Cuomo digs in, Chaos in the skies, and Evictions delayed... perhaps

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hi everyone this is pivot from the vox media podcast network i'm kara swisher scott galloway is off again today because all he does is take vacations but we were lucky to be joined by attorney and contributing columnist at the washington post george conway hello george

Hello.

How you doing?

Thank you for having me, Carol.

No problem.

We're trying to like do all these different co-hosts.

This week we had Stephanie Ruhl.

We've got a lot of people coming up.

But I wanted to bring you in.

There's lots of news to talk about.

And you know, sort of the idea of the way the show goes.

But I really wanted to talk about legal things with you, obviously.

But anything else you want to talk about?

People are surprised me in terms of what they're interested in.

But let's start a little bit about air travel.

I just interviewed the head of American Airlines, Doug Parker, and he was talking about the bailout and all kinds of things.

But one thing that, you know, and flight cancellations, it's a rough summer for the airline industry, even though it got 56 billion dollars from the federal government because of pandemic disruptions and because of a wide range of things

including unruly people on the airlines I just wanted to get some sense from you there's all kinds of things going American and Spirit Airlines cancel hundreds of flights due to weather and staffing issues not enough people the staff are dealing with major passenger incidents.

Frontier Airlines crew duct taped an unruly passenger in his seat in a Miami-bound flight after he groped to attendance this past weekend.

A few hours earlier, an American Eagle crew had to break up a brawl between two men, and the Association of Flight Attendants is calling for criminal penalties for unruly passengers.

What do you think about all this?

How would you handle it?

Well, lawyer George.

How would I handle it?

I don't know how I would handle it in the sense that I don't know there's anything different to do other than you get the people off the plane and you arrest them and you prosecute them, particularly that guy.

What's his name?

Cuomo?

No, no, no.

We'll get to Cuomo.

Don't worry.

Yeah, the Frontier Airlines guy.

George.

Andrew, Andrew.

Yeah, we'll call him Andrew C.

Okay.

I'm in CNC 28D.

No, you just have to get them off.

I think the thing, the interesting thing to me is what the F is going on out here with all these people behaving like this.

And I just,

I hate to, I don't want to politicize it and say that this is just part of the political realm that we're in.

But I think there's some kind of a crisis going on in this country where people

are no longer adhering to basic social norms or wanting to defy them.

Now, this guy was probably drunk off his ass.

Yes, they've cut.

The head of American Airlines told him they don't have liquor on the planes now.

Yeah.

Yeah, they got to cut back on the alcohol.

But there's something going on.

I mean, I think I don't.

Obviously, I haven't run the numbers on a statistician, but this does seem to be something statistically significant going on here.

And it's some kind of a societal behavioral thing.

And I'd love to hear what a social, some kind of social scientist has to say about this, what kind of sociologist.

So what do you, what, what do you imagine to do anything about it?

The politicization of everything that institutions, I like all the dogs in the background.

We're going to leave them in the, in the thing, don't worry.

Yeah, they're unruly and they're probably had their dog nip for the day.

I'm sorry for that.

But, you know, it adds a little to the broadcast.

So

this is this idea of institutional decline that has been going on for years and years, helped by the pandemic

and people then getting out and then having the pandemic return, return, essentially.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think it's probably that, but I also think there's just something there's just with a lot of people now, it's like, I don't care what anybody says.

I'm going to do what I think and I'm going to live in my own reality and everybody can go, you know, fuck themselves.

And

I don't know if that.

It's hard for me to say that it doesn't have something to do with what we've been through the last four years.

So is there a solution?

Do you imagine that it would just change?

People will calm down.

I don't know.

I honestly don't.

Is that a permissible answer?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's fine.

You don't know.

I don't know.

I honestly don't know.

I'd love to know what it is that's causing all this.

Right.

And, you know, because it is, it does seem like it's statistically, you can see the uptick.

It's real numbers.

Yeah, they are real numbers.

The FAA reported more than 3,000 cases of unruly behavior by passengers in the first half of 2021.

This included some nearly 2,500 instances where passengers refused to comply with federal face mask mandate.

I think the mask stuff began it, right?

This fight fight over the mask.

And you know, but the mask stuff didn't begin with the mask stuff, right?

I mean, the mask stuff is just, if it weren't the masks, it would be something else.

Right, right.

Like vaccination.

It's just, it's just

people are just become, you know, there are people are wanting, reverting to behaving to five-year-old behavior where it's like, oh, you're telling me to do something?

I'm not going to do it.

Yeah.

I don't want to do it.

One of the things that's also happening is that Congress is not getting along with mask mandates or whatever.

And there was a big fight over the CDC extending its eviction moratorium through October 3rd, which is a move that might be on shaky ground.

The move only applies to areas, quote, experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission levels.

