The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Judge Aileen Cannon Faces Her Moment of Truth

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, former federal prosecutor and host of “Justice Matters” Glenn Kirschner talks about all the legal turmoil involving Donald Trump, Jack Smith, and Judge Aileen Cannon. Then, Washington Post national columnist Philip Bump joins us to tell us who exactly is House Oversight Committee chair James Comer’s star informant, Gal Luft.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

joined by former federal prosecutor, host of Justice Matters and MSNBC legal analyst, Glenn Kirchner. He's here to talk about all the legal turmoil involving Donald Trump, Jack Smith, and Judge Aline Cannon. Then Washington Post National columnist Philip Bump joins us to tell us who exactly is House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, star informant, Gail Luffed. But first, Let's have some fun. So, Andy, it turns out that there is a group of people who actually believe that climate change exists outside of, you know, everyone else with an IQ, a brain or that has a D next to their names. Insurance companies see are rapidly pulling out of the state of Florida, just like we had talked about a couple of weeks ago with insurance companies pulling out of California. Why?

Because of the threat of hurricanes in Florida that these insurance companies, are pulling out of the state. And according to Newsweek, Farmers Insurance has become the latest insurance company to pull out of Florida, despite repeated efforts by their failed small, that's not what it says in the text, but that's what I say about Ron DeSantis, and state legislature to shore up the volatile market. On Tuesday, farmers informed the state that it is discontinuing new coverage of auto, home, and umbrella policies, a move that will reportedly affect 100,000 policies.

So it sounds to me like what you're saying, Danielle, is that the insurance companies have gone woke. Yes. And obviously, I am opposed to that, and I will be boycotting. I will not be using homeowners insurance from now on. Do you think they're spying on you? Well, I guess it helps that I live in an apartment rental.

No, but you're absolutely right when you say that these are, the people that recognize that climate change is real and is doing bad things to particularly coastal states like California and Florida and Louisiana. You know, I'm very, very concerned about the rich people in these states and how, oh, no, wait, they'll be fine. I'm not saying I blame the insurance companies, but as always, the people who are going to bear the brunt of this are the poorer people. I mean, you could just look at what the various hurricanes and storms and flooding have done to poorer folk in Louisiana and extrapolate that to Florida and California. You know, rich people always find a way to be okay and, you know, they can afford certain things.

Obviously, that's the whole thing about being rich. Good, good point, Andy. Farmers now joins, it's all state and state farm have also done similar things with Florida and California. And I don't know what, if you are a person of limited economic means in Florida, and you suddenly can't insure a house or insure your car, because part of farmers is also that they're not going to take any new car insurance policies. No. I am not really sure how you are supposed to live in a society that is set up where you need

insurance for these things. So here's what they said in a June statement, farmers. This is what farmers said. Quote, with catastrophe costs at historically high levels and reconstruction costs continuing to climb, we implemented a pause on writing new homeowners policies to more effectively manage our risk exposure. So bottom line is exactly what it is that you said. Rich people who have multiple homes and maybe one of them is in Florida, they'll be fine because if a hurricane hits, if a storm hits, they'll have the money and ability to rebuild.

For everybody else, the 99% who only see the American dream in accessing wealth through home ownership, when destruction happens, which it will, because it is unavoidable, because we have politicians that refuse to make any policies that are going to mitigate the effects of climate change. And so this is readily linked to the Republican Party completely and totally just deciding climate change, like everything else that they don't like, is a hoax. Instead of creating policies that are going to mitigate the effects that scientists told us 30 years ago, we're going to be happening. You now see who is once again going to be paying the brunt of the problem, which is the middle class and the working class that still see home ownership as a way to move out of their economic caste. And the people that are going to be fine are the wealthy donors to the political campaigns of these politicians that deny that this is actually fucking happening. And also, you know, like the companies who love to give to both parties, which is just always amazing. I mean, I get it.

I know why they're doing it. But they are just as guilty of this shit as the GOP donors. I was looking up some stats. And even if you can get your house insured in Florida, the prices are unbelievable. According to the Washington Post, Floridians pay an average of $6,000 annually for home insurance. The national average is $1,700 a year. Wow. This is the average in Florida has gone up 42% just over the past year and 100% over the past three years.

So the fact of the matter is even if you can get insurance in Florida, you are paying so much. Again, as you pointed out, this is all because of climate change. The thing that at least half this country refuses to admit is real. And we always hear this talk about how, you know, we hear it from the right about how, oh, when climate change becomes a problem because for them, it is something that's going to happen in the future. And they're always like, we'll figure out a way to deal with it, like even if they admit it's a real thing. This is not science fiction.

We are way past the point where climate change could be labeled science fiction. This is now. This is reality. This is happening to people now. And I know I, you know, I said poor people a lot. And I really shouldn't have because the middle class is also getting screwed by this. This is, you know, as you correctly pointed out, it's the 99%. it's everyone who's not the Uber wealthy is totally paying the price for this.

It would be nice if we could all, I know this is a really dumb thing to say, but man, couldn't we all just come together on this and look at the rising costs and look at the rising number of natural disasters that this country is seeing? And at least everyone agree that something's going on instead of, again, like half the country having its head in the sand. Ignorance is expensive. It is. I have said this so many times in different places is that that should have been the consistent refrain from Democrats in their pushback to climate deniers, which is the entirety of the Republican Party.

That ignorance is expensive. So now you are either not going to be able to have home insurance if you're living in California and North Florida. And for those people and people will say, well, there are other insurance companies. Correct. there are other insurance companies and how much do you think that they're going to be raising their premiums? You already said that the state of Florida is paying $6,000 in comparison to the national average at $1,700. So now that you have this shrinking market of insurers, they're going to be able to raise their costs even higher. And so again, it is going to be the middle class and the

working class that are going to be squeezed by this that are going to have to make decisions like, should I insure my car, which I'm using every day? Should I insure my house? Because what it looks like is that right now you're looking at maybe 10,000 plus a year just in insurance. And we're not even talking about your medical insurance, just to live in your home and drive your car. That's incredible. And I just like, I don't understand how we spread the message out to people who want to go along with the Trumps and the DeSantis says, oh, well, it's summer. So of course it's going to be hot. Motherfucker, it's not supposed to be 125 degrees. Like outside of hell, it's not supposed to be 125 degrees. Right. Look, what are you talking about? Two incidences happened this week that we saw.

