The Young Turks - Cast In Stone

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Texas woman charged with threatening federal judge overseeing Trump in Jan. 6 case. Explosive new footage shows Roger Stone hatching Trump's 2020 election plot. Trump’s lawyers ask him to cancel a press conference on the Georgia election before he makes matters worse. Judge who approved a raid on a Kansas newspaper has a history of DUI arrests. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on why he rejected Republican lawmakers' attempts to means-test school meals for K-12 students: "The haves and the have-nots in the school lunchroom is not a necessary thing. Just feed our children." HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur) & Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now.

I get a free Tilly Dog. Chilly Dog, not included. The Naked God. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. Woo! It's up! I don't know. All right, welcome to the Young Turks.

I yell it like this because it's fun. You're crazy. I have the most random prediction for you guys later in the show. Super random, okay? So that'll be fun for everybody. Jank you're Anna Kasparian, obviously, with you guys. You're predicting that you're going to have a prediction later in the show? No, that would be, though I said fun prediction later in the show.

That would be the most hilarious prediction if you predict a prediction, your own one. No, no, yes, it'll be within a story. Oh, got it, okay. Yes, all right. Am I going to tell you which story that Easter egg is in? No, I'm not. That's part of why it's random. And look, there's a thousand great stories in today's show as usual.

But to me, the Roger Stone one's super, super interesting. And Jordan Peterson's book reviews. Oh, we're going to have super fun with that one. All right, Casper. Well, we begin with a little bit of discouraging news because political violence and threats against opponents. happened to continue. And so let's discuss that. A Texas woman has been arrested following allegations that she sent a threatening voicemail message to Judge Tanya Chutkin, who of course

is the judge overseeing the Department of Justice's election interference case against Donald Trump. Now, of course, Donald Trump's truth social posts don't do anything to help this situation at all. He puts out his own threats. But they aren't, at all as explicit as the threats that we're about to get into. Now, according to a criminal complaint filed last week, on the night of August 5th, prosecutors alleged that Abigail Joe Shry left a voicemail for Judge Tanya Chutkin, who is black that said in part, you are in our sights, we want to kill you. The reporting continues to say that in the message to Chutkin,

Shri alleged that if Trump were not to be elected president in 2024, quote, we are coming to kill you, end quote, and you will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it, end quote, per the complaint. I don't, look, I think that this is someone who is obviously obsessed with Donald Trump and will stop it, in her mind, stop at nothing to ensure that he gets elected again in in 2024. I don't know why they felt the need to name or label the judge's race. I don't think that this was inspired by racism. I think this was inspired by someone who's a sycophant for Donald Trump. And no, well, there's a good reason why they mention race in this context.

First of all, she sent it to Chutkinu. She also sent it to Sheila Jackson Lee. Oh, that's a good point. But hold on, it gets way worse than that. And so, and they're both, But Sheila Jackson leaves from Texas. That's her home state. You say, well, maybe it's coincidental. No, not coincidental. Because she also said in the messages, you're a stupid slave. Oh, I didn't see that.

Yeah, and called her the N-word. Okay, my apologies. I did not see that. That was not in the report that I read. My apologies. Okay, so definitely racially motivated. I don't know why they left it out of the CBS report. That's okay.

Yeah, but anyway. But you're right, by the way. I read several articles that didn't have it. Right. And some articles that did. And I thought, that's so curious, why did they leave it out of the other articles? I don't understand why some legacy media outlets omit important information, especially because in the context of the CBS News report, you specifically mention, you go out of your way to mention

that the judge is black, but then in the rest of the piece, there is no mention of the racist attacks against these individuals. Anyway, apologies for that. All right, but there are more details to this. So three days after that call and after that voicemail message, special agents with the Department of Homeland Security visited her home in the city of Alvin, which is located in the Houston metropolitan area. And she allegedly admitted to making the call and leaving the message. And so she even told the special agents that she was not planning to travel to DC, but if Lee comes to Alvin, then we need to worry. I can't, but like, not only should she admit to it, which I'm glad she did, but then she continues to put out threats as

she's talking to investigators. Yeah, look, I get it. People who are going to do these terroristic threats, and in this case, quite literal, are not the brightest bulbs, right? So it reminds me the story I've told often a bunch of my friends got into a fight in New Jersey when we're growing up. I wasn't there that day. They go to court. The other guy punched my friend in the face. And he says, Your Honor, I didn't punch him in the face. It's not true.

I punched him in the stomach. And the judge is like, that's still assault. So you just confessed. Okay. So and that's what she's doing here. Like, I wasn't going to go to D.C. to murder her. I was only going to murder her if she came to town. Thank you for the confession.

