CTRL-F 'Trump' in the Epstein Files

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

On today's show, we're going to talk more about the treasonous coup that our old boss almost got away with, were it not for Telsey Gadden.

Talk about the president arguing with the Fed chair about line items in our renovation project while wearing construction helmets on live television.

Also, going to talk about why a man who was serving time in Venezuela for a triple homicide is now somewhere in America thanks to the Trump administration's recent prisoner exchange.

And then later you'll hear Tommy's interview with the top Intel Committee Democrat Mark Warner on the latest Tulsi nonsense and lots more.

But first, as much as we all want to talk about the many pressing challenges facing this country.

Donald Trump has again made headlines about his decades-long friendship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

You may remember that last week, Trump got asked what he'd been told by Attorney General Pam Bondi about her review of the Epstein files.

Here's what he said.

What did she tell you about the review and specifically?

Did she tell you about all that your name appeared in the file in the future?

No, no, she's she's given us just a very quick briefing and in terms of the credibility of the different things that they've seen.

And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey.

They were made up by Obama.

They were made up by the Biden information, you you know,

and we went through years of that.

Specifically, did she tell you your name was in the files?

No, no.

That was last week.

And here's the Wall Street Journal headline from this week.

Justice Department told Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files.

That's right, Pam Bondi told the president that he and quote many other high-profile figures were named, hundreds of other names in the more than 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related material they have, but that they felt the files contained, quote, unverified hearsay about Trump and all those other people.

The story, which has been independently confirmed now by the New York Times and CNN, among others, was sourced to multiple senior administration officials, though the journal specifically cites FBI director Cash Patel as someone who's been privately telling other government officials that Trump's name is in the file.

You always want your FBI director to be the office gossip.

That is, that's the person you want to trust with the nation's, the top law enforcement official.

You know, he's got loose lips, loose lips sink ships there, cash patel.

The president seems to know where this is all going.

A witness leaked to Playbook that Trump said in the Oval, quote, they're going to accuse me of some funny business.

And that even though he claims he didn't do anything wrong, quote, they're going to fuck me anyways.

Delicious.

What do you think, Dan?

How does this explosive revelation that we all saw coming change the nature of this almost three-week old scandal now?

I would hope that this changes how everyone, ourselves included, talks and thinks about this scandal.

Because we've had a lot of fun about with this.

We're going to have fun about it on this podcast.

I hope.

it is there's something amusing about it but i feel like everyone has been treating this kind of from a perspective of amusement like ah look at these conspiracy pushing grifters who've been hoisted on their own petard right where the real crime here is hypocrisy and deception right that they they say they released the epstein files but they didn't do it trump's breaking a campaign promise ha take that dog that caught the car all of that but i think we do really have to take a step back and i know this is going to sound like hyperbole i know it will but i truly believe it that this

scandal now with this revelation this scandal now should be treated like iran contra watergate other other major political scandals.

Because what we have here is the President of the United States, the Attorney General, the intelligence community, the FBI director, and the Republican Congress, all part of a conspiracy to cover up information about the President of the United States' relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

And lying about it.

Right.

And he lied to the American people, either by direct order or by implicit request.

The intelligence community, we have intelligence professionals, like what's theoretically one of the most apolitical parts of the government, concocting a bullshit report we're going to talk about to try to distract people from the political fault of this.

We have the Republican Congress shutting down and going home for a month.

because they are so afraid to vote on a measure that could shed light, once again, on the President United States relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

Like this really is a giant deal.

Like we need to know what is that hearsay Trump's worried about in the files?

What is is in there?

What do we not know about Trump's relationship?

Like what, what other steps have been taken to try to cover this up?

Have there been efforts to alter or destroy the records?

What other government officials have hid it?

Who else has been lying to?

Like this is a big deal and it should be treated as a big deal in my view.

Did you hear Mike Johnson say in an interview that we don't know?