We saw a whole fucking neighborhood slide off of a mountain in California because of a landslide. You see tornadoes, tornado warnings in Chicago at O'Hare Airport. They had to issue a shelter in place because of multiple tornadoes that they were fear that we're going to touch down. What are we talking about here? You're right. We're living in the future. This isn't 30 years, 40, 50 years down the road. It's happening now. The one part of our government that has always taken climate change seriously is the military. We can put aside the idiot, woke generals stuff, because trust me, the military is not a bastion of wokeism or progressivism or whatever you want to call it. But the military has, for a long time now, had studies showing that climate change is what they call a force multiplier.

And what they mean by that is, particularly in other regions of the world, that climate change is leading to things like people being forced to migrate and famines and stuff like that. And all of that can cause unrest. and so it's obviously of interest to the military. But the point is that even our own military has been sitting there. Again, this is for years. I remember talking about this when I worked at Fox. So this is not just the last couple years. The military has long recognized that, A, climate change is real, and B, it's going to

cause a lot of societal upheaval. And it boggles my mind that the rest of government can't look at this and say, well, damn, if the military's worried about this, maybe we should be too. And maybe it's not just happening in places like Sudan, you know, in Somalia. And maybe it's actually hitting the whole world. But, you know, you talked about earlier about getting people to believe this. Like the Democrats to me, it's almost like the climate is like high speed rail for them. It's like something they talk about during campaigns.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And they make a big deal about it. And maybe there's a, you know, a couple of paragraphs in a state of, the union speech about it, but they don't really do much about it. They nibble around the edges and they sort of throw up their hands and like, well, we can't do anything without the Republicans. Well, at some point, you're going to have to do something without the Republicans because the Republicans are clearly, they're going to be, you know, sitting there neck deep in water in Illinois

and they're going to be saying that climate change is not real. So you've got to just forget about them and you've got to do something on your own. I continue to look at this and say, what are companies are going to make these drastic decisions. And again, who is going to be left out of the opportunity to afford home ownership to be able to do what is necessary in order to rebuild? Because guess what? FEMA is not a bottomless pit. And this kind of ignorance is costing this country, billions of dollars, every hurricane season, every tornado season, every fire season is worse than the last. So this is not going to be the last state or the last place. that these insurance companies decide to pull out of?

No, absolutely. These states are basically canaries in the coal mine. And so, yeah, it's obviously going to hit a place like Florida or California, you know, before it hits the middle of the country. But you're absolutely right. It's not like it's going to stop there. And it's not like the costs are going to stop rising. As you pointed out, when there are fewer insurance companies who will actually work with

people in a state, they can charge more money. And, you know, this is like the top. toe in the water of what we're looking at over the next 10 years, over the next 20 years, over the next whatever years, until we are all just covered in water or whatever. And the idea that we can keep punting this and keep, as they love to say in D.C., kicking the can't down the road. Oh, God, it's my least favorite expression. I know.

I can't stand it. I know. It's right up there with at the end of the day for me. So what I'm saying is, at the end of the day, you have to stop kicking the can down the road. Yes. And we've got to start doing something about this now because now we are legitimately running out of time. 20 years ago would have been, you know, at minimum would have been a good time to start this shit. But now this is, it's here.

It is here and it is happening now. And the idea that we can continue to just keep debating this is insane to me. You know, quick point. I saw the other day on threads, which is a post about a paint company that has developed a white paint that can bring down the temperature like 10 degrees. And I think to myself, oh, wow. So we're going to monetize, of course, capitalism. We're going to monetize climate change.

And who the fuck is going to be able to afford that kind of paint? How much is that paint going to cost? So when we start to create windows and more people are using them because they exist now, but that are protecting against the UV rays and all of these things because everything is getting more intense, the cost goes up. And so instead of actually, again, creating the policy, that will lower the temperature, literally, of what is happening outside, companies are just going

to create goods that are going to cost us in order to protect ourselves, which frankly, the government is supposed to be able to do and just chooses not to. Yeah, that's just, to me, that's just whitewashing the whole thing. So there is some good news bubbling around the world that we never actually get to talk about or get to, which I think is exciting. The FDA, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, according to The Daily Beast, announced that it had approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, making it the first hormonal contraceptive pill available to buy in the U.S. without a prescription.

This is a big fucking deal, particularly at a time when we know that reproductive rights, women's rights, are completely under attack. and for a woman not to or a person with a uterus not to need a doctor's prescription slip and be able to just go into a pharmacy and get the medication that they need to have power and autonomy over their life and their body is a major, major step. The fact to me that it has taken this long to get to this place is wild. Nonetheless, it's an exciting day, but I can already, already smell the lawsuit. getting ready to brew to make sure that their handmade's tail goal is complete.

As you said, to echo what you said, this is very good news. It would be foolish to not anticipate the number of states that are going to try to ban this from sale. And the other aspect to this is what is the cost going to be? And I don't think it's something we know. I don't think the company behind, which I think is Perigo or Perigo, I don't think they've announced how much they're going to charge for this yet. But I'll be very curious to see what that is because if it's priced out of a lot of people's budgets, then not so great. Right.

Yeah. But look, it's a very good, hopefully first step towards other companies getting stuff out there. And eventually it becomes generic and the costs go way down. So again, I'm super happy that this is happening and it is absolutely a great first step. But I really do think that there are a lot of questions about it. And we'll have to see how that plays out. And that if we survive climate change, maybe, you know, five, ten years from now when there's more than one option on the shelves and maybe when it does become generic, this will be absolutely fantastic. And look, everything starts with a first step.