But guys, the fact that she's not the brightest pole is not any relief at all. So we're not talking about Trump, like my main concern, I've said it a hundred times on the show, is not that Trump has going to be, is going to build this incredibly sophisticated system where people are going to attack you and they have brilliant strategy, et cetera. No, it's called stochastic terrorism. They just say, well, no one rid me of this meddlesome priest, okay? Like someone do something about this biased, terrible person, and then they are expecting that the least bright people will take that cue and go, okay, I'll do it, right? And they're kind of almost halfway expecting them to be not that bright to do something this horrible and reactionary.

So something that stood out to me in regard to Donald Trump's posts on truth social was something that he said specifically about this judge. So let's go to the last graphic here, Chutkin, who has overseen several cases related to the January 6th capital insurrection, issued a protective order last week limiting the use and disclosure of sensitive material in the case moving forward. And this is the relevant part. Trump publicly attacked Chutkin in a truth social post Sunday, calling her, quote, very unbiased and unfair. I don't know how that makes any sense. I think he maybe just made a mistake there. You want an unbiased judge, but okay.

No, I mean, you want to talk about not the brightest bulb. I mean, of all the different jacko lanterns this Halloween, I mean, that guy is just the dimmest one of them all, no candle in the jacko lantern at all. So, but what I always find amazing is that he's a former president. He has all these staffers, right? And no one goes, Mr. President, so sorry, you just have to take out the unbiasedased. part you meant very biased and unfair. No one dares to do that. And so to this day, he just leaves it up, even though it's totally wrong. I mean, he's made a thousand mistakes, blatant, over the top,

crazy mistakes that nobody ever corrects because he will not take any criticism. And he does any, and he's not that bright himself. And so it's just super embarrassing in a thousand different ways. But guys, the embarrassing part, we've been over a billion times with Donald Trump. The The dangerous part is the part we're worried about here. And look, there's this potential civil lining here out of this horrible, horrific story. And by the way, now his fans are now starting to apparently docks grand jurors. Right, we talked about that on the show yesterday. Yeah.

And so that's an unbelievable disaster. That's exactly what brown shirts do. They instigate vigilante terrorism against anyone who opposes them, making good, decent people not want to go into the public square. And back away, so only the bad guys wind up dominating the conversation and politics and media, et cetera. But where the hell is the silver lining? Look, at some point, the Republican Party and its voters have to decide if they're this ugly. And so if you're a leftist and you say, are you crazy? They made that decision 2,000 times already, right?

They did in 2016, it was 17 people in the race. They chose him out of that lot. In 2020, 93% of Republicans backed him, et cetera. I make that case. I make that case and my book, Justice, is coming, right? get the link down below t yt.com slash justice anyways but I think he's going to go over the top and say something significantly violent on the record like we know he told mark meadows his chief of staff that he didn't mind mike Pence being killed by his supporters but he but it's not on

tape it's you don't you didn't see him saying that right and maybe I'm wrong maybe he'll say it And Maga will go, I'm good with it, right? If he said that over the phone, couldn't that recording be subpoenaed? It's not at all clear that he said it over the phone. And if it's the White House, I'm not even sure what rules apply, right? So, but Mark Meadows might be turning evidence against them. But Maga's not going to believe anyone else. They're not going to believe Meadows, they're not going to believe anyone.

But if he's on TV and he says, maybe she should be killed, I, you know, like, I don't know that he's going to go that far and I don't know that he's going to say it about this person. I hope he never says it about anybody, right? But he has verbal diarrhea and he cannot help himself. And his instinct is towards violence. And so if he goes over that line, which I think I suspect at some point you will, that's my guess. Then the Republican Party has a decision to make. Are you still going to stick with this monster? And I don't know the answer. So I don't even know if like the mainstream Republican Party has a choice. And the reason why I say that isn't because I want to encourage them to continue putting him up on a pedestal or propping him up. Obviously there have been multiple instances in which the Republican Party, the mainstream

Republican Party has tried to kind of purge Trump from the party and it hasn't worked. And the reason why it hasn't worked, Jank, is because of the voting base, right? And the loyalty among that about one third of Republican voters who will stand by Trump no matter what he does. You get what I'm saying? So I just, I feel like the Republican Party kind of created this monster. And now they don't know what to do with it. Yeah, there's only three possibilities. Look, one is that he flat out wins. Let's not forget that possibility. That's definitely a possibility. In fact, right now, him and Biden are tied. I just checked real clear politics average of polls, 44.4 to 44.0. That's an indictment on.