Chuck Schumer claims that's 90% of the country.

In June, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned that the CDC's eviction ban was overstepping its authority.

And I think Joe Biden seems to know this, but the White House states wants to distribute $46 billion in emergency rent relief.

So far, only $3 billion has been dispersed.

An estimated 11 million adults are behind in their rental payments.

It's a really difficult question.

And obviously, Representative Corey Bush slept on the steps of the Capitol to call attention to it.

Even if it's illegal, what do you think is going to happen here?

I think it's going to get struck down by the courts.

I mean,

the problem is,

I mean, I think there was a moratorium that Congress actually enacted into law, which is the right way to do it.

And then that expired.

And now the CDC is relying on its general authority to

protect the public health, which would include lockdowns if necessary, closing the border thing,

normal types of things that historically

governments have done to stop pandemics and spreads of

communicable diseases.

And

an eviction moratorium does not fall within that.

There's nothing to believe that an

eviction is more likely to spread COVID-19 than you going to the supermarket.

In fact, it's probably less so because you're not going into a public place with a lot of people.

And this is really just an economic issue, and that's not within the purview of the CDC.

The proper way to do this is, again, to pass a law that says, you know, you can't have evictions for a set period of time

because of the pandemic.

If they're willing to do that, if Congress is willing to do that, and leaving apart, you know, there are substantial policy issues about whether you should do that.

And if you really feel that you need to help renters who are having economic difficulty, the right way to do that, assuming that's what you want to do, is not to place the burden specifically and narrowly on landlords who aren't necessarily, you know, they're not all Jared Kushron.

It could be Kara Swisher renting out her basement.

And it's not fair.

It's not fair to, you know, people who own property that they should bear the entire burden of this.

If there's going to be a burden, it should be borne by all taxpayers.

And that's the idea behind the actual relief, which is the problem.

Which is interesting, the housing market is also exploding.

I mean, it's yeah, which is which is funny, which is sort of inconsistent with the whole eviction moratorium thing.

It means people are moving around, and it's like, well, if you're really serious and you thought it was a public health issue, just help don't move, don't move, right?

Exactly, of course, we're not going to do that.

Yeah, what do you think?

Biden is just going to do it from a political point of view, and he's it makes him look

good, like trying to have a good time.

It makes him look good, well, it gets him, it gets certain people off his back.

But the disturbing thing to me as a lawyer is the rule of law aspect of it.

You don't, you know, the president of the United States, who

is sworn to faithfully, no matter who he is, that's the key point.

He is sworn to faithfully execute the laws, including the Constitution.

And

he shouldn't be doing things that he thinks are probably not legal, even for political purposes, because that's just, nobody should be doing that.

It doesn't matter whether it's the issue is the freaking wall where Trump illegally diverted money to it.

It doesn't matter whether it's

DeSantis in Florida with his social media bullshit ban, which violates, clearly violates the First Amendment, and he's obligated to follow the Constitution and the laws too as a public official.

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter whether it's for a good purpose or not, because one person's good purpose may not be yours.

Right.

You know, the good purpose may be,

you know,

Donald Trump thinking that he should be elected president.

Right, right.

When he wasn't.

Right.

It's a slippery slope.

And I don't mean by saying all this to make an equivalency between this eviction ban

and the wall and

the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

But because that would be a false equivalency for me to, for example, to

equate the eviction, eviction moratorium.

So the solution is to pass.

What Trump did.

The solution is to pass something.

But again, the problem is if one side does something, the other side will invoke some kind of false equivalent and say, well, if they could do this, we can do this.

Right, right.

And we're off to the races.

And it's a very dangerous and bad thing.

And we're on a plane throwing one of the reasons.

We're on each other.

It's the same thing.

And that's one of the reasons why.

It's one of the reasons why I, you know,

as a lawyer,

I've always been a conservative.

It's because there had, you know, historically, to my mind, in the experience of my lifetime, there had been a tendency for liberals to twist the law and the Constitution, in my view, to achieve ends that they sought to achieve, which weren't necessarily consistent with the statute of the Constitution.

And that's one of the reasons why, you know, that whole rule of law concept is why I kind of, you know,

I think that we have only one party that's trying to adhere to the rule of law, which is now the Democratic Party.

Right.

So to see the, you know, to see Biden do this, it's like, listen, guys, you got to, you, somebody's got to hold a forward on the rule of law.

So I, you know, I really would like them to, you know, just, you know, bite the bullet and say, we can't do this.

Congress absolutely has to act, though, because there are a lot of people struggling continuously.

Yeah, there are a lot of people.

Yeah, there are a lot of people.

And they've shoveled out, you know, how many trillions of dollars already.

To everybody.

To everybody.

Too many.

Too much.

Too much.

Well, some people think so.

Some people don't.

Okay.

So moving on to some politics.