So I'm not, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm shooting this down or anything. I just hope it is only a first step of many more to come. I mean, look, if you're not going to be able to access an abortion, the least you can do is be able to access birth control. but we know that that is not what the right wants. You know, unfortunately, a uterus can't take down a classroom of children because then they would make sure that it was unregulated. I hope in your same way that it is something that is within reach for most Americans, that it is like an Aleve or a Tylenol or whatever, you know,

medication that people have in their homes because they can. And I think that that will go a long way to protect people with uteruses from the attacks that the Republican Party is waging against bodily autonomy. So it's supposed to go on shelves and be shipping next year. So we will see. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to the new abnormal, former 30-year federal prosecutor, the host of Justice Matters,

and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirshner. Glenn, let me tell you something. Whenever Donald Trump's name and legal woes come up, You're the only person that I want to speak with because I know that you have been following Judge Aileen Cannon for quite some time. You're the first person who brought up to me the fact that she was unqualified for the position that she currently holds. And we have gone through the way in which she tried to give Donald Trump preferential treatment during the first iteration of the document's case, which was getting the warrant to go into Mar-a-Lago. So now,

here we are and Donald Trump's attorneys are doing what they always do. Delay, delay, delay. Their latest is to try and push this case until after the election. So over a year from now because they say that this schedule just won't work with Donald Trump's ability to campaign for president, which he shouldn't be able to do in the first place with multiple indictments hanging over him. What say you, Glenn? You know, when I saw that 10-page filing from Trump's lawyers, it's a laughable piece of work. I'm going to go with work. That's not the word I was going to choose. It's a piece of something else. But in no uncertain terms, Donald Trump says to a judge he appointed and a judge who has already been found by an appellate court to have abused her discretion in favor of Donald Trump. He says to this judge, look, I'm telling you to vacate all trial dates and all proposed trial dates. And I am far too busy campaigning to be reelected president.

He actually says it takes up so much of my time and so much of my energy that comes right from his filing that he asserts, you know, I just don't have time for your petty little prosecution. Now, those are my words, but that's what he conveys. So the question will become, this is another moment of truth for Judge Aline Cannon. What will she do? If I were a judge, I would call him to the carpet. I would say, I'm setting this trial in December and you will be ready to go to trial, December, 23, this coming December. Will she do that?

Of course, that's the trial date the prosecutors have proposed. They said they can be ready. They said they can get everything in order, all the discovery out. They can get Trump's lawyers, the clearances they need, and they can be prepared to go to trial. Let's see what Judge Cannon does with that. You know, I have also maintained that Judge Cannon has a legal duty to remove herself from the case. Under federal law, right, the federal law says that when a judge's impartiality can reasonably be, questioned, he or she must remove themselves from the case. And Daniel, it's not that there has to be

some showing that the judge can't be fair, simply that the judge's impartiality can reasonably be questioned. We all have been reasonably questioning her impartiality from the time the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said she did something that was not only an abuse of discretion, but that was unlawful. She said that the appellate court said, you know, a judge cannot interfere. That was the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals word, interfere in an ongoing Department of Justice investigation by ordering the Department of Justice and the FBI to stop criminally investigating a defendant, which is what she did. She said, you have to stop investigating those documents you just seized from Mar-a-Lago, the Donald Trump stole from the federal government. That's a mind-blowing ruling from an appellate court.

How can her impartiality not reasonably be questioned? So I am disappointed that we haven't seen Jack Smith take on that battle. Nobody likes to take a swipe at the judge, because if you lose that same judge may preside over your trial, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do what's right, enforce the law and ask her to recuse herself. And if she refuses, you go up to the same 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that has already royally smacked her down. I kind of like our chances there. You know, the funny thing is, though, what we know, Glenn, is that the reason why she

was put in that position in the first place is to do exactly what it is that she's been doing. So to recuse herself, even though she's in a lifetime appointed position, would be to go against the very people who put her in that position in the first place. Donald Trump knew what he was doing when he chose a person that was woefully unqualified to be a federal judge in this area that he knew, you know, I'm a criminal. So I like to cover my basis. We know that other presidents put different judges in different places, not for their own well-being, right, but because they fit in those certain circuits.

But that's not the case with Aileen Cannon. So I never believed that she would recuse herself. I thought that maybe the slapdown that she got from the 11th Circuit may have had her think twice and say, well, I don't want to be a laughing stock. I don't want to have think pieces, countless of them written on me and how I shouldn't be in this position. But I digress. My question for you is she doesn't recuse herself. Donald Trump's attorneys write this 10-page fluff on why he can't bother to make time for this criminal case.

she decides to go along with the Trump attorneys, which is what I'm assuming that she's going to do. What recourse, if any, does Jack Smith and the DOJ have? First of all, I'm not prepared to say she's going to give in to Donald Trump's demands. If she does, I think that might inspire the prosecutors to file a motion to have her removed from the case and at least begin that process that will end up in the same 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that smacked her down previously. I'm hopeful that's what will happen. But I have a feeling she will probably say, look, I'm not going to put the trial off until after the 2024 election so you can, what, get elected potentially, appoint another corrupt attorney general and order him or her to dismiss

your case. Yeah, I'm not going to do that. But she may say, you know, I'll set it for early 2024, maybe not December. I'll set it for January, February. We'll still get it tried well in advance of the November 2024 election. That's what I'm hoping for and almost expecting. But if she goes another way, then the only recourse, you can't appeal the setting of a trial date. That's not an appealable issue. So the prosecutors would be stuck with that if they said, you know what? I'm going to set this trial for November 6th, 2024, right after the presidential election. You can't appeal that. That's not an appealable issue. But it will expose her. as needing to be removed from the case.

