The MeidasTouch Podcast - The GOP Loves Orgies, Cocaine and Insurrection (Ft. Daniel Goldman)
Episode Date: April 1, 2022On today’s episode of The MeidasTouch Podcast, we sit down with Daniel Goldman, trial attorney and legal analyst who served as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and also serv...ed as lead counsel in the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. Goldman breaks down his thoughts on the 7 hours and 37 minutes of missing records from Donald Trump & The White House on Jan 6, how the Jan 6 Committee is handling their investigation and what we can expect in the coming weeks. The remainder of the episode, the brothers discuss the latest breaking news of the week including; the January 6 committee referring contempt charges for Navarro & Scavino, the 7+ hour gap in Trump’s phone logs on Jan. 6, Biden’s proposed tax plan to make sure billionaires pay their fair share and much more. If you enjoyed today’s episode please be sure to rate, review and subscribe! As always, thank YOU for listening! DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: AG1 by AthleticGreens: https://athleticgreens.com/meidas ExpressVPN: https://expressVPN.com/meidas Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 Zoomed In: https://pod.link/1580828633 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The seven-hour gap in Trump's phone log during the insurrection.
Was he using burner phones?
Me think so.
The January 6th committee refers Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino for contempt of Congress.
Bye-bye.
Fallout over Madison Cawthorn saying GOP is engaged in coke orgies.
Uh-oh.
Republicans rushed to Ginny Thomas' defense saying she has a First Amendment right to
be an insurrectionist.
What in the world?
Biden wants to tax billionaires.
Republicans want to tax you. And the media has
lost its damn mind. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast. We have a great show for you today
covering those topics and our guests, who other than to have what we're talking about, a seven
hour gap of Trump phone records during the insurrection.
And Daniel Goldman, who was the lead counsel of the House impeachment inquiry and former federal prosecutor from the Southern District of New York.
We have an incredible show for you today.
Brett Jordy, how are you doing?
Love the intro. Love the new intro. I just,
I can't get over it. I love it. Intros are a huge hit. Although when you break it down and
condense all the stories like that in the very beginning, it's like, I mean, we're in a simulation,
right? I mean, all those things that happened like in the last few days, like we live in the
craziest times. For once, I would like to not live in unprecedented times.
Bring me those precedented times back, please.
It's honestly an excellent point because we just had a show two days ago.
Like the show was just Monday slash Tuesday.
And now we're back here Thursday, Friday.
And what the hell is going on, Ben?
Well, here's the thing, Brett.
I think you put this in a tweet the other day.
You said, serious question. Has any of the media put as a headline this seven hour gap in Trump's phone log
or are they too busy trying to criticize Joe Biden for the smallest minutia in the world?
The media has lost its damn mind. I mean, we can talk about this Mick Mulvaney story where CBS is paying this
Trump fascist Mick Mulvaney because they are rooting for fascists. They have Mick Mulvaney
on the payroll. Mick Mulvaney says we extort people all the time, foreign leaders. What we
did with Zelensky, that's par for the course here. You don't hire insurrectionists
as a media company, but you know what? When you break it down, big media is big business.
Big business, they don't like capitalism. You know what they like? They like oligarchy.
They like the idea that we could have people in power who don't tax us anything. We could have people in power who give us no rules. Big business hates capitalism. Most of the time they want socialism for big business only, not actually socialism that benefits the people. That's what's going on here. The media is rooting for fascism.
They need to be called out. Brett, your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I think it's really upsetting. I
mean, there's no other real explanation for it to me other than they're just looking at their
bottom line. They're looking for dollars and cents. And this whole notion that CBS is going
to hire Mick Mulvaney is just incredibly disgraceful, especially at a time, like you said, Ben, this is the guy who in the wake of Trump's impeachment, right after
he had that infamous phone call with Vladimir Zelensky, where he said, do me a favor, though,
he goes, we do that all the time at the White House.
Get over it.
And now, especially this would have been horrible at any time.
But now, especially during this Russian invasion of Ukraine, to think it's a good idea to bring
on Mick Mulvaney is just outrageous.
And the problem that I have is there are so many good journalists out there.
And The Washington Post and CBS News, they were the ones who broke this seven and a half
hour gap story wide open.
It was their story.
It was their exclusive.
And so I commend them on breaking
that story. It's incredibly, incredibly important. And then what do they do right after it goes off
their homepage on their website within mere hours? And CBS News on the same day as breaking this
story hires Mick Mulvaney, a literal person who was involved in all this stuff to their network.
Now it's coming out that they hired him because they, quote, want access to Republicans because they think, quote, that Republicans are definitely going to
win in the midterms. And it's this access journalism. It's this desire to always just
be in the in crowd rather than actually doing the journalism that we need that is leading us
to our problems. And there's I'm sorry, there's just no both siding democracy.
There's not, they're not two sides of the same coin.
And until the Republican Party or some other party comes around to supporting democracy,
the media can't treat these as two sides of the same coin.
It's just getting ridiculous.