100%. I mean, this, like the Democrats love to talk about what a monster Donald Trump is, and that's fair, I think he is, but your boy's tied with him. So what's wrong with your guy? But they never, ever talk about that, ever. And I'm, anyway, so massive bias on the part of mainstream media and Democrats and Washington overall. But so he could win. That's still definitely possible, in which case we're all screwed. I mean, take this vigilante violence and encouraging it and multiply it by a thousand once they have power, right? And an unstoppable Mike in form of the bully pulpit. Okay, but let's say that he is somehow loses at some point.

Well, then there you got two choices there. One is that all this stuff gets to him. He says something terrible. And remember that third that Anna's talking about. It's a little bit high on that. 37% say they don't think Trump's ever done anything wrong. This is of the Republican base. And that they can't foresee anything that's going to make a difference, okay?

41% of Republicans say that it might be time for violence. My guess is that there's a significant overlap between those two groups, right? So those folks are, I'm sorry, but irredeemable, right? But now you still have 63% of Republicans that are not hopeless. And so, yes, Trump could, if he says something just wildly over the top about murdering someone or something, it's possible that 63% of Republicans go, this is a bridge too far, besides which we're not going to win. This is crazy. We have to pick someone who's going to win.

We're not going to win with a guy going around telling people that he's going to decapitate folks or whatever. Again, remember, he didn't say that. That's my hypothetical, my guess, as to what, that he's going to cross the line, right? So that's one part. And then the last possibility is, no, they stick with him all the way. And he has a 40 point lead on DeSantis right now. So that's the most likely. He becomes a Republican candidate, as Anna suggests.

And then whether it's Biden or someone else, like 63% of the country says he shouldn't run. And he did something very seriously wrong, which is another story we're going to get to, okay? Sorry, the 63% said he did something very seriously wrong. That 63% is not going to vote for him. Like, I know he's tied with Biden, but Biden is enormously, ridiculously weak. Like, just get any other human being. And he can get landslided to the point where Republicans think, man, we just totally screwed up. Like, this was a humiliating defeat.

Yeah. I mean, just get me any random Democratic governor. And it's very, there's a good chance of humiliating defeat. And at which point, what are you going to come back from? I mean, you're going to come back from getting only 30% in a general election, 35% in a general election? I mean, you can't. Those are too low.

But so that's a possibility for how this story ends. And a lot of those outcomes, forget the country, are not good for the Republican Party, but you just can't get the voters to believe that, at least at this point. prosecution against him. Indeed, this particular piece of evidence, this video shows quite the opposite for Stone. He was pushing the plot, not because he believed Trump had won or was looking at numbers or looking at the results as they were called, which hadn't happened yet, no, regardless of the results that were not even in, he was already pushing this plot.

Stone's words on video were early, a month before now indicted Ken Chisbury, the memo outlining the plot long before Rudy Giuliani now indicted was recruiting those people. Ari Melbur obtained exclusive video that shows Trump's advisor and ally Roger Stone, essentially pushing the plot to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and install fake electors in an effort to do so. Now, this is being described as a pretty big bombshell, a giant piece of evidence that we hadn't seen before. I'm going to push back on that a little bit. But first, why don't we take a look at the video in question in its entirety? Let's watch. Although state officials in all 50 states must ultimately certify the results of the voting in their

state, the final decision as to who the state legislatures authorize, be sent to the electoral college is a decision made solely by the legislature. Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud to send electors to the electoral college who accurately reflect the president's legitimate victory in their state, denied him through fraud. We must be prepared to lobby our Republican legislatures by personal contact and by demonstrating the overwhelming will of the people in their state, in each state, that this may need to happen. Now this is the earliest instance in which one of Trump's allies floated this plan to install the fake electors. The video was taken on November 5th, and that was in fact two days before

the election was officially called for Joe Biden. In fact, here is a tweet from the Associated Press. As you can see, it's dated November 7th, two days after that video. that we just watched with Roger Stone, and it calls the election for Joe Biden, saying that Biden defeats President Donald Trump. So the argument here, Jank, is since the election had not been called yet, it is very clear, because that this video was filmed two days prior to the election being called, that they had already hatched this plan to install fake electors, and it cannot be true that they legitimately genuinely believed that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, because how could they know that if the election hadn't been called yet?

But there are some details that I'm going to use to kind of push back on that. Not saying that, no, no, no, they're totally innocent. I agree that they were trying to reverse the results of the election and essentially have Trump steal the election from Joe Biden. I believe that. However, to say that this is the bombshell piece of evidence that we need, I think goes a little too far, and I'll explain why. Go ahead.

All right, I'm looking forward to your pushback. But let me give you a summary of how I see it. So there were earlier reports that they had planned this scheme even before the election. So this is a couple of days after the voting, but a couple of days before Biden has declared the winner. And Roger Stone has it perfectly laid out already, right? So no question the plan is already in place. And he says, now let's say execute it, even though at that point, it's theoretically unclear who won. but obviously Roger Stone thinks Biden won.