So we just have to wait. I think this is up in court next week. So it's going to be a real moment of truth, a real defining moment to see whether Judge Cannon, after receiving that Royal Smackdown, has learned her lesson and doesn't want to be a laughing stock. She's a relatively young person and certainly a young federal judge,

doesn't want to be a laughing stock for the rest of her life tenure on that federal bench. And I will say, Danielle, Well, she hasn't yet, in my estimation, made any other horrific rulings. I don't want to digress too much, but there were some people who pointed to the fact that she wouldn't seal a list of witness names when the prosecutors submitted that list of witness names and asked her to seal it. I actually think she did the right thing under those circumstances because she said,

listen, I don't need this list of witness names. He was already ordered at his arraignment hearing not to make. contact with any of the fact witnesses. I, as the judge, the presiding judge, I don't need that list of names, but prosecutor Jack Smith, if you give me the list of names, the law that would allow me to seal them from public view and from the media is a very exacting law and a very high burden. So I'd rather not have the list at all because I don't need it. So I'm denying your motion, but I'm returning the list of names to you. because I don't even want to have to litigate whether that list should remain sealed or should be open to public view.

I actually, as somebody who has taught the law around this area of sealing matters, I actually think that was not only a justifiable decision, it was the right decision. So the good news is I haven't seen her yet make another horrific decision like she made up front in this case. Okay. Switching gears, but staying on this Trump case, earlier in the month, Donald Trump's valet, Walt Nata, pled not guilty to the charges against him. Walt Nata moved, I guess, not 10, not 20, but maybe 50 boxes of documents that Donald Trump, as you mentioned earlier, stole from the federal government, had in his possession for well over two years before they finally confiscated them. and we're not even 100% sure they got all of them. Let's just say that. But Walt Nata, who's 40-year-old former Navy cook, is pleading not guilty. He took two weeks in order to make this plea because they couldn't find a licensed Florida attorney,

which is what they needed. The Florida attorney that they did find, Glenn, isn't even in the, what is it, the catalog of attorneys who have heard these types of cases before. is a complete and total novice, I believe. Talk to me about Walt Nata and whether you believe he's going the way of Michael Cohen or worse. People now see that Walt Nauta was indicted, pleaded not guilty, and basically, you know, remains under Donald Trump's wing literally and figuratively every minute of every day. We see the pictures of the two co-conspirators, you know, shoulder to shoulder. or wherever Donald Trump goes,

there's little Walt Nile to write with him. And they see all that. And they're like, well, then he's not going to flip. And here's what I would say. There is never a time when the prosecutors can't approach a defendant to secure cooperation. Often, if I was going against somebody and I knew they could give me a bigger criminal fish, in this case, the big orange blowfish himself, I would work with them and their lawyer prior to indicting them. I would say, listen, save yourself. Cooperate truthfully about,

you know, the crimes of others, plead guilty to what you did, and you will receive a significant benefit moving forward if you testify truthfully and fully against others. But sometimes I wasn't all that persuasive, I guess. They're like, hey, Mr. Kirshner, take a flying leaf. I'm not pleading. I'm not cooperating. So I would indict them. Once somebody is indicted and they see their name on the wrong side of the V, United States of America versus Walt Nauta and Donald Trump, it has a way of getting their attention. It goes from being theoretical to being very real and concrete. So I can promise you the prosecutors are stepping back to Walt Nauta. Now here is the sticking point. I don't know if he has an attorney or a legal team who is zealously representing

his interests as opposed to zealously representing Donald Trump's interest. Because, yes, he's got this Florida attorney. The only thing I can say about her is she did a couple of years as a public defender. And I always applaud people who do that work. But then she's been, you know, like a personal injury lawyer and this and that. She has no experience in this kind of litigation, national security, classified information. But she's not his real lawyer. It's this guy Woodward, who, you know, is a lawyer to all the MAGA elite types. So I'm not convinced that they're not still in Donald Trump's camp, right? And I often think of Cassidy Hutchinson who had a team Trump lawyer. That's what I was just going to say. And that lawyer was essentially saying, listen, we're here to protect Donald Trump. We're not here to

protect your interests. And when she got a real lawyer who was representing her interests, all of a sudden, the truth started tumbling out. So I think the only sticking point is if Walt Noda gets a real lawyer representing his interests, then I'm telling you, that person is going to say, save yourself, don't go down with the SS Trump. But here's the other thing. Sometimes I couldn't convince somebody even after indicting them to come on board and do the right thing and cooperate. I would take them to trial and convict them. Then they're facing 50 years in prison. I would still step back to them, Danielle. I'd say, what's you going to do now, sport? You're going to go to prison for 50 years? Like the jury just potentially, you know, sentenced you to? Because you're not.

now convicted, you're not yet sentenced by the judge, or are you going to come on board now and cut your losses? I brought on several cooperators post-guilty verdict, but before they were sentenced. Now, there's this thing called a soldier plea. There are some people who just don't care, like mob people, right? They're like, I am not cooperating ever because then I'm just going to get killed in prison. So I'm just going to stay strong, send me away for life. I'm never going leave the family or the criminal organization. If Walt Nauta wants to take that approach with Donald Trump, then he will be headed to prison after he's convicted by a jury. But all of this, you know, all of these questions will be answered in the future. It's like I want to feel bad for this guy,

Glenn. I do. But I don't because I'm just like, you have to read the headlines. You know one, Donald Trump looks out for Donald Trump. You were a cook turned body guy. His own personal attorney. attorney went to prison. So how do you believe that Donald Trump is going to do anything that is going to protect you? Like, you can continue working for him and have the job, but my God, get your own attorney. He was in the Navy, right? He took the same oath that I took when I was in the Army and when I was a federal prosecutor to, you know, support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And he violated that oath because he's moving around, you know, national security documents, classified information.