Two small special elections in Ohio with some bigger implications.

Trump-backed Republican candidate and centrist Democrat won the primary elections in a pair of open seats Tuesday.

Mike Kerry, a political newcomer backed by President Donald Trump, beat a field of experienced Republicans in the Columbus area.

The former president's preferred candidate lost in a special election in Texas last week.

Chantel Brown, a centrist backed by Hillary Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus, beat out a progressive candidate.

Nina Turner, who is backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

So large candidate fields, low voter turnout.

We can't read too much into these elections, but what could we say is going on about Trump and his declaration of his kingmaker status?

And then the influence of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Yeah,

I can,

I can't speak to what the influence of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party just by on the basis of this one

off-year special election.

I will say this.

I mean, I think it's interesting.

The Texas race is interesting because

it was a single, you know,

it was not a primary, but it was a general election with everybody on the ticket.

and a general special election with everyone

on the ballot.

And that meant that

Democrats were voting and moderate or independents

were voting.

And the Trump,

you know, it just shows you that they're going to vote against Donald Trump's candidates.

And that's the problem that the Republicans have is that, you know, he may be able to pick in a primary

particular candidates.

It doesn't mean they win general elections, except in districts that are.

unlosable for Republicans.

Yeah.

So it's not necessarily a sign, but it's something to be watched for.

It's something to be watched.

Do you think he's a kingmaker?

You know,

I think he can ruin somebody more than he's a kingmaker.

Ah, that's interesting.

That's what I think.

His power is the power of destruction.

Which is something he's written about a lot.

Right.

That's what he does.

He doesn't create anything.

He destroys because that's the nature of his personality.

And so that's the way he exerts power in the Republican Party is the threat of destruction because, you know,

and he may destroy himself in the process.

And he kind of did do that by losing the House and the Senate and the presidency, which he could have, if he were actually competent and sane, he could have been re-elected even with the pandemic, I believe.

Many of them.

He, you know, he's, he engages in destructive conduct, and that is why they all are terrified of him.

Which is why they go along with it.

Which is why they they go along because they just they just are afraid of what he will do if they if he defies them because he'll he'll take everybody down with him.

So, when you talk to people behind the scenes, what is what is the what is the attitude?

We're just going to go along.

I mean, obviously, you've been sort of for shame for doing this.

You've written a lot.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I don't really talk to, it's hard for me to really make an assessment these days.

I don't really talk to people who

you know, to people who are, you know, in the Republican Party who are just kowtowing to Trump.

I just don't, don't have that many

people to talk to about that.

But I do think that that's just everybody is taking the path of least resistance.

I think that's just the obvious and it's just the short, you know, this incredibly short-termist view that they have been taking now for four years.

It keeps getting them, it keeps making things worse and worse and worse.

They don't make a stand.

They don't make any stand.

Very few of them.

They can't.

And now they're almost, I think they're incapable of it.

Yeah.

Well, now they can't.

they can't go back all right we're gonna get on to our big story your favorite one

governor andrew cuomo is running out of supporters

following the report by new york attorney general letitia james detailing evidence of sexual harassment and creating a toxic work environment president biden nancy pelosi new york's entire democratic congressional delegation said he should step down over 80 new york state assembly lawmakers said they would support starting a process of impeachment if cuomo doesn't resign which takes a longer amount of time a couple of months rudy giuliani does seem to be one prominent defender, which is not great.

Giuliani tweeted, Cuomo may be guilty, but we used to have trials of four convictions, which is a fair point, Rudy.

That's what Cuomo's Democratic allies denied President Trump, but he's using it for that.

There would be poetic justice if they did that to Cuomo, but it would be unjust, dangerous, and entirely un-American.

So, what do you think about this?

And I'll ask various questions about the video Cuomo put out and stuff like that.

Talk from a legal point of view, because Letitia James did not bring legal charges, although other jurisdictions are looking at that.

Let me take a step back there.

An unwanted touching is technically criminal.

Okay, so he felt up this executive assistant.

And technically, you could charge that.

Do people get charged for things that don't involve like ripping people's clothes off and physical and you know, stuff I don't really want to talk about?

Probably not.

Is it necessarily sexual harassment?

It It probably is, actually, in terms of the civil aspect of it.

To me, the bigger

question is, who is this man?

And why do you want to have somebody, and I don't, and I think the answer of the Democrats is that they don't, have somebody who is just this abusive and self and narcissistic in a position of authority over people.

And the answer is, you don't.

And that's the real problem here.

I mean,

the two things, the thing about this is that what put him over, I think put him, sent him over the cliff were the first two

accounts in the report.

The one with the executive assistant that he called into the office on the weekend and then made a pass at, to use the 1950s lingo.

And then the state trooper one, which was just gross.

Even though the physical contact there was

brief, the whole context of it was just, you know, it's just abusive.