And they're really just at this point serving the interests of autocrats.
The media is complicit.
Play the clip, Brett,
of Senator Hawley and Senator Hawley basically saying that Ginni Thomas has an absolute right
to talk about, to lead the insurrection. It's her First Amendment right.
Okay, so Clarence Thomas's wife has opinions. Is she not free to express them? I think it would
be natural for people that
are dating, people that are married. There probably are a number of issues people disagree on, a number
of issues they agree on. If that's the case, if that's the standard now Democrats want to set,
wouldn't that apply to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and the laptop? And wouldn't Joe equally have to
be impeached himself or recused as they're trying to do to Clarence Thomas?
They are bending over their backwards to make this Hunter Biden thing a thing.
And no, I mean, she's allowed to have opinions.
Yes, of course.
And her opinions are allowed to differ from her husband.
Yes, of course.
She's not allowed to engage in coups against the United States government.
Let's be clear about what we're talking about.
An insurrection to overthrow the United States government. And all ethics rules say that if you are a justice on a case and there is even the appearance of impropriety, you have to recuse yourself.
And Clarence Thomas had the option to do this.
There was already a January 6th case in front of him where he had the ability to recuse himself.
He chose not to. And then he was the lone no vote,
the only one to vote no in getting access
to those records for the January 6th committee,
which I think speaks volumes
when he could have just sat on the sidelines.
And then we could have said, yes,
Ginny Thomas is a crazy bat shit, QAnon obsessed,
not even QAnon adjacent.
The stuff she's saying is deep in the weeds
of the firm straight.
Be like me. Can I say one thing though,
Brett? Yes. Ginny Thomas is a leader in the conservative party. Hunter Biden is not a leader
in the democratic party or a liberal party movement. She runs organizations that were
called conservative. And again, I don't embrace that term. That's just what
they call it, that for them, conservatism is supporting the insurrection, being against
vaccines. But she is a leader in that. And she is known to do all of these things in concert with
Justice Thomas. But Brett, also play the clip of Jim Jordan, because I want to draw a comparison in a second
between what Republicans are talking about,
what Democrats are talking about,
and what the media is doing.
So play this clip of Jim Jordan also saying,
why are they doing this to the wife
of a Supreme Court justice?
Well, think of the obvious comparison.
Look what they're doing to the wife
of a Supreme
Court justice who is simply engaging in her First Amendment rights to advocate and talk about issues
that she cares about. Look what they're trying to do to her compared to the son of the commander in
chief who took money from companies connected to the Chinese Communist Party. Imagine what they
would do if this was one of the Trump children.
I mean, that is so ridiculous. The country again. That's what Jim Jordan says. At the same time,
Brett and Jordy, Jordy after Jim Jordan, I apologize for that, Jordy. That's why I changed
my name to Jordy. Jim Jordan made me change my name. What are Democrats talking about? Democrats
are talking about pushing forward a bill, which they hope to be bipartisan,
to cap the price of insulin at $35 a month, to lower drug prices. That's a tangible item
that Democrats are fighting for. What is Joe Biden fighting for? What's he messaging out there? He wants to put a 20% tax, minimum tax,
that applies to billionaires. Because right now, billionaires pay an average rate of 8%
of their total income. You, listening to this, pay far more than 8% of your total income on taxes. Billionaires are paying about 8%, if that,
on their total income.
And they have schemes that in many cases
try to pay no personal income tax.
A firefighter, a teacher pays double that right now.
That is something that Democrats out there are fighting for.
And of course,
we have some people in the Democratic Party who aren't being that helpful, Joe Manchin included. But here are the messages coming from the president. We need to tax billionaires,
not you. The Republicans want to tax you. They want to tax firefighters, teachers, workers.
They have. They've taxed you more. And at the same time,
they're supporting insurrectionists. And what is the narrative that the media is pushing?
The media is pushing anti-Biden agendas. They're trying to put their fingers on the thumb because
ultimately they want fascism. And Brett, the ultimate headline, what the media is not talking about, what the media is not talking about is this gap anymore. It's like, all right, there's a gap. Let's I went on the Washington Post website and it had already faded off the front page. It wasn't even there anymore. What was there in its place? Their special report
on Hunter Biden. They had two Hunter Biden pieces and then nothing, nothing, not even one thing
about Trump. I went over to New York Times. I'm like, well, New York Times must be saying
something about this. This is like the biggest scandal on the planet as far in the midst of an
attempt to overthrow the United States government. There must be a blip about it on the front page of the New York Times. No, but there is an article from
Brett Stevens, a noted contrarian idiot, who wrote a piece in support of Vladimir Putin
saying that maybe this was all Putin's strategy all along to lose all this territory. Maybe we're
all just getting played by all these big losses. That's what they decided to run with on the front page of their website.
Does he call himself a noted contrarian?
No, I called him that because I don't know what Bret Stephens calls himself, but his pieces are always contrary to popular belief.