The reporting is he moved 64 boxes out. He only moved 30 back that the DOJ officials could look at. He hid the rest of them for Donald Trump and at Donald Trump's direction, I'm quite sure. I have absolutely no sympathy for somebody who took an oath and then so blatantly violated it in furtherance of serving a criminal former president of the United States. but I'd still like to see him flip. Of course. Give him something of a benefit

and then let him provide incriminating information about Donald Trump. Just for quick clarification before I get your last thoughts, Will Nodda did not have to know what was inside of the boxes, right? Just to be clear, do they have to prove that he knew that he was moving classified documents? You always have to have guilty knowledge and criminal intent. So if he thought he was moving around,

Donald Trump memorabilia that, you know, didn't involve any government property, any documents whatsoever. But think about it. So yes, but here's the thing. The way you prove somebody's guilty knowledge and criminal intent is you infer it from the facts and from any statements he may have made. What are the facts? He absolutely knew he was hiding boxes from the FBI and the DOJ. He knew that. What can you infer from that? It wasn't Donald Trump memorabilia in those boxes or he would not have been hiding it from the FBI and the DOJ. Then when he was asked about it, he lied to the FBI and the DOJ. What can you infer from that? He lied because he had a consciousness of guilt, because he was trying to protect himself. That will prove his guilty knowledge and his criminal intent.

This is always, always how we go about proving knowledge and intent. It's through circumstantial evidence from which we infer what's going on inside somebody's head. A judge will instruct a jury in every single criminal case. Ladies and gentlemen, there's no way to look into the workings of the human mind and determine what somebody's knowledge or intent was. Therefore, you are permitted to infer knowledge and knowledge. intent from all of the surrounding circumstances. That's a standard jury instruction. That's how we prove criminal intent in every single criminal case. And it ain't hard. It's so hard to prove intent.

I did it for 30 years with a hell of a lot less evidence than I have seen even publicly reported about Donald Trump and Walt Nauta. We will have to leave it there today, Glenn. But, you know, I will say this. I know you're not a betting man. I know that you only betty you only bet. a buck. What is your bet for this case happening either in at the end of 2023 or early 2024? Are we betting a dollar that it goes? Yeah, I'll bet. Yeah, I am not a high roller, right? $1 is my betting limit. I will bet a buck that this case is resolved, whether by going to trial or with guilty pleas, resolved prior to the 2024 presidential election. All right. Thank you, my friend Glenn Kershner, I'm sure we will talk to you again. As always, appreciate you. Great being with you,

Danielle. Back in May, House Oversight Committee Chair, James Comer told Fox News that an informant who had the goods on Hunter Biden had gone missing. Well, he's been found, and it turns out he wasn't so much missing as a bail skipper who was on the run from the feds. Tomato, I guess. Joining me now to explain the wild saga of Gail Luff is Washington Post National columnist, Philip Bump, Philip, thanks so much for joining us. You bet. So let's start with the basics. Who is Gal Luft and what dirt does he claim to have on Hunter Biden?

So Gal Left is a guy who was associated with a thick tank in Washington, D.C., which anyone who's familiar with D.C. knows that is a very, very loose definition of employment, right? And there's all sorts of things. Also, according to the Justice Department, which indicted Left in November of last year and recently unsealed that indictment, had done work on behalf of the Chinese government without declaring it, had worked to evade Iranian sanctions and had also been involved in some sort of effort to traffic arms. Those are allegations from the Justice Department. But Loft was sort of known as someone in D.C. who was associated with this sort of like thinky space. The federal government

sees his role very, very differently. Okay. So that's who he is. Let's get to the fun stuff. The indictment was just unsealed this past week. But as you said, he was arrested back in February and the indictment itself was handed down on November 1st of last year. Yeah. Now, if my calendar reading skills, having completely deserted me, and it's possible they have. Both last November and this February came before this May when Comer said that Luft had gone missing. Is this a normal way for a member of Congress to describe someone who is on the lamb after skipping bell? Yeah, no, the timeline here, you're right, is absolutely critical, right? So we had, earlier this week, there was this huge brouhaha over the unsealing of the indictment and this interpretation by a lot of people, including

folks like Maria Bartaromo from Fox News, that that meant he had just been indesionable. Now, Comer, to your point, has been for weeks now saying, oh, we've got this guy, this informant, who has dirt on the Bidens. It's really important to note, and I realize now I didn't actually answer your question in the first place, but it's really important to note that these allegations appear to have only stemmed after he was actually arrested. So we have the indictment in November. Luff becomes aware of it, obviously, at the very latest in February when he is actually arrested in Cyprus. At that point in time, he releases a tweet that says, oh, I just got arrested. I also happen to have on the Biden's, boy, is that a coincidence or what? At that point in time, it seems, it comes to the attention of Republican legislators, including James Comer, who then sees upon it as like, oh, look, this is one of our guys. Lufft, however, is not interested in serving time in prison, so he skips bailed, and he is now on the run. That's the point at which Comer then goes on, again, Maria Bordromo's show, and says, oh, our informant is missing. Now, it's really important to note that Comer actually got the guy wrong there. He was actually talking about a different invented issue,

this idea of that Biden's haven't been bribed and said the informant in that case was missing, his staff had to come out later that day and be like, oh, actually, no, he's talking about this other guy, Gallup, who's making these other allegations. But all of that had happened before Monday this week when the indictment was unsealed. And we learned specifically what the charges were against Luft. But none of that deterred Comer and his allies from saying, oh, they're only doing this because they're trying to punish our guy. What is the dirt that Luft claims he has not only on Hunter Biden, but also on Joe Biden,

because it's important to get the whole Biden crime family in on this. Right. So the answer to that is probably most clearly articulated in a video that the New York Post reported on last week. Again, last week before the indictment was on sealed, Luft had this video that the post reported on that explained some of the charges he was facing, like this arms trafficking thing. He had already explained it in this video. The New York Post talked about last week before the indictment was unsealed. But in that video, he also talked about what it was. that he allegedly knew. And it involved a meeting that he said Joe Biden had attended

that involved some of the investors from a Chinese company that Hunter Biden was doing work for. And it involved details of Hunter Biden's and Joe Biden's brother, Jim's work with this Chinese company. Now, all of that, everything that was in that New York Post story was already known prior to last week. It's already known that Biden was at this meeting. It's already known that Hunter and Jim Biden did work for this company.