And I think the two, the combination of those two, more so than

some of the others, which everybody already knew about, I think that just

put him over the edge politically.

Although, you know, some of the others were pretty bad too.

But legally, he is not in jeopardy criminally, correct?

I don't think so.

I think you could, technically, you could bring a charge

with physical assault, but they don't generally do that.

I generally don't do that.

And, you know, I mean, sexual harassment, you know, to me, it's like it's a multi-dimensional, to measure how bad it is is a multi-dimensional thing.

You have the degree of the physical

aspect of it.

You have the degree of the verbal aspect of it.

And you have

also sort of the number of times it's repeated

with one person and others.

And

also the credibility aspect of...

contemporaneous corroboration did the did the victim tell people at the time or relatively soon after And here, okay, the physical aspect of it was, you know, it wasn't rape, wasn't sexual assault.

This is a legal person thinking of it.

And it was vegal.

And it was, yeah, I'm just making an assessment of how bad it is in terms of like, do you give somebody the employment death penalty?

Do you fire them?

Do you kick them out of their job?

You just tell them, you know, cut the shit.

And, you know,

if there had just been like one or two of these incidents, leaving apart the groping, you might be able to say in an employment context, cut the shit, although they don't really tolerate much of that these days.

He'd be fired out of any, you know, he was a CEO of a major corporation.

He'd be gone.

And to me, because of the fact he did it with so many people, and it's clear that he disregards.

It's 11 women claiming harassment.

It's 11 women, you know, and not all of them were hugely, again, not all of them were just like hugely awful, but when you put it all together, it's awful.

And it just shows you his mentality and

his perception of a droit de seigneur.

Is that how you say it?

Yes.

That's exactly.

And it's exactly how you say it.

And it's just, you just don't want somebody,

it's a bad example.

And to me, the thing about it is, if you wouldn't permit this in the private sector,

you shouldn't, you absolutely should not permit it in the public sector.

And that was always one of the points I like to make about Trump was if he were in any other job.

He would be fired.

He'd have been gone.

Yeah.

He would have been gone.

He would have never been.

So when you look at how Letitia James handled this, and obviously there's rumors she's going to run for governor, right?

That seems likely in this case.

A lot of AGs have jumped from there to the governor seat or tried to.

How did you think she handled it?

She put in an outside firm.

Yeah, I think that was absolutely the right approach.

That was absolutely the right approach.

It insulated her from the

political aspect of it.

These are two.

professionals who have professional reputations and who are doing this,

you know, being brought in especially for this.

And remember, guess who asked for this?

He did.

Cuomo asked for this.

Okay, here you are.

Here it is.

So, you know, he's got no business complaining.

Well, he did.

He said it was political.

And his video, what do you think?

Oh, I know, but he's got no business complaining about it.

And the facts are the facts.

They released, you know, they released,

they describe the testimony in excruciating detail and released tons and tons of exhibits.

And you don't have to read very far to come to the conclusion that.

Okay, if one half of this is true, he should go.

Right, right.

So you thought she handled it well the way she was.

Yeah, I think she handled it.

I think she handled it very, very well.

And he obviously did not.

And you see that huge controversy of them trying to trash Lindsay Boylan.

Oh, Lindsay Boylan, yes.

Yeah, they did that.

They did that.

Which was just sort of.

Yeah.

Yeah, which is, yeah, I can see where they were going because at that point, there was really just it was really just her.

And she did leave the office, their office on bad terms.

And apparently, there are people there who didn't like her.

Yeah, but that's how they do it.

And so forth.

But

anytime you attack a victim, particularly when you don't have the facts on your side in terms of the Sexual Harassment Act,

you're just going to blow yourself up.

And if you go out and you defend

the alleged perpetrator without knowing all the facts, you just have to assume that with some of these guys, there's so much under the waterline that you can't see at first.

Which was

what happened here.

Which it was so true here because these guys, these guys who do this shit,

it's usually they're recidivistic.

We now know that.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's not just one, you know, it's just not one thing like he just sort of like is enamored of this one woman.

You know, they typically, when they engage in this kind of conduct, it's like they just think they have, they can get away with it, which amazes me in 2021 that you could ever think that.

I think he's brazening it out, but I think he's doing a trauma.

Everyone's talked about that.

There's a video.

This guy, this guy's a narcissist.

He's a world-class narcissist.

Right.

But what do you think of his video?

I do it with everyone, black and white, young and old, straight and LGBTQ, powerful people, friends, strangers, people who I meet on the street.

I was like, you're a creep with everybody?

What do you think about that?

It's a bad faith-false equivalency, right?

Yeah, so what would you do if you were his lawyer?

I think the only argument you can make is.

Maybe it's not a high crime or misdemeanor.

