The MeidasTouch Podcast - Senator Schiff Responds to Trump’s Latest Threats

Episode Date: September 21, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on how the GOP Witness Susan Monarez suddenly flipped on them and Republican Senators looked utterly foolish trying to bash her and Meiselas speaks with Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone who is the highest ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee about the GOP threats to the country. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Please play responsibly. So we saw what happens when you appoint an internet troll with no experience to become the director of the FBI. That was on full display when Cash Patel testified both before the United States Senate and the House. And while it was deeply humiliating for Cash Patel, it was really deeply humiliating for the United States of America. And I truly worry about the other threats that are out there right now that are not being investigated or protected. and we just see how Patel's handling the Epstein files and other things. This was Cash Patel, just the photo of him, K-dollar sign H right there, wearing the camouflage.

He would sell this gear. He would post memes of himself, chop sawing or hacksawing off the face of Democratic politicians. I think I saw him do that with Senator Schiff and other people where he would do memes like that, which is just horrific. Then Senator Schiff got the opportunity to cross-examine Cash Patel. You know, it's kind of like watching, kind of like, no offense to like little babies, like petulant babies who are like arguing, but kind of like where they cover their ears and go, I don't want to answer.

I don't want to answer. I don't want to answer. It was really, it was, it was, I just am thinking what the career FBI agents who were there were doing while they watched this. Just take a look at Senator Schiff cross-examining. Just an unhinged Patel going, right, blah, blah, blah, here play this clip. You can take an internet troll. Take it to the bank that the FBI is protecting this country.

and the state and citizens of the California will all be historic reformed. Just trying to ask them a question. Like, you said you were going to release the Epstein files. Like, why aren't you releasing them? Why aren't you releasing them? Just make them public. And I don't know, I read all the federal orders.

All the courts said they can release the files. They don't need the grand jury testimony. The court said, DOJ, go for it. Release the files. Here was another part where Senator Schiff was cross-examining Patel. plate. And let me follow up on Senator Kennedy's question because he asked you, and I'll be very precise here, you've seen most of the files, who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself? And you said, himself, there's no credible information, none,

if there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals. And Kennedy, the information we have again is limited and Senator Kennedy said the answer is no one and you said for the information we have. So is it your testimony today that in all the Epstein files that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked no one to anyone but himself? Is that your testimony? I never said Jeffrey Epstein did traffic anyone else. Did he traffic any young woman to someone other than himself? That was Mr. Kennedy's question. And I said the information that three administrations have had access to have made determinations that there are no investigative leads that were credible to prosecute and investigate any others. I'm specifically stating we were working out.

You just read it and I said it 10 minutes ago, so let the record reflect my testimony. I just want to make sure there's no misunderstanding because there are victims like Virginia Gwifer who have testified otherwise who have said, otherwise and you're telling the American people today that the Epstein list is a single name and it's Jeffrey Epstein. That's what we're to believe. That's not what I'm saying. That's what you're saying. And you can say whatever you want. I don't even know what that was. Let's bring in California Senator Adam Schiff. Senator, you had the opportunity to cross-examine an internet troll posing as an FBI director. But unfortunately, with the authorities of one, what do you make of it? Well, that claim that you just played was, I think, what was most astounding, which is the Epstein list, according

to Cash Patel has only one name on it, and that is Jeffrey Epstein. So he basically wants the American people now, after for years saying that there was this secret list of very high-profile people that were the clients of Jeffrey Epstein, he wants suddenly the American people, including the Maga Base, to believe, no, no, there was actually only one name, and that was Jeffrey Epstein. Not the least bit credible, but it wasn't the only thing he said that wasn't believable at all. What really set him off, what set off that tie rate that you started with, is I asked him, who made the decision to transfer Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, Jelaine Maxwell? Who made the decision to transfer her to this minimum security prison not fit for a sex offender?

And his answer was the Bureau of Prisons. And I said, just them without any input from the administration or from, Blanche or Bondi or anybody, they should on their own, coincidentally, after this interview transferred her to this, you know, men of security prison. Do you expect people to believe that? But he does expect people to believe that. And it all gets back to the point you started with, which is we have someone now who's wholly incompetent running the FBI. someone who is essentially a troll, and I think about the men and women at the Bureau, who I worked with when I was an assistant U.S. attorney, they're the premier law enforcement

agency in the country, to have such terrible leadership, and the fact that Patel is firing these experienced agents because they worked on the Mar-a-Lago investigation, they worked on the January 6th investigation for no other reason. They're getting fired. So we're losing expertise and we're gaining incompetence, we're taking people off of important cases, and we're making them essentially an immigration police force. This is a dangerous development for the country because it means really serious, violent criminal cases, terrorism cases, counterintelligence cases are not getting the staffing leadership they need right now. You know, is Donald Trump intentionally trolling the FBI by picking the worst people to run it right?