In fact, the Washington Post did a report on it last year. So it's not actually clear that Luft has any new dirt Now, Lough says that in 2019, he talked to these FBI officials and, you know, gave him this information, nothing happened with it. And so now Comer and all his friends are like, oh, we got to get the details of that meeting. But it also seems pretty clear that if the FBI was talking to Lufth back 2019, they may have been doing so to hope that he would incriminate himself for this criminal investigation that yielded the charges last year. So I assume I would be correct in thinking that Republicans have now backed off of Luff's claims and that they haven't at all been layering another conspiracy on top. of the original conspiracy, this one about his arrest, and that they have completely stopped saying that Joe Biden himself has received bribes. You, sir, are an astute observer of the last eight

years of American politics. And that's exactly what happened. No, yeah. I mean, so we even had Maria Bardo Romo, again, yesterday talking with Kevin McCarthy and saying like, oh, this guy's on the run. But then he just got indicted. And it's just like, you know, the extent to which there is this eagerness to assume that the Justice Department is acting with malfeasance, which of course itself is downstream from the effort to try and rationalize Donald Trump's indictment. But the fact that this very basic element of it is both obviously wrong and going uncorrected. I think it's in a uniquely obnoxious example of the ways in which reality is ignored. I have to be honest, what you sound like here is just another deep state-owned journalist trying to protect the Biden crime family. Is that what

you are? And I remind you, sir, you are under oath. Yeah. Hey, and let me ask Merrick Garland, who's here in the room with me if I'm alive to answer that. I mean, look, you know, look, the beauty of this incident really is the fact that as you presented, the timeline is so clear, right? We have an indictment that was sealed on November 1st, 2022. You can go and look at the records. It's not like this suddenly was, you know, like a jury rigged by the Justice Department to make everyone look bad. This is what occurred. And there is no evidence that Galloft, A, has evidence against the Bidens or B, that the FBI, you know, willfully buried. I mean, look, if they're going to bury this thing, why would they have just buried it? I mean, this was the FBI in 2019 under the dominion of

Donald Trump's administration and Bill Barr as Attorney General, and nothing came of it. And yet now we're supposed to believe that there is this smoking gun that resulted in his arrest. So I've now seen, and it kind of reminded me of every time, you know, when Trump would say something and the first defense would be, oh, he didn't really mean that. And then the second defense would be like, no, he meant it. And then he would come out and basically re-say it. And then they would say, well, he meant it and he's right. And now I'm seeing there's sort of these two sort of competing theories from the right about the whole. whole left thing. And the first is that this is all to silence him and to ruin his credibility by claiming

that he is, you know, a paid agent of China, of Iran, all of this. And then the second one that I'm now starting to see is, well, maybe he is. But who better to know that someone else is doing illegal stuff than a person who is doing that same illegal stuff? Does that make sense? It does. And I think here we get to one of the longstanding issues with all this Hunter Biden stuff, which is that Hunter Biden absolutely appears to have been a sketchy actor. No one denies that, right? It is very clear dude was trading on his father's name. Yes, 100%.

Was this deal with the Chinese industry company or with Burisma, you're creating an energy company? Were those sketchy? Of course they were, right? Was there bad behavior or criminal behavior involved in that? Potentially, right? We already know that he tried to skip on paying his taxes and so on and so forth. That stuff exists as a possibility, absolutely.

It's even possible that somehow Joe Biden got money. We don't know necessarily. The issue here is that we don't know, that there is uncertainty, and that is being presented by folks like James Comer, Maria Bartaromo, and the rest as a proven fact, which it very much is not. And the challenge for Comer is he keeps going on these witch hunts and turning up absolutely nothing and then, you know, cobbling together a witch out of straw and being like, here's the witch we found. And it's just, that's a very weird mixed metaphor of a straw man. But, you know, this is what he's doing. He just doesn't have the goods. If he got the goods, great. Let's move forward. Let's figure out what the ramifications of that are, but he doesn't. And he and his allies keep pretending they do and using really bad rationalizations and just honestly the credulousness of their allies to get away with it.

And then there's also, as you pointed out in your Washington Post piece about this, it's not just Comer. You've got Nancy Mace out there saying the DOJ and the FBI are trying to silence our witnesses. Again, this is like one of those things where if it was just some outlier cuckoo Republican, you could say, all right, whatever. But this is the mindset that has infected the entire party, it feels like. Yeah. I mean, it seems pretty clear that there is this belief that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, did all these criminal things. I think that Homer believes that. I think that Nancy Mace believes that. And so I think that predisposes them to lack rigor in the way that they assess new information, right? That's that is an admittedly very charitable way of looking at it. But I think there is an argument of accuracy to it. You know, I mean, look, I think Comer also just makes mistakes on stuff, right? Like the fact that he confused Gail Luft with this, you know, alleged bribery informant in the first place suggests that maybe he doesn't have that strong a grasp on the actual allegations that he's got in his pocket. You know, then, of course, when I admit that that is interpreting it graciously, that implies that it's

also fair to assume there's potentially some maliciousness at play. Well, yeah, and again, I'll look at a quote from Comer that you have in your Washington Post piece where he said the president of the United States and his family has taken millions of dollars from a company that's 100% wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Now, he just asserts that as a fact. Yeah, to Maria Bartaroma, who just nods along, right? Because that's her new schick, too. Look, politicians lie. This is not new. This is not a function of one part of the other. But yeah, again, his job here is to be the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and to get details like this correct. Right. You know, Adam Schiff was just censured by the House or misrepresenting information that he claimed to have. Here's Comer doing essentially the same thing, but no one even blinks an eye in part because the standard of expectation is sold up.