I don't even know much about him, but what all these quote unquote conservatives do, their vision of like intellectualism is just going
against whatever is popular. So if you write a piece that you could be wrong, like the wrongest
person on the entire planet, but if it goes against conventional wisdom. So you'll give
an example, Brett, like, let's say like do a crayon is, you know, like the sky is blue.
They'll say, actually the sky is green and
here's why an article by brett stevens and he'll get into a ben shapiro would do ready let me do
ben shapiro we're hitting all the names let me do a branch up here you say the sky's blue let me
explain to you ladies and gentlemen why the sky is actually green let me tell you why the sky
is green you see blue but you see it through these various use. And there are different people
who say that sky is blue. But when you really break it down, what is what is the color blue?
Is it a mass consumption view of the world? Is this a view of the world that we've all embraced?
Or maybe it's metaverse.
Maybe what we're talking about is a metaverse and the sky is really green.
People do not listen to blue sky people.
I mean, they say shit like that.
People go, oh, well, the way he said it sounded smart. Like, oh, metaverse, this intellectual.
It's the entire basis of conservative thought.
And I use that term very loosely, just how they use it in these publications. But that's what gets you an appearance on CBS News. That's what gets you the
op-ed in the New York Times, unfortunately, because they're like, oh, this is a novel opinion.
But we also got to understand, you know, everyone has a right to an opinion, but not all opinions
are the same. And at a time when our democracy is at stake, you know, we have to learn to focus
on the things that are important to preserving democracy.
And I think that's the most important thing that the media could really be doing right now.
And so let me break down just the hard news here, because we do explain the news. So about the seven
hour gap internal White House records from the day of the insurrection on the UDIS Capitol that
were turned over to the House Select Committee show a gap in President Trump's phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes.
Many people are saying that Trump was using a burner phone.
We know Trump was speaking to people on the phone during this period.
And you have to keep track of your phone calls during this period.
We know because people have said they spoke to Trump.
People are saying, well, he's probably using burner phones.
Trump says, I don't even know what a burner phone is. Midas touch broke the story that through the Mary Trump lawsuit
that was filed in connection with Trump, that Trump used the term boner, boner phone.
He used the term burner phone like numerous times in the lawsuit.
Not sure he used the term boner phone.
I'm mature sometimes.
Obviously, those were written by the attorney who filed the case.
But, you know, this was the crux of Trump's lawsuit against Mary Trump that Mary Trump had used.
I said that. Face in the pot. you know, this was the crux of Trump's lawsuit against Mary Trump that Mary Trump had used.
That he used that she used burner phones multiple times. And then I saw our reporting get picked up by people like the independent Lawrence O'Donnell played it on his show the other night. We got zero
credit for it, by the way, even though we were the first to break this wide open. I might as
much. We break the story. I just get zero. We just get the shit. Very little credit, just off the nothing. Nothing. Very little credit.
You know, at least they reported on it though. I'm glad they reported on it. A little hat tip
would have been nice. Look what Midas Touch dug up on Lawrence O'Donnell. I like Lawrence too.
We get accused of cabals to bring down people in things that we have no involvement in. That's
where we get credit. And when we break news
like we do every day that the national media reports on, the national media doesn't give us
credit. But you know what? I don't care that the national media doesn't give us credit.
And there are some people who go to us, hey, we see you on YouTube. We really wish you were on TV.
We listen to your podcast. Guess what? Our reach in many ways is bigger than what the TV's reach is when we're
on YouTube and when we're on the podcast. And I really don't want to be complicit in the mainstream
media's mainstreaming of fascism. I don't really like being a part of that. I'm sorry. It doesn't
excite me or interest me to be one of the talking heads when they want
to just get a 30 second soundbite and try to, you know, both sides things.
That doesn't excite me.
What excites me is doing a podcast like this, being on YouTube, where we could actually
speak to people who can talk to you about these issues in ways that are detailed in
the ways you can understand.
Brett, just going to another piece of news right here. The House January 6th committee also referred the contempt charges for Navarro and for
Scavino. They are trying to claim, oh, attorney-client privilege. Representative Jamie Raskin
schooled them on what attorney-client privilege is and what executive privilege is, and their
absurd claims that they should have executive privilege play this pitch perfect representative Jamie Raskin clip.
Mr. Chairman, Madam Vice Chair, the American people opposed the January 6th insurrection
and the American people oppose future insurrections and coups against our government.
We are fighting to defend the institutions and values of democracy
at home against coup plotters and insurrectionists, and we are supporting other democracies around the
world under siege by autocrats and kleptocrats, bullies, and despots. We are on the side of the
people of Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, who is not a genius, but a mass murderer. And we stand
strong on the side of democracy, freedom, the Constitution, and the rule of law
against people who smashed our police officers in the face with Confederate
battle flags and tried to cancel out the results of our presidential election.
These two men are in contempt of Congress, and we must cite them
both for their brazen disregard for their duties and for our laws and our institutions.