That's why he's hatching a plot to steal the election from Biden. If he thought Trump would won, you wouldn't have to reverse the electors at all. You would just keep the electors of the winning candidate. Remember, he doesn't use the word fake there in terms of the fake electors. But he's talking about the alternate electors, the Trump electors. The ones he knows are the wrong ones. He knows Biden has won. And he's saying, let's do a plan where we have the.

Republican-led state legislatures pretend that Trump won and sending these alternate electors instead. And then you see that plan get executed by Stephen Miller, Navarro, Bannon, and then eventually, of course, Trump, Giuliani, and the rest. And so it's unsurprising. Stone actually hatches a huge percentage of the plans that Trump executes. So he is prime evil and the hilarious part of the secondary footage is as he's explaining the plot to steal the election, there's a, I love Richard Nixon bumper sticker on his laptop and a giant picture of Nixon in his office. So kind of perfect. And if you don't know, Roger Stone has a tramp stamp. I'm not kidding, of Richard Nixon's head on the small of his back.

So Roger Stone is known as a dirty trickster for a reason, which is why I believe that it's totally fine to suspect that he's a bad actor in all this, right? But suspecting he's a bad actor is different from, you know, proving in a court of law that he's guilty of criminality here. And so the main point here is, look, you can't use the defense of, well, we genuinely thought that the election was stolen from Donald Trump when you guys were all. already hatching this plan two days before Trump even lost the election, right? However, as we all know, the fake electors were in very specific swing states, right? And we also know that while the election hadn't officially been called on behalf of Joe Biden yet, several states had already been called, including many of the states that are swing states where they tried to install the fake electors, right?

So I want to- Like Arizona. I looked into every single one of them, right? So the fake electors were in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Okay? So a lot of those states were already called on November 4th. Michigan was called on November 4th. Roger Stone filmed that on November 5th. Same for Arizona.

That was on November 4th. It was already called for Biden over Trump. Georgia was the state that took much longer to call. In fact, as of November 8th, the Associated Press had reported that it was still too early to call it for Biden. Part of that was because of the, it was a very close election in Georgia, as we all know. And there was a fight to avoid certifying the election in that state. That took a little bit of time.

But as we all know, eventually Biden won that state. Wisconsin was announced on November 4th, New Mexico was announced on November 3rd. Nevada, so there are three states that were announced. after, okay, after Roger Stone filmed that video, and that included Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. So I say that because while it's true that the official election results had not been reported yet, many of the states where the fake electors were going to be installed, were already called. So Roger Stone saw what was going to happen, right? Yeah. So look, I think it proves two things. One is the thing that I just mentioned and that Anna is alluding to here, which is that while they're pretending that Donald Trump won, they all knew for certain that Biden had won, right?

So it's totally lying from the get go. But secondarily, you also have the issue of the 2,000 mules have not yet arrived. So they have all of these fake evidence that they've convinced their supporters of, oh, the cracking and the mules and all these different things. But at that point, they didn't know any of that. So, like, none of it is true anyway, but even if it were true, Roger Stone didn't have one inkling of that on November 5th when he's saying, oh, I bet there was fraud in the election, wink. I bet a couple thousand mules show up later, wink, and let's go steal the goddamn election

by using the Republican state legislatures. By the way, let me note that Roger Stone has not been indicted yet at all, right? However, let's say he does get indicted and he faces charges and this video is used as evidence against him. I'm just thinking about what the possible defense could be, right? So, yeah, I hear you, Anna. Yeah. So if you're saying it will be hard to convict Stone on this because he didn't use the word fake, and he'll say, oh, well, I thought maybe we could have won.

He could say his defense could argue that, well, at that point on November 5th, you know, several of these swing states had been called for Biden, even though the whole election had not been called for Biden yet. And at the same time, the recounts hadn't been done. The 60 court cases hadn't been done. You know what I mean? Like where they tried to challenge the election results in front of judges. And every single one of those judges are like, no, Biden won. Sorry, you haven't provided any evidence. He could make that argument as part of his defense. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. So I hear you on that. But for me, this isn't about Roger Stone at all. And so whether you can convict Roger Stone just on this tape is not that relevant.

And maybe you're right about that. But this is about Donald Trump. And so when you're going to prove a case, whether it's in Atlanta about the interference in Georgia, including interfering with Georgia state representatives and getting fake electors to sign a piece of paper in Georgia, or it's the federal case that the special prosecutor is pursuing, you play this tape and say, remember how we told you guys in the jury the fake elector plot? And we showed you the sections of Navarro's book and Bannon's podcast, et cetera. Now here is Donald Trump's top ally on November 5th already hatching the plot.