I just would like to point out that you fell into my trap and we now have a headline for this, which is Washington Post reporter claims politicians lie. Honestly, I feel like that might have run into Washington Post before, but I'll say it. When I first saw this week's stories about Luft, my immediate thought was, oh, the GLP will just say this is part of a conspiracy against him. Because that really is where we are in 2023, isn't it? Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, right. And again, it's really fascinating when you consider how much of this. stuff originates from Trump and Trump's self-defense mechanisms. This idea that the Justice Department is really thoroughly corrupt is primarily, not exclusively, but primarily a function of Donald

Trump in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, trying to downplay the idea that the Russian government had had a role in his victory, right? He immediately came out of the gates. As soon as there started being these rumblings about Russia's involvement in 2016, he came out of the gates disparaging the intelligence community saying they were out to get him, yada, yada, yada. As it became apparent that he was involved in actions that he ought not to have been involved in both with Russia and then subsequently, it served him well to have his base of support think that the FBI and the Justice Department are corrupt enough to get conservatives in the right, and by extension, Donald Trump. And of course, that elevates as soon as the FBI searched tomorrow, Lago, that became, you know, defund the FBI was the watchword for many on the fringe right.

So this has been years in the making and drives, again, not exclusively, but predominantly from Donald Trump's self-preservation in terms of, you know, both the accusations that he broke the law and the idea that he didn't win the 2016 election on the merits. And also it just, you know, everything they do sort of mirrors the accusation, not even the fact that Trump and his family did enrich themselves. Oh, 100%. through the Saudis and other countries through their business dealings. Yeah, I wrote about this.

So back in May, the House Oversight Committee had this big, splashy press conference in which they were presenting the information they'd received about the Biden family, taking money. And they had sort of been implied for quite some time that they were going to tie Joe Biden to it. They were unable to do so. But at that press conference, you can see, they get up there and they're like, oh, and they have all these shell companies, these LLCs that are passing money to one another. And all these people in the family got cash, and it amounts to millions of dollars.

And if you just literally step outside of that room and consider the argument being made. Like I did a report back in May of 2019 where I actually walked through all of the LLCs that are included in Donald Trump's statements as president. No, he has to do these financial statements. Literally hundreds of LLCs that are just subdivisions of each other and, you know, shunty money around for tax purposes, primarily, right? But the exact same idea when applied to Hunter Biden is this nefarious effort to have shell companies and yada, yada, yada. And of course, when we're talking about the scale of money, Jared Kushner walks out of the Whitehouse, makes a $2 billion deal with the Saudis, right? It's bonkers, man.

Like, it's, you know, it's literally like, you know, this scale is hundreds of times as large. But what does Comer do once the Republicans take up with the House Oversight Committee is they very quietly shut down the probe into Jared Kushner and the Trumps, you know, this is what happens. And it's just, you know, the hypocrisy there, I think, is worth note. Oh, no, absolutely. And now we have, which I guess is sort of the chef's kiss of the whole thing,

the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee now want an investigation into how Lufft became an informant for Comer and, et cetera? Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of cutesy political stuff going on here. There's a letter sent from Van Goldman and Jamie Raskin, who's the ranking member of the committee asking for the sort of probe. You know, I think, though, that it does raise a valid point, which is that the hypocrisy at play here, the fact that, you know, Adam Schiff was targeted that Eric Swalwell received this criticism for months and months and months about his interactions with this woman who was working

out the Chinese Communist Party apparently. These sorts of things as baseline for what the House Republicans are going to get mad about. It's very low-hanging for the Democrats to then turn around and be like, oh, well, if we apply that same standard to you, look what happens. You know, obviously, obviously it's, you know, it's scoring political points for a day or two. It's not likely the result of much. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so where do you see this whole thing going? It doesn't look, at least at this point, I mean, Comer is not going to suddenly say, ah, you guys, you're right, we don't trust this guy anymore. He's no longer my whistleblower or my informant or whatever.

So where do you see this going? Yeah, I mean, this is the beauty of the racket, right, that you can make these allegations. It's sort of like the election fraud thing. You make the allegation, and then that sort of adds smoke to this already smoky room. And then it turns out there's absolutely no fire to it, but the smoke is still lingering. And then you put in something else in there that puts. smoke into the room. And the room gets smokier and smoking and smokier, but there's still no underlying fire. So we saw that with election fraud. We see that now very much with House oversight.

So this idea with this really under-recognized allegation that the Bidens had taken bribes from this Burisma executive that is literally based on one person's conversation with one executive from Burisma, an executive who apparently also had at other times completely denied having spoken with the Bidens, but became this multi-month saga on the right of, oh, he took these bribes and yada, yada, yada and bore absolutely no fruit. But all that it does is it gives the same set. Oh, Joe, but those bimes are so dirty. You heard about these bribes and you heard about, you know, what they did with this, this Chinese company that this guy was talking about. And it doesn't matter that it never gets reinforced and never gets substantiated.

It's just putting this idea out and then it becomes self-reinforcing. And you have things like Comeer going on Barter Romo's show and saying, oh, you know, the president took money, which is something that he is responsible for proving and has insisted that he is going to prove and has not proved, but he just asserts of his facts because the room is smoky enough that he knows Bartoromo and her viewers are going to take him at face value. First of all, it sounds like what you're basically saying is we're not going to burn to death, but we are going to all die of smoke inhalation. That's what it sounds like to me.