You know, when we get the documents, the deep state might have doctored the documents.

Yes, they put Trump's name in there.

Yes.

That's the next thing because the deep state.

Trump has been leading.

He has been...

This is one of the clues that you and I took as evidence that Trump knew his name, or at least suspected his name was the Episcopal, was he kept saying, how are we going to know the real?

Maybe Comey and Biden and whoever else doctored them to put his name in there, right?

And now,

so first of all, their initial reaction to the story from Stephen Chung, the communications director at the White House, was, oh, this is a fake, another fake Wall Street Journal story.

Then the journal reached out to, and I think the Times first reached out to Bondi Bondi and the DOJ, and they said, well, we just briefed the president

on what was in there, and we didn't find anything worthy of prosecution or further investigation, carefully chosen words.

That was the next explanation.

They also had an explanation that, oh, well, we knew his name was in there because in those binders that Pam Bondi handed out to all the right-wing crazies who came to the White House that started this whole thing, you know, Donald Trump's phone number was in there and everyone knew that.

And it's like, okay, okay.

Well, if Trump's name's in the files and it's just completely benign,

why not release it?

Why did you have to lie about it, right?

If all that's in the files about Trump is what is publicly known about Trump, which is that he used to party with Jeffrey Epstein and hung out with Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein went to his first wedding and there's pictures of them together and we know that he flew on his plane a bunch of times.

If it's just that that's just verified in the documents, I mean, it's not fun to have that come out, but it's already known.

So why cover it up?

Yeah, I mean, the, the chain of events here is they were planning to release the files.

They were on Pam Bandi's desk.

They released that first tranche that had his name in it.

That did not, at that point, they did not say we're not going to release more.

Because after that went out, Pambandi said, these are on my desk for review.

She reviewed them, found something that she thought would be quite embarrassing to the president, and they changed their plan.

And they've continued to believe that the massive amount of political file they've been getting now for almost three weeks is preferable to whatever they believe is in the files.

So, as you mentioned, Mike Johnson tried to bail him out by

literally just like sending everyone home for the summer early.

School's out, everyone get out of here, no vote.

They were going to take a vote to try to compel the DOJ

to release more information.

Not even compel them.

Just since you just said that was the unbinding one.

Right.

It said a sense of Congress that they would like, it would be nice if they released it.

And they couldn't even do that.

And yet, yeah, and yet his gambit sort of failed because the House Oversight Committee found there were enough Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, I believe three, voted with all the Democrats to subpoena the Justice Department for the files.

And they took that vote just before they left town in a move that surprised, I think, just about everyone.

The committee also subpoenaed Epstein co-conspirator Ghelane Maxwell to come testify before Congress, though it seems like Trump's DOJ is trying to get to her first.

It's like a fucking mob crime movie.

Trump's personal lawyer turned deputy, Attorney General Todd Blanche, is visiting Maxwell in jail today, Thursday,

and she reportedly, according to her brother, has new evidence to share.

And wouldn't you know, Dan, she's also reportedly interested in a pardon.

No, no, no.

Amazing.

Two totally unrelated things.

So the co-conspirator of the child sex trafficker who's currently serving 20 years in prison has probably a lot more to say because she was never interviewed by the Justice Department on any of the Epstein files.

And before she can testify to Congress, she gets a visit from the president's former personal lawyer, turned deputy attorney general,

who's going to meet with her first, knowing that she wants a pardon and that his boss, the president, has the power to give that pardon.

What do you think is going to happen there?

Is she going to be a straight shooter?

Seems seems totally above board.

Like,

if you can't trust a convicted child sex trafficker, who can you trust, honestly?

But

you've nailed the exact, the problem here, why this is like, this is such potential corruption, such a massive scandal, is that you have Ghelaine Maxwell, a convicted child sex trafficker, who wants a pardon, meeting with the justice official who just happens to be, by chance, Donald Trump's personal defense attorney.

Okay.