And that is super important context and proof to the jury that they had this fake elector plot from day one. That I agree with. And so the main point I'm trying to make, guys, is that anyone who's saying, no, this is the bombshell piece of evidence. They're not quite accurate, okay, but taken in the context, the full context of all the evidence of the prosecutors have in this case, both coming out of Georgia and the federal prosecution from the DOJ, if you take it all in context, it is a relevant piece of evidence. That's what I'm just trying to say. I'm making a very, I guess, slight distinction here, right?

Because I just hate the way the media has been presenting this video as if like, that's it, bombshell piece of evidence, case closed. Well, I mean, the media does that about everything. I know, they need to stop. It's super annoying. Yeah. Okay, last thing on this. Look, I always think about Sean other foot.

If let's say I'm advising Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders is in the situation Donald Trump is in, would I ever, just so you get a sense of weight, was this nefarious or was it not? Is there any possibility that it's not nefarious, right? If somebody said to me, oh, let's come up with a plot to have different electors vote for Bernie instead of whoever the Republican, or let's say Trump, and because we think with no evidence at all one day after the election that Bernie won. And I would say, no, that's crazy talk.

We're not doing an alternate slate of electors. We're going to go and prove in court that we won, and we're going to show the evidence and we're going to show the votes. And so that's what we're going to pursue the court path because we're correct. We have the evidence. I would never say, yeah, don't worry about the evidence, let's just get our electors to somehow get certified even though we didn't win the election.

That's how you can tell it's nefarious. Right, no, absolutely. And by the way, other things happened. Other communications and exchanges happened on November 5th of 2020. Let's actually go to Graphic 2 here because Don Jr. was texting Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on that very day. 5th, 2020. So Don Jr. sent him the following text messages. GOP state assembly should step in. Separate slate of Trump electors. Those are the phony

electors, of course. Republicans control Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, et cetera. We get Trump electors. So guys, again, super important in the context of proving a case that they had already had this plot in their back pocket in case they lost, they know that they have Republican legislatures in those states, even a dumb dumb like Don Jr. knows that because they've already gotten ready. They're all ready to do the fake elector plot. Navarro brags about it. Stephen Miller's on TV executing it in the midst of this whole controversy, etc. So there's no question that they had a plan to steal the election in case they lost. By November 5th, they had already realized that they had lost, even though they're pretending

that they won. So they're going, let's do the fake elector plot now. Yeah. Well, we got to take a break. When we come back, we have more for you, including wealth. Trump's lawyers urging him to avoid doing something that he is committed to do next week. We'll tell you what that is when we come back. Trust me, I'm like a smart person. All right, back on Young Turks, Jake Uger and Experian and En Bronco, who just hit the join button below the video on YouTube and became an American hero, a young Turks member, and helps us do honest reporting. So we appreciate you.

You could also join through t.com slash join. All right, Casper. Well, a little more coverage on Donald Trump and these indictments. Let's do it. Ron DeSantis also said Wednesday that he believes Georgia's 2020 election was legitimate. Despite that lack of evidence, Trump announced he will hold a press conference on Monday, where he claimed he will provide proof for allegations of fraud that have been thoroughly disproven. Will he? That press conference actually might not happen at all.

That press conference is now very much in doubt, multiple sources tell ABC News that Trump. Trump's legal advisors have told him that holding such a press conference with more dubious claims about election fraud in Georgia would only complicate his legal problems. His lawyers have asked him to cancel that press conference. The status of it is now very much up in the air. But of course if he comes forward, Michael, those those allegations in Georgia have been thoroughly disproven. Listen, if your own lawyers are telling us, telling you don't do the press conference, it will not exonerate you, maybe listen to your counsel telling you don't do it. But we'll see what happens on Monday because Trump seems

pretty committed to holding this press conference where he alleges he's going to provide irrefutable evidence that the election was stolen from him. I mean, never mind the fact that he and his team of crackpot lawyers had literally dozens of times to make that case before federal judges more than 60 times in these cases before federal judges. But nonetheless, Ty Cobb, who actually happened to be one of Trump's former White House lawyers, recently agreed that the press conference, not a good idea. Don't do it. And here's his reasoning. This is all Trump, you know, PR. This is, you know, generating chaos. I mean, frankly, there's a good chance that whatever document he produces ends up as evidence against him. It could

could even end up as the basis for an obstruction count against the author because it's likely to be fiction and solely for the purpose of contaminating the jury pool. I mean, how does Trump not realize this? So, Jank, what do you think is going to happen? Okay, so I'm not sure if the press conference is going to happen or not. It's a rare time where I don't have a prediction because of this. Every single advisor is going to tell them not to do it, because you would have to be mental to do it. Like you're, guys, think about it this way. Even if you were generally right, which Trump is not anywhere near correct, but if you were generally right and you do a press conference and you stay things a little wrong, that could be