I don't know what the standard is for impeachment under the New York State Constitution that these things, you know, I think he's got to go full contrition mode.

I think it's a little late for that.

Yeah.

And basically say this is, these are not not grounds for removal of a governor, but also engage in full contrition mode.

But the problem is, he can't really engage in all full contrition mode because some of the allegations are so bad.

And he's locked himself in testimonially.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

He's not, he's, you know, if he, if he basically all of a sudden says, yes, I'm sorry, I did all this stuff.

He can't do that with the stuff he's denied because then he's then he's only

basically admitting the perjury, which is a crime.

Right.

Right.

And

actually, that could be, I guess you maybe that would be one aspect you could throw in in an impeachment trial is that he may have perjured himself.

Right.

He's denying the grope and he's denying the touching of the state trooper and so on and so forth.

Lastly, what happens with the civil cases here?

Obviously, people could, there's other cases being looked at in Manhattan, I think,

in Albany.

What happens now from a legal point of view with him?

Or does he just, are these just civil cases that will?

I guess they're, I mean, these individuals, if they choose to, could sue him.

And the law

pretty hard.

At least the federal law is pretty tough on sexual harassment claims because

you have to show that

there's this pervasive problem that really makes the, you know, alters the conditions of employment in such a fashion that it's different for one person of one gender and different for another.

But if you read the stories of these women,

you know, you go into the office every day and you dread it.

I guess his best defense, weirdly, would be he's such an asshole

that everybody was miserable there for different reasons, perhaps, but everybody was different there.

And that's something that the report actually talks about.

Yeah, Elizabeth Spears wrote about it.

Sure.

Screamer and a yeller

and just a psychological abuser.

So oddly, that would be his best defense is that he mistreated everybody,

both men and women, although frankly, he mistreated women in a way that was a bit different because of the sexual aspect of it than men.

So do you think he's going to be impeached?

That's probably where it's going.

Yes, I think he's going to be impeached or removed.

Removed.

Okay.

All right, George, we're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about the insurrection hearings and take a listener mail question.

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Okay, George, we're back with another big story.

The latest revelations coming out of the investigations into the January 6th attack on the Capitol, ABC News got a hold of review, a collection of Justice Department documents turned over to the House and Senate committees.

First off, there were some emails at the end of December 2020, where the former acting head of the DOJ's civil division, wandering out of his area, Jeffrey Clark, circulating a draft letter asking Georgia's governor and state lawmakers to investigate claims of voter fraud in the state.

He was trying to get acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donahue to sign off on this letter.

They refused.

Then there was the draft of an unsent resignation letter that Rosen's chief of staff wrote in case Rosen got fired during the January 6th meeting with Trump.

He didn't, but the letter detailed his intent to resign over what he said were former presidents' direct instructions to use the department to support a false election fraud claims.

Rosen and Donahue Doniu later thwarted an attempt by Clark to have Trump appoint him acting Attorney General.

So,

wow, the Justice Department is quite a place.

Tell us about what your insights into what was going on here from a legal point of view and also a political point of view in a place that's not supposed to be.

I mean, I think both legal and politically, I mean, basically what was happening here was Donald Trump was trying to politicize the Justice Department to use the Justice Department in an illegal fashion to perpetuate himself in office.

And he was doing it in a manner that reflected the fact that he didn't really care whether there was proof

of the fraud that he was claiming had been perpetrated upon him.

I mean, he told Rosen and Donahue: basically, don't worry about the facts.

Just say, just say that there might be a lot of fraud and we'll take care of the rest.

There was this note in Donahue's notes that basically said, you know, I and Trump and the Republicans in the House will take care of it.

So,

you know, that, to me,

those documents show,

they really show as much as anything else, his criminal intent.

Right.

Yeah,

you tweeted that.

Yeah, absolutely, because they just show

that he

absolutely was, he didn't care about the legal aspects of it.

He didn't actually want the Justice Department to do something that would argue, that might be within its purview, which would be to enforce the law.

He didn't actually care.

He just wanted them to make a statement that he could use politically.

And under the under the criminal provision of the Hatch Act, you cannot

force or try to coerce anybody.

You couldn't, that includes the president of the United States, can't do this.

Can't try to coerce anybody into engaging into political activity.

And this was purely political, precisely because they were basically telling him there's nothing legally that we can do because the facts aren't there and that's not really our role.

And he's just saying, so what?

You know, make this statement and make this statement in effect for his own political benefit.

So what happens then?

This has happened time and again.

Well, again,

I wish the Justice Department now would

engage in the enforcement of the criminal law against Donald Trump, because this is a pretty clear violation right here.

You could argue that some other statutes were violated.

And in terms of other things that Trump did, the fact that he just didn't care about what the facts were and just blew past the facts, and the fact that he told the Georgia Secretary of State that he just needed to find 10,000 X number of votes,

just shows basically that

he was attempting to steal the election himself.