right now. He said he wanted retaliation and retribution. And what better way to do that than literally pick Cash Patel, who's written books and is posted about, you know, his distaste and hatred for the FBI. And also, if I was a career guy at the FBI and I found out that a 22-year-old kid, with Thomas Fugate III, who was an intern or a gardener with no experience, was now getting one of those senior positions. And I had a report to a former intern. who's now, what's Fugate running like counterterrorism? He's doing like domestic counterterrorism. I mean, I don't even know how the morale exists at all in the FBI.

And then I read that lawsuit that was filed last week by Driscoll and Evans and all those other top leaders who were saying all that Patel and Bongino cared about was social media likes and reposts over investigatory work. So I don't know. It feels like it feels like he was. wants to destroy the FBI by doing. So we're the victims. I think that's right. I think that's right. And to put that kind of incompetence in charge of the FBI really helps to kind of hollow it out. And people are leaving the FBI in droves or losing this expertise. And what's more

around the country as FBI agents show up as witnesses in important cases, juries are not believing them because they think the FBI now is just essentially a political tool of the president. And that's terrible. In those pleadings that we're talking about, this lawsuit, that was filed by three well-respected senior FBI agents. And they basically said in the complaint, Patel told them that if they worked on an investigation of Donald Trump, that they were going to get fire. And he said that is possibly illegal, but we're going to do it anyway. And there's nothing you can do about it. That's basically now our FBI leadership. And you're right. You put someone like that in charge. People are going to flee the agency. It's going to degrade. And I guess that's

what the president wants. It's part of his retribution campaign. You know, it's a great point. I never even thought of it. So I want to highlight it here that there are, you know, thousands of cases taking place or more across the country where FBI agents have investigated something. They've then turned over the file, working in concert with the United States Attorney's Office. An indictment is brought. Eventually, if the case goes to trial, that FBI agent has to testify. And if you're the criminal defense attorney, you're out there, and this is probably going on now across the country.

You're taking all of these posts and the trolling and all the things that, Patel and Bongino and their concealment. And you're going to cross-examine the FBI agent who's going to have, and the case may not even be about any Trump relay. It may be about drugs. It may be about counterterrorism, right? But you're going to start showing, wait a minute. This is what they're doing with fishing boats, Venezuela, without giving evidence. This is what they're doing with immigrants. I'm supposed to trust you. And you look at a jury that represents a cross-section. And all you need is one to hang that. And you could probably pick them out either. right now in these very serious cases.

I think that is absolutely the case. I talked to assistant U.S. attorneys when Trump was president the first time, and it was nowhere near as bad then. And they were telling me, yes, defense counsel are making the arguments in court that the president's people are coming after me for X, Y, or Z reasons, and it's already affecting their ability to prosecute cases. Now you have an addition to, you know, this troll is, as a troll as FBI director, you have some of these real rabid partisans being appointed as

U.S. attorneys, and you have people leaving those offices, too. It's just really decimating the whole Department of Justice. And meanwhile, it's not like the threats have gone away from around the world or domestically, but nevertheless, this premier agency is just being crippled. I want to talk about the economy quickly, although it doesn't have to be quickly. It's just we can't do the interview all day. Obviously, your time is precious. You've got the Fox poll showing that 52% of Americans right now view the economy right now as worse under Trump than it was under Biden.

And the entire MAGA Republican campaign was to basically vilify the other administration's economy and say they were going to make things more affordable and make housing more accessible. and make housing more accessible and all of these things. But it seems all they're interested in doing is chopping down the trees around the White House to build the 90,000 square foot ballroom or to change the Rose Garden to club Rose Garden or Donald Trump gallivanting in the UK as they put on the kind of Disney princess version at Windsor Castle for him, you know, to try to appeal to his ego. And Americans are suffering while to me, you have. all these symbols of Trump kind of flaunting his wealth now that he's achieved with the quid pro quos

and just rubbing it in our faces, it feels like. Oh, for sure, for sure. I, you know, just the other day Forbes came out with their, you know, I don't know, a thousand richest people. And Trump had moved up by, you know, over a hundred spaces. He's already made billions of dollars in the first eight months of this administration. He's made more money in eight months. In eight months, he's made more money in eight months, then he made in his entire life before that. And it's just graft. It's just using the instruments of his office to grab money. He's getting $16 million from CBS over a bogus lawsuit. He's getting $12 million from ABC over another bogus lawsuit. He's getting another third Air Force one from the gutteries. So while people on the ground are still trying to pay their rent and figure out

how they're going to pay for those ever more expensive groceries. I guess the president would say they should take solace in the fact that he now is a third Air Force one. He has a palace in the sky, courtesy of gutter. That's not helping anyone. People's personal economies are really suffering right now. Donald Trump's personal economy is the only one that is doing well. And I think this is why people are really souring on him as we see.