used against you in court later. And then they'll ask you, were you lying then or are you lying now. And then if you make a number of mistakes, they're going to paint you as a liar in that way, even if you were relatively innocent and had made a couple of honest mistakes. That's why lawyers tackle you and tell you don't say anything before the trial, because anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Now, if you're not being honest, oh boy, you are going to make a thousand mistakes both on purpose and otherwise. And it's going to massively hurt your case, let alone the specific thing that Thai Cobbs said, which I'll get to in a second. I mean, Trump himself should know this better than anyone else, because he's already

been through this. Remember, when Eugene Carroll accused him of sexual assault, the lawsuit against him, the civil case against him that was brought forth by Carol, wasn't about the assault itself, it was about the defamation after the fact. It was Trump going on the record multiple times denying that it had happened and also, you know, questioning her character as a person, questioning her reputation or putting her reputation in jeopardy. So when you're dealing with a civil suit, you're literally told to avoid even commenting on that civil suit. Because if you deny any wrongdoing, the individual bringing forth that civil suit against you can tack on additional allegations that your denials amount to defamation.

He knows this firsthand experience with it. He doesn't know anything. The most underrated thing about Donald Trump, and I've said it a billion times, but it still doesn't get through to people, is how deeply unintelligent he is. Remember, he bankrupted himself in Atlantic City. He started three different casinos in the same city, when literally everyone told him not to do it because it's the world's dumbest idea. And why an executive in his organization said, because he liked to see his name and lights.

And that way he can see Trump, Trump, Trump in three different buildings. So that's why I say it's a tie. There's no lawyer in the world that wouldn't tackle a client before they did a press conference like this. So literally everyone is going to advise him not to do it. But Donald Trump is so unbelievably stupid and uncontrollable that he might do it anyway. So I've seen him sometimes when literally like one other moment was when he was considering martial law rolling out the tanks on American citizens as part of this coup attempt. And everyone else in the Oval Office said, we will all resign if you roll out the tanks.

And by the way, that worked surprisingly. Yeah, that's why I'm saying it's a tie because sometimes when everybody says we're all going to resign, he goes, I guess I can't, I guess this one is above and beyond stupid. Like when he said, let's increase our nuclear arsenal by 10 fold, which would have, you have no idea how expensive that is. That would have literally bankrupted the country. And everyone else was like, no, we're just not going to do it. And then he was like, okay.

I mean, yeah, because it's not only expensive to develop the nuclear weapons. You also have to maintain them. And that's very expensive. I mean, he's just, he wanted to nuke a hurricane. Come on. Yeah, he's, look, he's challenged. He's a challenged dude. But I want to come back to Ty Cobb's statement there.

Guys, if you put out misleading statements purposely in public, especially in a way that could be heard by the jury pool, and since he's the former president and has a giant microphone, and that will be broadcasts all over national media, that brings up a new charge of tainting the jury pool, which you are not allowed to do. You're not allowed to talk about the case at all because they're worried about, hey, well, jurors here in the news, and that makes them biased, etc.

And so, I mean, that's a near guaranteed charge, especially if what you're saying isn't true. And since the election wasn't anywhere near stolen and he doesn't actually have any evidence at all, literally everything he'll present is a lie, which then compounds his liability and makes his legal problems in Atlanta and in the federal case even worse. By the way, devil's advocate, remember, this is in regard to the indictment out of Georgia. And currently, Trump's lawyers are trying to move that case to the federal courts. So maybe messing with the jury pool in Georgia is part of this plot to move the case somewhere else. I hear you, but he's doing a national press conference.

So if it's tainted in Georgia, it's tainted everywhere. So one more thing here. Have you ever seen a former lawyer speak out against the client? I know that it's hard to remember, right? But I've never seen it, and I pay attention to the news meticulously every day for a quarter of a century, right? I mean, the lawyer who represented the QAnon shaman did. Yeah, well, but it's in the same milieu here, right? So I'm not saying that it's never happened, but it is incredibly rare.

It's so rare, I don't even remember an instance before Trump. Tons of former Trump lawyers speaking out against them. As I told you before, 40, out of the 44 cabinet members he had, refused to endorse him. Why do you think all of these former cabinet officials and former lawyers and people that were so close to Donald Trump, they all come out and do unprecedented things with their hair on fire going, that guy's guilty, that guy's problematic. That guy's got massive problems. because they've seen him in person, in private. In action. Yeah, and if you think he's crazy in public, wait until you get a load of him in private.