And we know that Trump has dangled pardons before.

The Mueller Report concluded that Trump's public communications about Roger Stone when Roger Stone was uh being prosecuted for crimes related to the Russia gate

was consistent with the idea of dangling a pardon to try to interfere with his cooperation.

He specifically dangled, he almost, almost explicitly dangled a pardon in front of Paul Manafort when Paul Manafort's plea deal fell apart.

There is a report, an unverified report, but a report nonetheless, that in 2017, Congressman Dana Werbacher went to meet with Julian Assange with a pardon promise from Trump if Assange would say Russia did not hack the election on Trump's behalf.

So we have seen this before, right?

We don't have any evidence that's what's happening here, but we have very real reason to be suspicious.

These people have lost all benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, I'm waiting for Todd Blanch to come out of that meeting and be like, oh, just found out from Jelaine Maxwell that Donald Trump, he was actually the one that said, Jeffrey, Jeffrey, enough with those girls.

I'm going to report you.

Those girls look too young.

And you know who else was there and said, I don't care?

Bill Clinton.

Yes.

And that's that's that's what I'm waiting for.

And when Obama was on Epstein Island, he told them about the pending treason plan.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, he had it right in his pocket.

So I'm sure that Trump and Johnson are just hoping this thing blows over by the time Congress comes back in September, now that they've escaped early.

What do you think?

It's hard to see how the fundamental political dynamics change here, which is the overwhelming majority of the American people want disclosure of the Epstein files.

The Republicans in Congress are caught between wanting to...

be with not just the 80% of Americans who want this, but the part of their base who very strongly wants it, and not getting on the wrong side of Trump.

Democrats are going to continue to offer this amendment in the House Rules Committee.

And if they cannot pass a rule, they cannot pass a bill because it's going to require, if you don't pass a rule, then you have to pass, you need two-thirds of the House to pass the bill.

So they can barely pass it with 50% of the House.

And so I don't see how it fundamentally changes.

Like ultimately, they're going to have to pass something or there's going to have to be some promise of disclosure to make this political dynamic change.

Of course, there's going to be a million news cycles between now and when the House gets back.

And I'm sure we won't be talking about the epstein scandal every pod from now until then don't be so sure but who knows um but like i do think they're all going to come back and you're right like it's i guess maxwell's going to testify in august right so they'll come back for for that testimony but like i don't know i don't see how they get past i don't see how they keep all the files at this point Maybe they just decide to, I mean, you know, these people lie, break the law, cheat all the time.

So who knows?

But But they can fight the subpoena in court.

Like, I mean, the DOJ has a long history of doing that, sometimes for reasons that are legitimate, because their fear that it would, in a legitimate, in a legitimate situation, mess up an ongoing investigation.

That's obviously not the case here.

Eventually, they're going to have to vote.

Maybe they vote to compel, maybe they, or they just, or the Romans are forced to vote to town and sort of eat their spinach there.

Yeah, and again, and we've talked about this before, like there are good reasons, even in this case, for the withholding of some information.

There's videos of the victims and also, you know, there's rules about like, you don't want to release a ton of hearsay about people if they're not incriminated in something.

Now, I think you can also make an exception for the current president of the United States that might be implicated in something.

So like there are good reasons and I'm sure that there are courts to litigate those reasons.

But yeah, they can certainly, of the however many 400 gigabytes worth of material, they can probably release a little bit more.

Yeah, they can at least release the parts that mention Donald Trump's name.

Yeah, that'd be one thing.

Yeah.

That'd be one thing, particularly if

there's nothing in there that he finds that's incriminating, right?

If there's no quote-unquote funny business, then what's the biggest thing?

No funny business.

What's the big deal?

Right.

Did you see, by the way, that this old video that's been circulating, so Midas Touch tweeted it out from 2010, and it's from the Epstein deposition where he gets asked about partying with Donald Trump.

Not only did I see it, John, I said it to you.