Wow, that clip gets more powerful, like with age. Each day I listen to it more and more,
just dissecting each of the words there is so meaningful. And that's who Newt Gingrich, that's who the
Republicans, if they get into power, they want to investigate Jamie Raskin and they want to arrest
Jamie Raskin. That man who you just heard, Republicans want to arrest him. That just
tells you where the Republican Party is. I think the work of the January 6th
committee, I think the work that they're doing is so incredible. I have the utmost, utmost respect
for them. And I share everybody's frustration about the lack of action at DOJ when it comes
to prosecuting the people at the top. But I think and I hope for damn sure that there's action taken
on these referrals. But all these clips that we see
of the January 6th committee, this committee is going to age very well. They are doing the right
thing. They will be judged right for history, but let's hope that they are judged right right now
because there are criminals out there on the loose and we need to convict them fast.
And on a little bit of a lighter note,
Brett, and for the podcast listeners,
just Google a picture of Scavino really quick.
Why does he just look perpetually guilty?
Like he looks guilty of all of the crimes.
Can you bring it up for our video listeners, Brett?
Well, it's kind of because they model themselves after the bad guys.
They embrace that.
They have the Joker, like Bannon.
They have like the penguin, like they have like actual people who look like you're right.
They have people who look like the Batman villains who actually are the villains.
And Trump is like, you know, you could put Trump next to like the bad guy from Sonic the Hedgehog, like put them side by side. Like you go, you go,
they literally look like the bad guys in all of the movies. But Brett, good news on the, on the
DOJ rather bringing in about 137 new prosecutors as well to help prosecute January 6th related
cases though, which shows that there is momentum picking up there. But speaking of prosecutors, we have Daniel Goldman, one of the most world-renowned prosecutors, joining us on the
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And without further ado, let's bring in our interview with Daniel Goldman.
We are joined by Daniel Goldman, trial attorney, legal analyst who served as federal prosecutor
in the Southern District of New York and served as lead counsel in the first impeachment inquiry
against Donald Trump. Welcome to the pod, Daniel.
Thanks so much for having me, guys. I'm a huge fan of yours, and it's an honor to be here.
We are huge fans of yours because we are huge fans of democracy here on the Midas Touch podcast,
the rule of law, not as a bumper sticker, but as truly being implemented in our policies.
And big stories this week.
And let's start off with the bombshell report that seven hours and 37 minutes of call logs
are missing in White House documents handed over to the January 6th committee.
What are your thoughts on what this means for the investigation? Well, I think what it means, at least for Donald Trump and the folks around him,
is that there's no good explanation for this gap. Under the Presidential Records Act,
the president and his staff are required to document all sorts, everything that he does, including phone logs.
They then are required to provide that information to the National Archives. And somehow the National
Archives does not have the information about who Donald Trump spoke to during the insurrection.
And not coincidentally, I think, the seven hours and 37 minutes encompassed the entirety of the speech on the Ellipse and the insurrection at the Capitol.
So there's no good explanation. Either Donald Trump and others concealed the calls, erased them from the official records, which is a violation of the Presidential Records Act, or he evaded the Presidential Records Act in real time by using other telephones, other people's cell phones. There have been some rumors about using
burner phones, which are prepaid phones that cannot be traced back to the individual by
subscriber information. And so, I mean, those are the types of phones I dealt with all the time when
I was a prosecutor, prosecuting drug crimes, mafia crimes, even an insider trading case. I had a
high profile insider trading case where a cooperator of ours who was a member of the
board of a Fortune 500 company received a burner phone from the defendant and called it the bat
phone. And that's what he would call the defendant on to give him
insider trading information. So the burner phones are something that, broadly speaking,
are used widely by criminal networks and enterprises. But we don't know is the answer,
Ben, to the question is what what actually happened i i suppose it
could be a clerical mistake but somehow i don't think it is given the timing of it and giving
the substance of it and by the way we know that he had phone he had conversations during that time
it's not as if oh he could have just gone seven hours without having phone conversations. We know that he spoke to Kevin McCarthy.
We know that he spoke.
He called Mike Lee's phone and asked for Tommy Tuberville.
So we know there were phone conversations.
And now the question is on what phone?
Which is why the January 6th committee was asking or put in this uncomfortable position
of asking for their colleagues' records. It's not
that they wanted their colleagues' records for the hell of it. It was what phone numbers were
you getting calls from the president of the United States during the insurrection? Why were you as a
member of Congress speaking to the president during the insurrection? Right. And as I like to always say, if you don't want your phone records or your documents subpoenaed, don't do anything wrong. And so if these congressmen are involved in what occurred on January 6th and they're ashamed of that or they want to hide it then they probably shouldn't have done it
um but it's that i'm not sure you know as of what but based on the information we have right now
it's not that the the members of congress are hiding this information so i don't want to cast
dispersions on them you know at this point it it's Donald Trump and the people in the White House who are
hiding information as far as we know. So this is the concealing in plain sight story. People
like to focus on that also, like what happened during those seven hours, you know, and that's
very interesting and intriguing. But a lot of the stuff Trump does is not even concealed. Like when he called on Putin
to release messages relating to Hunter Biden this week, like this week again, you wrote recently on
Twitter, Russia calls for its partner Trump. That was the words they used on their state TV
controlled by Putin, partner Trump to be installed as president.