So these guys are all going like, he's a former Trump lawyer, so he can't say Trump is guilty. But he's like, reminds me of that Metallica song where the guy's blinking, like, he's guilty, he's guilty, right? So they all know it. The only people left in the country that doesn't know it is MAGA. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, more news for you, including an update on the story about the newsroom in Kansas getting raided. We've got some pretty important details about the judge who authorized that raid to begin with. Don't miss it.

We've got that and more coming up. All right, back on T.Y.T. Jank, Anna, and Michelle Alexander. Michelle, thanks for joining. We appreciate you. And Druggist of Dragons, gifted five young tourist memberships on YouTube. Love that you guys help us do honest reporting and try to fight for positive change. All right, Casper. This one's a doozy. An update on a story we did earlier this week. This morning, the weekly edition.

of the Marion County record is still being published. Even after police in this small Kansas town raided the paper's offices on Friday, seizing cell phones, hard drives, and documents. The search warrant accused reporters of identity theft and computer crimes while reporting on local restaurant owner Carrie Newell for a story that didn't run. Newell told the city council the paper illegally obtained her driving record, which included a DUI. And the very judge who issued that warrant, which allowed for that raid to happen in a literal newsroom in Kansas, apparently has a questionable record herself when it comes to driving under the influence and really failing to potentially report all of this as she was attempting to become a magistrate judge. Okay, so let's get to the details here. Now, Judge Laura Viar is the name of the judge who was the one who authorized this rate to take place, did the warrant, right?

She was appointed on January 1st to fill a vacant eighth judicial district magistrate seat, was arrested at least twice for DUI in two different Kansas counties in 2012, and that's according to a Wichita Eagle investigation. She was the lead prosecutor for Morris County. county at the time. Now, what's relevant here, having a DUI on your record doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be a judge, right? However, there are certain reporting requirements and it is, I don't know, it's not clear at the moment, but based on this investigation, it does not appear that she has done the proper reporting. In fact, it even appears as though the prosecutors didn't do their job as she got, you know, in trouble the second time for the this DUI. So it's unclear whether a judicial nominating commission that selected Viya for the magistrate position knew about her arrests and diversion, she would have been required to disclose

both arrests in her application. Now let's just quickly talk about the arrests, the first one. Okay, so the first arrest was in Coffey County, about an hour and 15 minutes southeast of her home in Council Grove on January 25th of 2012. That has not been reported. Okay, in Coffee County, she, the judge, who went by Laura E. Allen at the time, was charged and entered a diversion agreement, which was extended six months because she refused to get an alcohol and drug evaluation and even stopped communicating with her lawyer. That's crazy. That is insane. So they extended her diversion program for another six months as a result of that. Okay, so the Coffee County sheriff's deputy who made the arrest is Eric L. Smith, now. now serves as a state legislature, legislator as the state representative for the area.

And the court records indicate that he also saw prescription drugs in the vehicle at the time of her arrest. She was never sanctioned by the state's attorney discipline board and one re-election multiple times as a Republican candidate for Morris County attorney. Believe it or not, the second arrest was even worse. The second in Morris County on all August 6th, 2012, came amid an unopposed re-election bid for Morris County attorney. She was not supposed to be driving because her driver's license was suspended in Coffey County. Court records show, she reportedly drove off road and crashed into a school building next to Council Grove's football field while driving then 8th District Magistrate Judge Thomas Ball's vehicle.

Now Thomas Ball, he's a magistrate judge, he recused himself in this case because of the fact that he was at the vehicle with her. But there are some pretty shady details on how some of this stuff was never reported or prosecuted. The Morris County arrest likely would have been a violation of her diversion agreement in Coffee County. But court records indicate prosecutors in Coffee County didn't know about the Morris County case. And the earlier Coffee County DUI was not disclosed to the public. in Morris County where she was standing for reelection. So remember, the raid allegedly happened in this newsroom because a local restaurateur was being investigated by the paper for driving with a suspended

license after she had been found guilty of a DUI, right? Yeah. And so there's like, I don't know, I don't know if there was a bias here because of the judge's past, but I do think these details are interesting to say the least. the least. For sure. So look, this has two different problems, and then I'm going to make a random point about electing judges. One is the judge herself, and two is its effect on the underlying case, right? So when you talk about the judge by herself, I'm worried about the details that Anna showed you guys, because if she's not even showing up to get evaluated as she's

supposed to, and she won't even talk to her own lawyers, no, she's off to deep. That means she's having significant issues, right? Well, then that creates two problems. One is we have a judge brazenly breaking the law and not following it. I mean, that alone right there, giant red flag, you can't do that. They got to take her off the bench, right? Right. And potentially people providing cover for her, right? That's what it appears to be.

