuff there. And I'm not even sure, I don't even know that that means you can get more, right? I mean, like, the sort of banking that Mulvaney has enough friends that will then want to come on the network because Mulvaney's there. I mean, it's a bit circuitous, isn't it? I don't know. They say, you know, we've got to hire more Republicans.

And like, Nick Mulvaney is, that that's your first get? That's not even a good one. Well, it's also, I mean, I think, like, if you're going to have, if you're going to have Republicans, there are smart Republicans who are thoughtful. And then there are, like, unabashed Trumpists. Right. It does seem pretty clear that what he meant was unabashed Trumpists because they feel like that's the country now is it's Democrats and unabashed Trumpists.

And with a few notable exceptions, he ain't wrong. Yeah, it's pretty grim. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is? I very much want to know who your fuck that guy is. My fuck that guy is the is the Ivermectin industrial complex. You'll notice that basically one of Trump's after going for that malaria pill, right, the malaria, the malaria, the hydrochloroquine, they decide, and that didn't work. this sort of another stop on the way was ivermectin. And Ivermectin, I mean, the crazy thing about ivermectin is like that came into prominence when we already had a vaccine.

We had a vaccine and these people were like, no, this dewormer is really the way to go. And like, yes, it's used for other parasites. It's used for malaria. But it's also not used for COVID. And so the right went. all in on this and still you have you had Tucker Carlson you had Laura Ingram you had the whole crew saying that ivermectin was you know just needed to be tested and we should and people should have a chance to treat themselves with anything they want to be treated with because aren't we all

really doctors and we all have the right to give our relatives medicine that doesn't work it so they can die because that's the right of every American. And so think of all the people. I mean, you know, we all have read stories of the people who family fought with the doctor because they wouldn't prescribe ivermectin

or, you know, or they wouldn't prescribe the apple-flavored one for horses. No, I'm just kidding. There is an apple-flavored one, but I don't know how much I got it prescribed for humans. But the point is, like, they took a chance with these people's lives.

They're never going to correct the record. They're never going to apologize. There are people in this country who died because Tucker Carlson told them that Ivermectin was a reasonable treatment for COVID. And while Tucker Carlson is making millions and millions of dollars, and I congratulate him heartily for, you know, Duncan on the rubs or whatever he thinks he's doing, it seems like clearly that the people who encourage their watchers to reject traditional medicine, and to try for Ivermectin have caused their viewers like, you know, injury and harm.

Fuck that guy. 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. We'll 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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