And you wrote, Trump calls for Russia
to help him politically at the same time.
All this while Russia commits war crimes
through brutal, unprovoked invasion
of another democratic nation.
This is the leader of the Republican Party.
But even though this is in plain sight, Daniel, Trump calling on Russia to do that
still seems like collusion. It still seems like a crime. Ex-presidents calling on foreign powers
to interfere right now. What do you make of that? I think Donald Trump is deteriorating to such a degree that he may have just lost all association with reality.
And I think he has become so drunk on his own power and influence, and to some degree, his invincibility that I think was certainly boosted by his
acquittals in the two impeachment trials, that he feels like he can do anything and
he will do anything to help himself.
I think, you know, Alan Dershowitz and his ill-advised argument in the second impeachment, where he basically said do whatever it is that he wants that is in his personal interest.
I frankly, notwithstanding the fact that I'm a former prosecutor,
I'm less interested in the criminal, potential criminal aspect of him asking again for help from Putin. And I'm far more
troubled by his knowing, willing and intentional alignment with Vladimir Putin at this stage. one thing for, you know, for Russia to be a sort of cooperative adversary, so to speak,
and that we had business with Russia, and we had dealings with them, they were involved in,
you know, trade agreements, etc. And when he was president, it's entirely a different thing. Now
that he is a warmongering war criminal, invading without provocation,
a democratic country, and that he is trying he is avowedly anti democratic and authoritarian. So
now when Trump aligns himself with that, he is outwardly aligning himself with a dictator.
And I think at the end of the day, that's what Trump wants to be.
And you talk about how in the podcast, you guys are big fans of the rule of law and democracy.
Everything that Trump espouses is contrary to the rule of law and contrary to democracy.
And what I was trying to say by that tweet is the Republican
Party has not disavowed him. In fact, to the contrary, they are all kissing his butt and they
are all catering to him. And he is the leader of this party. He has the most power of anyone in
the party. And so it's not just Trump, but it is also the members of the Republican Party that are
implicitly condoning this anti-democratic, fascist, wannabe dictator.
And that is incredibly troubling beyond the personal failings of Donald J. Trump.
And Daniel, how do we get people to understand that we are in a battle of democracy versus
autocracy?
It's very clear that there are all these other issues right now and people are concerned about inflation.
They're concerned about gas prices.
But how do we really tell them we cannot reelect somebody who is cozying up to dictators and, frankly, who wants to very hard in the world of Fox News and alt-right fringe websites, which get a ton of traction and far-right partisan radio, which gets an incredible amount of listenership because what happens is that
people,
people are not getting the objective truth through the news.
And I think that especially on the right, I mean, Fox news,
particularly in the evenings is, is state television.
And it is very little different than RT in Russia, which is
truthfully, state television. And so people are not getting an alternative viewpoint,
they're getting Donald Trump's word. And in some, a lot of what he says speaks to a lot of people who feel like, you know, this country has turned against them.
And I think they they just simply don't recognize the the they take for granted the values or the value of our democracy.
And it will be too late when it goes away if Donald Trump is
reelected. And at that point, he will have just completely co-opted a significant portion of our
country. So, I mean, part of the trick here, part of the problem is trying to reach these people
with something other than what comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. And at the end of the day,
this is why I sort of why I'm focused so much on the Republican Party. And that tweet is the party
and the members of the party and the other power holders in the party need to stand up to him and
need to promote to come down on the side of democracy, not on the side of Donald Trump. And that's really
the only way that I think that we're going to break through this logjam with Donald Trump at
the helm of the Republican Party. One of the things I always wondered, and I think I said it on MSNBC during the second impeachment is I was I was somewhat surprised, frankly, that
there were not 10 more Republican senators who joined in with the seven who voted for conviction.
And they all got together and they just say, if we convict him, there'll be a backlash. He will be pissed. The base will be pissed, but he will not be able
to run again. He will therefore not be able to raise money. He will have much less influence
over the party going forward. And we will be able to break ourselves from him. And I point to the
second impeachment, even though I did the first impeachment, because
I don't think they were in a place in the first impeachment to believe that they truly needed to
break away from him. But it was abundantly clear in the second impeachment and after January 6,
that the Republican Party needed to break away from him. And I will always wonder why they didn't realize that at the time and take the group decision
to convict him so that they could eliminate a lot of his power.
It just feels like pure cowardice, in my opinion.
Well, it's self-preservation, right?
It's a situation of they care more about their own seat and their own power, which is currency in Washington.
And they're worried about a primary from a Donald Trump endorsed opponent.
And so they will do anything possible to avoid that, including effectively selling their soul.
And you need look no further than Ted Cruz to see the perfect example of that.