Well, that's a third problem, in my opinion. That's a systemic problem. But for her personally, the other thing that I'm worried about is competence. So if she's on the bench and she's sauced, right? And she's not showing up for those evaluations for a reason. It's not like, oh, golly, gee, I forgot for six months in a row. The reason you don't show up for those is if you're high or drunk, right? And so then she's going on the bench and judging people and sending them to jail and playing with their lives.

And issuing warrants for raids, including warrants for raids in newsrooms in a country that's supposed to have protections for the press. Yeah, so that gives, gets us to the underlying case. I'm not here to say, like, to try her. This is not a court of law, this is not a court of law. This is my opinion based on the facts that the Wichita Eagle is presenting, but someone ought to pursue this. I mean, at least is she on the straight and narrow now? Like, I know before she didn't give a damn about the law and wasn't paying attention to it and refused to follow it, but is she following the law now? Is she sober now? I don't know.

And so they should investigate that. All right, now to the underlying thing. Look, guys, I question her competence in several different ways, or maybe her bias, as Anna pointed out. because number one, she gave the warrant that she should not have given at all. They did not have sufficient evidence and now the Marion County prosecutor has withdrawn the warrant. That's how terrible and insufficient the warrant was. But on top of that, their press organization, a warrant is not sufficient. You have to get a subpoena for a press organization.

Did she not know that? So that's a massive problem for a judge to not even know what the law is. So then finally, the electing the judges is absurd because if you're in a really red or really blue county, it's you're going to be unaccountable because people vote based on red or blue. They don't know the judges. So if you've got a judge who's totally out of control, either again, either Republican or Democrat in these counties, they're going to win the elections anyway.

So we're just electing randos to judges based on whether we have an R or a D on our helmet. Yeah, I mean, look, I'll admit. every election season when you get that massive California ballot asking you to make a decision about judges. It's like, I don't know who these people are. No one does. And how are we supposed to investigate the judge's record as average citizens? Exactly. And there's 20 of them. And how in the world, are we going to go get LexisNexis and all become legal experts? And by the way, then they're allowed to take campaign cash. So then corporations just buy the judges as well as the politicians. This system is disastrous.

Okay, but with that said, there was another angle to that story that I want to revisit. Not much has developed yet, but remember, the idea that a raid should be allowed because a local restaurateur was being investigated by journalists for allegedly, you know, driving under the influence or I'm sorry, driving with a suspended license. It all sounded weird to me. I felt like there's something else afoot. Like there's something else going on behind the scenes. And one of the things that was mentioned very briefly in one article was that this paper that had been raided was also investigating their local police chief. And so the publisher of the paper, his name is Eric Meyer, touches on this in the next video that we're going to show you. Let's take a look. The publisher and co-owner of the paper, Eric Meyer, denies the allegation and tells NBC News he believes the police chief has a personal act to grind. Police chief saw an opportunity to let's really stick it to this newspaper, which has not been entirely supportive of him.

According to Meyer, the paper was investigating police chief Gideon Cody's time on the force in Kansas City, including that he was set to be demoted for misconduct before joining the department in Marion. Meyer says the sources wouldn't go on the record and the story was never published. The police chief did not respond to NBC News's request for comment, but previously defended the raid, arguing there were legal grounds. Yeah, except no, there weren't legal grounds. And the judge who issued the warrant, as we've shown you, has some issues. And just to go back to what Jenks said earlier, I want to reiterate it because it's an important detail to this story. Let's go to Graphic 7. Marion County attorney Joel Enzi said Wednesday that the warrant was ordered with insufficient evidence to establish a connection between the material seized and the alleged crime.

And that is exactly why the warrant in question ended up being rescinded by the same county attorney. Now, guys, do you get it that if the police chief gets all of their equipment and has all of their information, he'll know who their sources. So whether it was published or not published, he now knows who was saying that he has these disciplinary problems from his past. He knows who the sources are. And you think he didn't want to know who the source was? He definitely wanted to know, right? And now he almost certainly does. And is there going to be retaliation against that source?

Well, I mean, look, it's going to be hard because the paper doesn't want to put out the source's name, because that's not what reporters do. But if that source gets fired, nobody will even know. So that's why you don't do these search and seizure on a press outlet unless you have a subpoena. It is a higher standard than just a warrant. And in this case, the warrant was crap, let alone not having a subpoena, let alone having a judge who was either potentially biased or had competence issues at a minimum. Exactly. Anyway, I find this story so fascinating.

So we'll update you as we learn more. For now, we're going to take a brief break and come back with the second hour of the show. Incredible story out of Minnesota where you have, believe it or not, a Democratic governor doing the right thing and being super aggressive about. it come right back thanks for listening to the full episode of the young Turks support our work listen ad-free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t I'm your host jank huger and I'll see you soon