Well, American democracy, not necessarily that. Yes. But then you end up with, and I think, I guess it was John Chate, who wrote about this in New York magazine, this effort on the right for everything that is said about Trump, they have to say that, well, Biden is just like that too, to the point where it even infects people like, I mean, I think I can still say even people like Charles Cook, who I knew for a very long time and is a very intelligent person. And he's writing that, you know, columns about how both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are assholes. And that's what we get from all of this. And that's what,

that does seem to be what they want. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, look, I'm not going to dispute that major political figures are mainly assholes, right? Like, I'm not going to, like, that particular argument, I'm not going to try and debate. But yes, this idea of what aboutism, again, serves Donald Trump very well, and it serves those who wish to appeal to the broad fervent and less fervent base of Donald Trump very well, right? You know, it is very useful, even if you are someone who's sort of meh on Donald Trump as a Republican, you are still part of the target audience for a Joe Biden's bad too, right? That's clear. And it's also much easier to pivot from in the conversation that exists about what Donald Trump did to Joe Biden doing

it too than to sort of, you know, elevate new Joe Biden conspiracy theories from scratch. So it's very easy, for example, to take, you know, the Fed search moral log, aha, but Biden also has documents and make that a big story, whereas otherwise it may not have had the same sort of length. So, yeah, I mean, this is the past eight years. Yeah, absolutely. Philip, thank you so much for joining us. This has been very informative.

and this story is one of the weirder ones, it feels like, that we've seen in, I guess, the last month, I can't even go back further than that because everything is weird right now. But, Philip, thank you so much. And thanks for your excellent reporting on this issue. You bet. Thank you, sir. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy, how are you closing out this week with your fuck that guy?

I am going to go with, there are a couple Republicans who had some interesting things to say about race. type things this past week. I think you're going to handle one of them. I'm going to go with the guy who was maybe slightly more subtle about it. And that would be Rand Paul. And by the way, I'm not saying he was subtle about it. I'm saying he was just slightly more subtle about it. Rand Paul decided he really, really hates the idea that college athletes can now be paid. His quote about it was, now everybody that plays basketball in college is going to be driving a Bentley or a rolls. I mean, we're going to be seeing rap stars instead of basketball stars. So that was, you know, an interesting comparison to make.

I don't feel like he pulled rap stars completely out of his ass. I feel like he was trying to make, in his mind, explicitly racial connection and that he's basically not happy about all these young black people. being paid for playing sports. These guys are, you know, we've been saying for a while now that the quiet part is almost gone and it's just everything is just said out loud. And this is exactly what he's doing here. You know, he's taking a thing.

And look, given the overwhelming prevalence of black athletes in colleges, there is a racial component to this. And that's, in fact, one of the biggest arguments for paying college athletes is that you're using, you know, the bodies of young black people in many cases to profit these universities, and they ain't seen a dime from it. But that's the American way, Andy. Well, exactly. And that's what Senator Paul would like to go back to. He would like to go back to his view of the American way and how things should be. And that is, you know, that has generally been since day one, the exploitation of black bodies. Not a surprise, but the fact that he bloated this out on the Senate

floor is just another example of how the quiet part is going away and everything, then they're just saying everything out loud now. And for that, and so many more reasons, just in general, fuck Rand Paul. Fuck that guy. One thousand percent. I mean, Rand Paul, I don't know if his comments are at least or less racist than my runner up to you today. But what I will say is exactly what you just said. The fact that schools and universities are able to bring in tens of of millions of dollars on their athletic programs, that they run these kids into the ground, they say, oh, what you're getting, right, in payment is an education, which they barely get, right?

There had to be policies and laws that were instituted to make sure that these athletes were actually going to be getting the education that these universities supposedly said that they were offering. But now being able to monetize your likeness for people where if going into the major leagues is like 1% of them are going to make it there. You're using your four years very wisely to help yourself, to help your family. And that's what Rand Paul doesn't want. He needs black people oppressed and broken and in debt.

And that's, to him, that's what makes the most sense about this pyramid. So fuck him. Yep. Do we want to get in that he once called for the Civil Rights Amendment to be repealed? Oh, God. I think we just did. Good job, Jesse. Danielle, I'm curious how your pick could top Paul in terms of saying the quiet part out loud.

Yeah, I mean, because the only thing that Tommy Tuberville, Republican from Alabama didn't say was the N-word. Here's the thing. I hate this motherfucker so much. I did a TikTok video about it earlier this week because I got to tell you that he is so representative of who the Republican Party is and has always been. So he finds himself saying that white supremac shouldn't be denied access to the military, right? Shouldn't be sussed out of the military because it weakens the military, Andy. Like we need white nationalists in order to have a strong military. And he goes, you may call them to a reporter.

You may, the Democrats may call them white nationalists. I call them Americans. And so mainstream media doing what it always does, which is giving racist the benefit of the doubt. And 68-year-olds, you know, the benefit of the doubt that they have never. never opened up a dictionary or have an education in order to be senator, then have to offer this 68-year-old white man the definition of a white supremacist for him to then walk back his statements after being admonished by both Democrats and Republicans alike. Because Republicans only admonished him because they're like, dude, we only say that in our back rooms when we're

together, not in mixed company. Democrats, however, came out and were Schumer, actually, I'll give him credit on the floor of the Senate, read him for filth and said, this is not becoming of a senator. What pisses me off about this is when he's finally presented with the definition of white nationalist, then he's just like, yes, racism, I hate it. But then goes on to pull his but I know black people card, which is, I was a college football coach and I dealt with minorities. I'm sorry, what? You dealt with? Doesn't actually sound like you give a fuck. No. Or like have any kind of partnership or recognize like the equity of people of color, right? I dealt with them. Like I dealt with my trash earlier this week. Like I have dealt with

raccoons. Like I, what are you talking about? But leave it to mainstream media to say, are you sure you meant what you said? And I'm saying, these motherfuckers are telling you very clear and concisely what they believe. Believe them. Believe the words that are coming out of their mouth and stop assuming that a 68 year old is somehow a 6 year old and doesn't know what the fuck he's saying. So for that reason, Tommy Tuberville, who is in our hall of fuckery, is my fuck that guy for this week. And just quickly to tie our two fuck that guys together even more, maybe just put a little bow on this. Make it white. Tuberville quit as Auburn football coach.

He still had time left on his contract and he just quit, which, okay, fine. People quit jobs. Auburn paid him over $5 million after he quit. And this just becomes interesting when you think about who the people are that don't want college athletes to be paid. Well done, Andy. So yeah, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. we're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com

slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.