I think that's spot on. And someone who's not taking democracy for granted is federal judge
Carter here out in California, who ruled that it was more likely than not that Donald Trump
committed multiple crimes, including felonies to obstruct Congress on January 6th. What message do
you think the judge was sending by putting that message out there? I felt that that was a little unusual to actually put out there in writing like that. I mean,
you're a federal prosecutor. How do you also think that Garland is handling all this? And
was that a message to Merrick Garland? At the end of the day, the way that he
ultimately ruled, he had to address that issue. The case is a fairly narrow issue related to John Eastman, who was the lawyer who sort of concocted the coup plan or at least the January 6 plan to try to overturn the will of the people on that day in the joint session of Congress.
It's a question of whether or not he needs to turn over his emails.
And there were a number of different legal arguments for why he needed to turn them over and that various privileges did not apply. Ultimately, the judge
said that there was enough reason for at least one of the privileges to apply that he had to address
the final argument, which is something called the crime fraud exception, which basically means that there is no attorney, client or
work product privilege if the information related to a fraud or a crime.
And so he had to address the allegations that Eastman and Trump were conspiring to commit
a crime related to January 6th. He basically just very efficiently and concisely
categorized a lot of the evidence that's out there in the public record and put it all together
and said that he found that that was more likely than not a crime. It's a different standard
than a federal prosecutor would need to meet in front of a jury,
which is beyond a reasonable doubt. But it is a very different thing to your point,
Brett, that you need to, it's one thing for Congress to make a referral to the Department of Justice, which comes with its own taint of political
veneer, it's entirely different to have an objective, neutral federal judge that is exactly
the type of judge that everyone at the Department of Justice appears in front of in court say this.
And so I'm not sure if it was intended to be a message to the
Department of Justice. But if I'm at DOJ, it is another data point among many that they need to be
really aggressively focused on investigating Trump and his associates role in trying to
overturn the election. Now, in their defense, they have over 750 prosecutions arising out of
January 6. And I think it's easy for us to just say, oh, there are all these prosecutions arising
out of the same incident that, you know incident. Sure, it's a lot,
but it's not that much. When I was a prosecutor, I charged a 40 defendant case and it consumed
all of my time. And because you have, every defendant has a lawyer and you have to go
through the process for each individual defendant.
And it's incredibly time consuming.
The vast majority of U.S. attorney's offices around the country do not charge 750 cases in a year.
And the DOJ has added on to their regular workload all these 750 cases, which is a tremendous amount. So
we do need to be understanding of, you know, a resource issue. All that being said,
we just cannot wait any longer that, you know, time is ticking, information gets lost,
memories fade. And, you know, we're getting to the point now where the January 6th committee
is going guns a blazing, they're interviewing everyone, that's going to complicate any
prosecution for the Department of Justice. But there's just no avoiding the requirement,
the duty of the Department of Justice to investigate whether Donald Trump and others around him committed the crime of what
I think is the best crime to charge is defrauding the United States by impairing a lawful election.
And you need look no further than Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation to see
that he used that exact charge against the Russian troll farm and the Russian
Internet Research Agency and other co-conspirators to charge them for interfering in our election
with the exact same charge. So it is, I think, the correct way to look at this,
which is a conspiracy that brings
everybody in that includes January 6th as sort of the climax of this months long effort, but would
also include all of the evidence related to Brad Raffensperger in Georgia and the members of the
Department of Justice, who Trump tried to just get them to say that it's corrupt, that the election
was corrupt, and then he and the Republican congressman would do the same. There are all
sorts of different tentacles that would be wrapped up into some sort of conspiracy, and it's all out
in the public. And that's just what's out in the public. We don't even know what these individuals
would say when interviewed as witnesses. So we're at the point now where it's not just enough to sort of
slowly plot along with January 6th, maybe make some connections to higher ups, to Trump or Roger
Stone or others. They need to be doing that, but they really need to have a separate investigative
thread that is focused on the coup attempt separate and apart from January 6th.
And to their credit, DOJ has now said multiple times they are, I think they're trying to make
it clear, listen, we are pursuing everyone involved in January 6th, no matter how high
up the chain it takes us. I know you've said previously that you haven't seen any evidence,
though, that they're building a case against Trump.
Do you take them at their word here that they really are pursuing everybody up to the top?
So I do take them at their word that their intention is to do that.
And I think it's very likely that there's an open investigation. is an investigation that is aggressively and intensively pursued is ultimately going to be
one that we will hear about. And by that, I mean, not from the Department of Justice itself and not
from the FBI, but from the witnesses that they will be approaching and that they will be trying to get information from.
And certainly, you know, Trump world is going to be up in arms and claim this is a political hit job and that's going to be their defense.
But even from people like Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia, who said
a couple of months ago that he has not heard from the Department of Justice.
Now, that is an obvious first step you would have because of that recording.
And he's not a hostile witness.
So you would go and you would interview him.
And presumably he would, you know, be forthright and honest.
And I don't think he's not going to lie that he did not hear from the DOJ.
I think from the witnesses, we would hear about it.