He was attempting to do what he was accusing everybody else of doing.

And that should be criminal under federal and state law.

And I just don't,

you know, I understand the hesitance of the Justice Department to get into this because it's

politically fraught.

But I don't know how you can let this pass.

Yeah, but they seem like they're going to.

Because now Roth, Rosen, and Donahue are expected to provide interviews in coming days.

This is why Donald Trump doesn't like lawyers.

They take notes.

They take notes, right?

I know there's a famous passage in the Mueller report where he was trashing

McGahn for taking notes.

And McGahn says, no, no, no, no.

Good lawyers take notes.

And then Trump said, oh, no, no, I had great lawyers like Roy Cohn, Cohn, and they never took notes.

But yeah, I think you're going to hear.

I mean, the story was basically they knew the election wasn't stolen.

They knew this was all bullshit.

Barr knew it, which is why he basically quit, because he told Trump that, and Trump had had enough with him.

And I think the rest of them who were left after Barr left

were basically trying to run out the clock.

And they were fending off these demands and requests and emails and

bullshit emanating from the White House and just trying to run out the clock to January 20th to the point, but also there was this point on January 3rd where Trump was ready to fire

Rosen and replace him with this guy you mentioned, Jeffrey Clark, who was the Assistant Attorney General in terms of the Environmental and Natural Resources

Division and then had become acting head of the civil division and who basically was all in on

the on the on the stop the steal and was doing doing all sorts of crazy stuff and was having conversations directly with Trump and Tron angling to be the replacement so what happens to him what happens to him a lot of people are talking about disbarring him I don't I don't know I think I'd have to know more facts about what he did but because

when you get disbarred for something usually it's for yeah you'd have to do something

if he had filed something in court that was dishonest if he had made a public statement in connection with a a case like Rudy Giuliani did, you could get suspended or disbarred, which is what happened to Giuliani.

You know, here he was just doing, he was engaging in bad conduct within the confines of the government, although really not acting on behalf of the government.

I don't think he ended up actually doing anything.

Maybe you could, maybe you could, maybe you could get him on conspiracy to

engage in, you know, yeah, it's difficult.

I just don't see, you know, because he was was thwarted, I don't think there are necessarily going to be any

ramifications for him other than I don't know if he'll ever get a job again.

Or, you know, you did, you did tweet this is a criminal intent, but you think this is going nowhere.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's right.

What about the committee calling McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, and Jordan?

This is another proceeding.

It's a political proceeding, but it's also a legal proceeding to find an investigation.

I think they have to.

I think particularly McCarthy, because we already know that there was some kind of conversation or conversations that day between McCarthy and Trump, and we know pieces of those conversations.

We need to have, I think, testimony from basically everybody who spoke with Trump that day.

Because that's one of the big sort of the gaps in our knowledge.

We have

these books that are coming out where people are unloading their stories about how

they tried to tell the president or they tried to tell somebody who told the president that, oh, you know, this is terrible.

You have to go on TV.

You have to tell these people to stop and go home

and so on and so forth.

And he basically dragged his feet for many hours.

Well, what was he saying?

These books, you know, written by, you know, these great reporters like Bender and

Carol Lennig and Phil Rucker, they don't actually have that much on what Trump was actually doing.

I mean, there was more reporting actually in the days immediately following January 6th about what Trump was doing.

And there was a Washington Post story that said basically had some White House person saying that Trump was an absolute monster that day, you know, not for attribution.

And you have, you know, some reporting from the New York Times that's saying that somebody had said that he had lost it.

And there was some reporting from, I don't know which newspapers about how Cipollone was essentially saying you could be criminally or civilly or criminally liable for this.

We don't have a lot of detail on that.

And we don't have a lot of detail on what Trump was doing, right?

In the Bender book, or I don't know which book it was, actually.

They're all meld into each other they're all meld together they like they they were bringing they kept having to bring meadows kept bringing ivanka down to to to to calm trumpet according to a source close to ivanka trump and if they were if they were any exact

they'd be on the other side of them but go ahead right right they might be right they that's the source with blonde hair and and tall and blonde hair and whatever and um

what was the response We don't hear about like, oh, well, he screamed it back or he said,

I know you're right, you're right.

I'm just so, I'm just, I'm just so shocked at this.

I can't go on television.

So they need right now.

So they need to be.

They have to find out what he said.

What did he say and do?

What was he wanting?

He was watching TV all day.

All right.

Final question here.

Will they do that?

Will they do that?

Yeah, they're going to, well, I mean, do what?

Call people testify?

Absolutely.

They absolutely have a moral and ethical and legal and constitutional obligation to do all that.

Kinzinger has said that they're going to do that.

They're going to do,

they're going to definitely call.

They have to call McCarthy.