these prices continue to climb, he had promised, as you pointed out, that on day one, he was going to bring prices down. But his tariff policies are driving them up. Everything else he's doing is driving those policies up. And it's just making life even more difficult for average families. And finally, I want to get your take on Brendan Carr, FCC Commissioner wrote Project 2025 Roadmap on this. He's like posting memes of like the office. like raising the roof, or Jack Nicholson, like, laughing and mocking. Like, he's, like, actually playing, like, a villain. Like, it's just weird to see this behavior from any human being,

yet alone the leader of the FCC commissioner, gloating about getting a talk show host or a late-night talk shows, like Jimmy Kimmel, you know, kicked off the air and the chilling effect that that has. And then you have, obviously, you have Next Star wanting to do their super, their big merger where they need FCC approval to clear that 39% ownership cap. You've got Sinclair saying that Kimmel needs to issue an apology and donate money to the Kirk family. I went back and watched.

I'm like, what are we doing here? You know, obviously we condemned what happened in the most serious of terms, but to use that as a pretext to violate everybody's First Amendment rights, it just seems that's what they want to do more than anything. So true. Brennan Carr is now just another kind of anti-free speech pro MAGA voice that happens to be chairing this important commission that gets to decide whether a news organization gets a license to broadcast. And for someone in that role to be such an overt partisan, to try to be censoring speech the president doesn't like. and it comes, you know, after a long series of similar attacks on the First Amendment.

So you have the FCC threatened to withhold the ability of Paramount to merge with Skydance unless they, CBS pays off the president. So CBS pays off the president $16 million to supposedly settle that litigation, that frivolous litigation that president brought against CBS. So the merger can go through. And then you have that same guy who was holding up that merger, potentially holding up the acquisitions of these local stations, Next Star and Sinclair, who both want to acquire other media companies.

But no, they're not going to get approval from the FCC unless they can do something to show their endearment to the president. And what better way than trying to pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air? So you have Stephen Colbert off the air. air. You have Kimmel off the air. Immediately, Colbert off the air next year, you have this suppression of free speech. And they're just getting started. They're going to go after non-profit organizations. They're going to threaten those organizations tax exempt status. Trump is already taking aim now at NBC, threatening NBC. Of course, he sued the New York Times, which just got thrown out with the judge there at powerful terms, said, this is not a complaint. This is a

propaganda filing, masquerading as some kind of a civil complaint. But it does show, I think, cumulatively, the First Amendment has never been more at risk in this country than it is today. Before we go, Senator, you know, I see signs of hope out there, whether it is peaceful protests, whether it's the fact that people don't like this, Trump's approval, is plummeting right now. It's not that this is being embraced and he's being viewed as this is what we've always wanted. But from your vantage point, what you're seeing, reasons for hope, you see Democrats fighting back, coming back from the summer with some fighting spirit. What do you see?

You know, there's a lot of reasons for hope and what we're saying. I mean, just today, the fact that the court throughout this phony baloney propaganda lawsuit by the president against the New York Times, and not just threw it out, but castigated it, shows, okay, at the district level, there's still some independence. There's still a check and balance. That's working. Seeing people take to the streets to protest the militarization of Washington, D.C., thousands of people take the streets, or millions of people taking the streets on No King's Day to show, no, no, we're not going back to the days when we answer to a King. Those kind of actions give me optimism, seeing prosecutors resign rather than doing things that are unethical, seeing a CDC

director who's been fired, willing to come before Congress and tell the American people what they're doing is dangerous to your health. What they asked me to do before they fired me because I refused would have been dangerous to your health. That is, to make decisions about vaccines, not based on science, but based on their anti-vax conspiracy. theories. So there are lots of heroes who are coming out every day. And the American people, I think, are standing up every day. In Chicago, there are plans to make sure that kids can get to school from immigrant families. So other parents are taking them to school so that their parents don't get arrested, bringing their kids to school. And they're making food deliveries

to folks rather than have them risk going out shopping and getting arrested. So lots of people stepping up right now. Each of us needs to step up in our own way to mitigate the harms that are going on until we can put an end to them. Senator Adam Schiff, thanks for joining us as always. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers this month. Thanks for watching. Be sure to add the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast for new updates every single day. Thank you.