And there are too many witnesses who are relatively close to the action,
so to speak, who you would need to talk about to figure out
whether there's a crime or not not to wait until the very end. I don't
think you can build a case without making requests of people who would have information,
and even if they might not be, you know, targets or subjects themselves. And I just think we would, I think the nature of Washington in particular,
the nature of the way that Trump world defends itself, we would hear if they were reaching out
to speak to these witnesses. And there's a lot of work that can be done behind the scenes for sure.
And I imagine that they are doing some of that. But I guess my concern is I don't think
that a case will arise out of the traditional way of working your way up from low level to high
level from the January 6th folks. Now they've done that with January 6th. they've worked their way up. But to cross over from, you know, the
defendant Rhodes and the other leaders of these, and Terrio and the other leaders of these
white nationalist groups, to make the crossover to the White House and the campaign and Giuliani and all of the Eastmen and all of these, you know, these Sidney Powell,
all these people like that's not a natural progression up. That's really going across.
And so that's not the way I would be thinking about making this case. There's there could very
well be information that flows from that that could be helpful, but there's a whole other aspect of the investigation that precedes January 6th that relates to his efforts to coerce the state legislatures to essentially nullify the voters and the votes that is totally separate from January 6th. And so my concern is that we're not hearing
about that side of things. And I just think that we will. And Daniel, earlier you mentioned Fox
News basically being state run TV, which they are to your credit. They are. And now going back to
what we were talking about earlier, the missing phone records here, when there was 18 and a half
minutes of the missing tape of Richard Nixon,
that became a defining moment of the Watergate scandal. So here we have seven hours and 37
minutes of missing records. Is there a way to convey the gravity of this in the current media
landscape? Well, I do. I mean, the good thing about it is there are ways to sort of retrace that time period. Meadows used, that other folks close to Trump, whether it be Dan Scavino or Johnny McAtee or
other people who were generally with Trump, presumably they have some of those numbers
and they can get the phone records for those numbers. And they can then start to retrace a
little bit about who those numbers were talking to. They can ask witnesses,
you know, did you speak to him? Did you see him speak to anyone? There are some witnesses who
were in the White House that day who are cooperating with the January 6th committee,
and they very well may have information about who he spoke to. Obviously, you know, it'd be great
for Kevin McCarthy to offer up his phone records to show when he spoke to. Obviously, you know, it'd be great for Kevin McCarthy to
offer up his phone records to show when he spoke to Donald Trump at what hour, but let's not expect
that to happen. Even though that would obviously be the right thing to do. So, you the, it's similar in some respects to Nixon because of the gap.
But anytime you have recordings, it's a totally different animal than phone records.
Because you don't know the substance of the conversation with the phone records alone.
And so I think it's, I think what is interesting is what he's trying to hide.
Who was he talking to that he's trying to conceal?
We more or less know where Trump stood on all of this.
It's no secret. It's not as if he had nefarious conversations.
I mean, to Ben's point, everything is out in the open with him.
His obstruction is in plain sight and he's not afraid to obstruct justice.
He did it with Mueller.
He did it with our investigation of Ukraine.
He's doing it again.
That's his MO.
That's not a surprise, and he's not ashamed of it, even though it is incredibly, incredibly
debilitating to our justice system when you have people trying to conceal the evidence so that you
can't get to the facts and the truth. But I think what's more interesting about it is who he was
talking to. And that will be what I hope will start to trickle out. Daniel Goldman, I want to
thank you for your time today. I hope, did you see that Trump filed that ridiculous case out in Florida? It was that stupid
RICO case that he filed, which isn't even really a case, but it gives some of those, well, it gives
those people he sued, if they don't file the motion to dismiss right away or whatever the
procedure there is, the right to depose Donald Trump. Here's my call to any one of those people
who were sued. Please hire Daniel Goldman. You may not even want this, Daniel.
I'm calling for it. I want them to hire you so you can cross-examine
Donald Trump in the next 60 days. Are you in or are you out?
I'm in. Let's go. Jump at that opportunity any day.
You heard it there. If you were one of those 50 people sued in that ridiculous lawsuit,
Daniel will represent you pro bono, Daniel.
Of course, pro bono.
Daniel will represent you.
I will pay them to let me take the deposition of Donald Trump.
You heard it here first on the Midas Touch podcast.
Daniel Goldman, thank you for joining us on the pod.
Thanks so much for having me, guys.
It was a pleasure.
Daniel Goldman, you heard that, folks.
He will provide pro bono legal services.
Amazing how generous you are with other people's time and money.
It's so, so kind of you.
It's really a great Ben.
Ben is so generous with other people's time.
He is one of his best qualities.
I don't know if that was a true offer by Daniel Goldman.
I think he was serious.
I think he was serious.
I'd love to see Daniel Goldman.
He's a man of integrity.
Can we set that up?
If you've been sued by Donald,
it's like one of those lawyer commercials.
If you've been sued by Donald Trump in a frivolous lawsuit,
now you want to take his deposition.