Jordan seems to be be hiding something if you've seen his statements on television when they ask him did you talk to trump and he's like oh i had ice cream on thursday yeah you know he's just he's just avoiding it trump himself all these people what about trump himself yeah i absolutely i wouldn't i wouldn't call him

in in a live hearing unless i were having him cross-examined by a guy like like like barry burke um i think what i would do first first before with basically almost all these people is take their depositions have good lawyers go down there and make these people sit in a room for five hours and take their depositions under penalty of perjury.

And that's what I would do with Trump.

We'll see.

And Trump, you know, Trump, all the things that he has done over the last few years, he hasn't even had his deposition taken on anything.

No, it's just shocking.

The civil cases, the criminal cases,

he's managed to avoid even having to answer.

And

he can't answer questions.

Yeah.

So that's the problem.

Truthfully under oath, which is one, you know, that's why his lawyers fought so hard not to have him even interviewed by the lawyers.

People, exactly.

So we likely is not.

He will probably not be.

All right, George, we have to pivot to a listener question, roll tape.

You've got, you've got.

I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman.

You, you've got mail.

Katie here from Madison, Wisconsin.

My question for you is, do you think social media companies like Facebook will face the risk in the next five to 10 years of major class action lawsuits?

We've seen this with tobacco companies and most recently with the opioid crisis.

And with all the discussion you talk around its effects of depression and other mental illnesses was just curious what your thoughts are on this what do you think george what do you where what's going to happen with lawsuits with these companies possible or is it going to be i don't think they're going to go anywhere i mean you know in terms of the this the specific disinformation you know i think that section 230 protects them um and i think generally the first amendment protects them and i don't know how you would

i i don't know how you would

put together a claim that says that, you know, going on Facebook causes depression.

I don't think the causation,

you know, I think you might, there may be a correlation, but I don't think you could show the kind of causation that

would be necessary to establish a legal claim.

And I don't, I just don't know, I don't see how you, you would hold these companies liable for this sort of thing.

I just don't see it.

So do where, what, what legal challenges do they face?

Is it more just federal laws around antitrust and things like that?

I don't even think the antitrust things pan out because

explain, explain.

You know, Facebook, Facebook has, you can't define, I mean, one of the things the government sometimes does in antitrust cases is define the actual, you have to show in an antitrust case that somebody is engaging in monopolistic conduct or

in

controlling.

controlling the market and in a defined product.

All right.

If you define the product as Facebook, yeah, Facebook has a monopoly of

Facebook.

But there are so many, you know, Facebook competes with so many other avenues of communication and miscommunication, whether it be Twitter, whether it be just message boards and

so on and so forth, that you can't really, you can't really define a market in a manner that would allow you, I think, to bring an antitrust case against against

Facebook for controlling, I guess, information flow.

I just don't see that.

that.

So where does it go?

Does it say, do they have to look at, this has to be sort of a legislative to they remove like liability protections?

Now, most people think that should not happen because it would be disastrous from a business point of view.

But

how do you look at if something like that, this law protects them on all, it's sort of a get out of jail free card for everything, correct?

I mean, is that?

Yeah, and I think you basically you couldn't have

you know, you couldn't have anything.

You couldn't have Twitter.

You couldn't have Facebook if you didn't have essentially section 230 because you can't, you know, every, I could go, you know, either of us could go on Twitter in 10 seconds and libel somebody, and then Twitter would be held liable for that, and they basically would shut down pretty quickly.

So I, you know,

I just don't know how you deal.

I don't know what the happy medium is between allowing this sort of unrestricted

free speech and shutting it down altogether in a manner that's consistent.

I don't know how you do it, frankly, consistent with the First Amendment, but

I don't know what the solution is to this.

I honestly don't know.

Well, I think more.

More sites.

That's my argument: more sites.

Yeah, I think that's well, more sites.

I got more sites, though, but what if all the sites are like, you know, getter?

How do you pronounce it?

Getter.

I'm on getter.

You're on getter, right?

You and the, you and ISIS, I gather, know, is on getter.

And porn.

And porn.

Let's not leave out the porn.

I tried to get on getter.

Did they let you on?

No.

What?

I don't know how.

I tried.

I tried, but for some reason it kept rejecting me.

Oh, you might be in there.

I think I'm on a blacklist, right?

Because basically

you're supposed to enter, you enter your Twitter handle.

Yes, right.

And you must be on there.

Okay, I said I did that.

And I think I'm on a blacklist.

Oh, Mike.

I can talk to Jason Miller for you if you want.

Just offer.

Yeah, no, I was going to get A.J.

Delgado to do it for me.

We're not going to explain that reference at all.

So are there any legal implications for these companies?

You're right.

The First Amendment does when people, what's really interesting is someone like Trump who's demanding to be back on these platforms, saying it's his First Amendment right, but their First Amendment rights lie with these companies, not with Trump, correct?

Correct.

And he's right.

And he's not going to get back on.

And his claims are bullshit because they're not the state.

I don't know.

I mean, first of all, what are you trying to do with these?

That's step one.

We have to ask, well, what do you want these?

companies to do that they're not doing and i think

ideally you would want them to filter filter out the misinformation better.

But if you start trying to force them to do that in some manner,

you're, you know, you, you're, you're almost, you're coercing speech or you're coercing.

And I don't know how you can do that with the First Amendment.

It's a very dangerous path to go on because what if the next Trump administration,

you know, coerces

a company not to allow criticism of MAGA or whatever.

Yeah, right.

You, You can't, that's the problem.

That's why we have a First Amendment.

And, you know, I don't think the framers really understood what could be possible,

you know, in their era of people

cranking primitive printing presses and pamphleteerings.

I think judges will knock this down.

That's where it's going to go.

No, judges will never tolerate it because we have a very firm and strong First Amendment tradition that basically says that you cannot engage in

regulation that is not content neutral.

And even

trying to fend off disinformation

that's not content neutral.

Although,

I mean, false speech is actually protected by the first.

Right, but these companies can make those rules.

These companies are.

These companies have every ability to make these rules.

I think the question is, are they willing to do that in a manner?

Do they think they can do that in a manner that doesn't hurt their business model?

And the second manner is, can they do it?

Effectively.

How effectively can they do it?

Because there's so long.

So are there any legal avenues for people who are having problems with this from your perspective if you were trying to fight big top?

No.

No, I don't think so.

I would agree with you, George.

I have to say that.

All right, George, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

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Okay, George, each week we like to make a prediction.

It can be about anything.

Give us one of yours.

I think Juliani is going to get indicted soon.

Tell, explain.

And I think that,

you know, because of his recent interview,

he gave an interview to a

W, I guess it was WNBC TV news reporter in Manhattan who was interviewing him for the 20th anniversary of 9-11.

And they were down at the 9-11 site at the memorial.

And he just starts spouting off about how unfairly he's being treated by the government.

I mean, I'm more than willing to go to jail if they want to put me in jail.

And if they do, they're going to suffer the consequences in heaven.

I'm not.

I didn't do anything wrong.

Why are you willing to go to jail if you feel that you're innocent?

Because they lied.

I mean, these are not the words of somebody who thinks they're not going to be indicted okay okay um so so you think he will be he's that's one of the next shoes that's going to come and be disbarred correct he hasn't yeah i don't think he yeah i don't think he's i don't think he's going to have a have a

leg to stand on when they actually have a disciplinary hearing that to to confirm whether or not he should be suspended and um you know and he says other problem reportedly according to maggie habrin of the times is he's basically broke at this point yes yes so i don't know how he defends himself from all this stuff yeah so what a fall it's actually kind of of sad.

It is.

Think about it.

20 years hence, right?

Okay.

And he could have just, you know, he had a nice sinecure.

He could have just stuck to that.

And

it's just inexplicable.

Well, he just can't quit him.

That's how, you know, he just can't.

He can't do it.

You can see it.

You can see it.

It's just self-destruction.

It is.

It's a lot of things going on there.

I think.

Oh, that's an excellent prediction.

All right.

How soon?

How soon do you suspect?

Soon.

I'm not going to hazard that, but it'll happen this year, probably in the fall.

It's just my, I mean, just a wild-ass guess based on no, no specific information.

Um, so I disclaim it as a wild-ass guess.

But you just can't, I, it's a prediction.

It's a prediction.

All right, George, thank you so much.

This is really helpful.

These are really good.

That's a really good prediction.

I think you're absolutely correct, though.

Um, and I think you're correct about these, uh, these Facebooks and others.

I don't think there is an avenue.

I think laws, if they want to pass new laws around them around privacy and data and things like that, that's the avenue to go in because then you

can.

Well, yeah, but I mean, if you just pass data and privacy laws, that makes their business not quite as, you know,

interested in creating rage and anger, that will, that would help a lot.

Just basic rules around data privacy.

And those are certainly completely legal to do.

And you mean, and that would be basically so that you can't use data on what people are looking at to encourage to dump more of that same shit off.

There's all kinds of business.

Which is the problem.

That feedback process.

That's the intentional feedback.

Yeah.

There's all kinds of things they can do to make these businesses.

And then also encourage innovation so that there's more.

You may or might like Getter and I'm sorry you can't get on it, but it's more like that is great.

I don't care what they are.

The more the better and the more innovation there is, the better.

Anyway, I really appreciate you coming on.

Thank you very much.

Have a great rest of the summer.

Don't forget if there's a story in the news and you're curious about and want to hear more or opinion on, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the show.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman and Evan Engel.

Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media.

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