Now he is enlisting my free time to make a video
ad of Daniel Goldman doing that. And by the way, when Daniel Goldman sees this video, he would be
quite confused. Call Daniel Goldman, former federal prosecutor for the Southern District
of New York. He will take the Donald Trump deposit. Have you seen it? We buy a spot on CNN. Totally unrelated. There's this ridiculous lawyer ad that airs in Los Angeles for this lawyer. I
don't want to say his name because I don't want to give him free airtime, but his name is big.
Let's call him Frank because I don't want to actually give him free airtime lessons but but but it's basically like it's like i've been hit in a car accident
i'm gonna die i'm dying i gotta call big frank right now call him please please this is my
dying wish like it's the most screwed up ad yeah it's the crit and it's someone screaming like
that i wish i would have called him earlier but but you can do it for me. Those lawyer ads are wild.
And my law saying that's a lawyer ad, but talking about that's wild. Madison, I thought you're
going to say talking about boner phones, Madison. I think because of the Madison Cawthorn Coke orgy
story that I had up that we have to talk about. We talked about it
on the last podcast. Madison Cawthorn said that his GOP colleagues, that one of the things when
he came to DC that, you know, people wanted to do all cocaine with them and they offered to invite
him to all of these orgies. Like it was like the craziest, the craziest thing to hear a Republican
Congressman say, but that was, that story was broken by Patriot takes Patriot
takes just breaks like every major big story. And also, I don't think that I don't think the
media credits them also with these stories. No one credits Patriot. They just write like stories.
The stories about Patriot takes, why is this social media account of doing media? It's like,
it's like the dumbest thing in the world. It's like, are you media and you have a social
media account? Why is that a social media account doing media? Why can't they just-
All these legacy media, they're honestly, they're afraid of social media because the reach of
groups like Patriot Takes and Midas Touch of other like-minded groups out there are bigger
than most of them. It's wild. They spend more time trying to fact check us, attack us, go after us, then like go after Trump. That's been one of the strangest revelations since we have the weirdest things. for democracy every day. And these fucking phonies who go out on TV, who try to act like they care
about the issues, they just try to attack pro-democracy groups over the dumbest little
shit ever while they just let the insurrectionists like reign supreme. Anyway, let's talk about the
Madison story. So the Republicans are like, dude, why are are you like no ben here's the most revealing part about
why are you telling people we've had we've had insurrections we've had the ginny thomas revelation
we've had marjorie taylor green appear at literal nazi rallies not a peep from kevin mccarthy
and the republican party but the revelation of cocaine fueled orgies was the one thing where Kevin McCarthy
had to put his foot down and have a stern talking to with Madison Cawthorn.
You named names, Madison.
And so he brought him in yesterday on Wednesday.
He brings in Madison Cawthorn into his office.
There is a photo of Madison Cawthorn leaving.
And first off, I apologize for what I'm about to say,
but the headlines on all this stuff,
I'm just going to be immature for a few seconds.
There was a headline from, I think it was Manu Raju,
who, I can't even say it.
It's going to be so gross.
But he goes, Tom Tillich just unloaded all over Madison Cawthorn in a private meeting. And then the second one was talking about how the minority whip had to have a talking to with Madison Cawthorn. Can we not use phrases like whips and unloads and all this stuff? Are they doing it on purpose?
Because I'm immature and I'm laughing about all of it.
But this is the thing that Kevin McCarthy, and if you look at the pictures of Corathorne
coming out here, and I'm putting one up right now for our listeners, I don't know if Kevin
McCarthy, if they actually screamed at him and he looks flushed, he looks like he's smiling,
but it looks like he might be smiling through tears. His face is bright red. It's a very strange sort of image
of him. And I think, you know, I just imagined it, you know, Madison, you know, Madison's like,
he's a young, he's like 26. Yeah. He's a kid. He's a kid. No excuse. He's an insurrectionist,
but he's a kid. Kevin McCarthy mustccarthy must be like the fuck are you doing
you know what it's like it's it's it's fight club you know and the first rule of orgies and uh
cocaine is you don't talk about the orgies and cocaine and i think corthorne kind of
let a little secret in about what's going on over here at the you know house freedom caucus
people people people here's my plea to you. We've talked about it.
Pro insurrectionist, pro coup, whatever the hell Madison Cawthorn's doing. You listen to these
podcasts. We need you to act like we really do have an opportunity. The media doesn't know what
they're talking about. The media is wrong. The media wants to set up this close race in 2022.
Stop.
It's not fait accompli that what's going to happen is going to be horrible.
There are polls that suggest that Democrats can win.
American people, when they know the ideas of the Democratic Party, will vote Democratic
because those ideas help people.
That's the only reason why I'm a Democrat is that
the Democratic policies are common sense and they help people right now. They help Americans. They're
not serving the interests of insurrectionists and billionaires. I want to give a special thanks to
our guest, Daniel Goldman, for joining us on the pod special. Thanks to our sponsors, ExpressVPN and Athletic Greens.
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