I can't remember remember who sent me what anymore.

Let's listen.

Have you ever had a personal relationship with Donald Trump?

What do you mean by personal relationships?

Have you socialized with him?

Yes, sir.

Yes?

Yes, sir.

Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of

females under the age of 18?

Though I'd like to answer that question, at least today, I'm going to have to assert my fifth, sixth, and 14th Amendment right answer.

Have we just, is there just too much bullshit out there about Donald Trump, too much scandal that we somehow, that this was out there and it just wasn't a big deal at some point because everyone just assumes that Donald Trump is a fucking predator?

Yeah, I think there is this assumption that, I mean, this is a very, very gross way of looking at the world, but because Donald Trump has survived politically and mixed all of the accusations, E.

Jean Carroll, the Access Hollywood tape, all the reporting that came out right before the election of the women he had sexually assaulted or sexually was

involved with sexual misconduct with those and he survived all that then none of this stuff would matter this this video is such an artifact of history because if you follow where might have touched got it from it's from a 2016 daily wire blog post detailing donald trump's long gross associations with jeffrey epstein yeah Now Ben Shapiro, fully on board.

Fully on board.

Let's talk about the politics and what Democrats should do now.

Our friends at Data for Progress asked likely voters last week what news story they'd heard and seen the most about recently.

The leading answer by a large margin was Epstein.

37% said they'd heard, quote, a lot about the story.

That was up from 25% the week before.

When asked why they think Trump hasn't released the files, 46% said it's because they contain information that could incriminate him.

Given that, and a lot of other polling that has not been so good for Trump on the Epstein drama.

How do you think Dems should handle this issue over the next few months?

I think our goal should be to keep the issue in the news as much as possible without putting too much spit on the ball.

Right.

I've seen other testing, which shows that the most effective messaging and the most effective online posts are not Democrats talking about it.

It is clips of Republicans or people who previously supported Trump, you know, podcasters, influencers criticizing Trump for this.

That's the most effective medium.

So when we think about how we, like if we are messaging people, if you're an elected official and you're thinking about how to use your platforms, that's one way to do it.

If we're thinking about it in the context of how all of us are messengers and people in our lives and you're sharing things in your group chat, the better thing to share is the clip of Andrew Schultz talking about this on Flagrant than it is, you know, some Democrat ranting about this on MSNBC or Pod Save America or anywhere else, right?

It's like the thing about someone who is whose motivations are not automatically questioned, even in an issue on this one, where they're quite sincere.

I think it's also just a proof point that's worth bringing up when making other arguments that are also true about Trump, which is, you know, he's lying about this.

What else is he lying to you about?

He promised transparency on this and is not fulfilling that promise.

What other promises has he broken to you?

He's protecting elites here.

What else is he doing that's protecting elites?

Like, there's just everything that's bad about Donald Trump, that Donald Trump is doing to hurt people, to let people down, to disappoint people, to break the promises he made during the campaign.

Like it's all in here in this scandal.

And I think as we go on to talk about other issues, reminding people

that this happened and that he's lying to them here and he's hiding stuff from them here and he's covering this up is just another good proof point to drive the argument home.

Yeah, you have to do this without sounding like you were created in a Talking Points lab.

Yeah, I got it.

But it's already, some of them it's already

in there.

The argument here, right?

These are not the words to use, right?

But the argument we want to tie this to a broader narrative that Trump is embodies a corrupt political system that protects the politically connected and the rich and powerful.

Don't use those words like that because that sounds like it was, I'm sure that that sentence tests fucking phenomenal, but it's not.

You've got a lot of press releases right now.

But like, that's the point you want to make, right?

Where like, think about it that way.

Just make it like a human.

Make it like a human.

And then, like, it is connected to tax cuts for rich, paid for by cutting Medicaid and food assistance.

But how you make that connection should be like a little more natural than trying to jam it into 240 characters, right, for your ex-post or whatever else.

I mean, it just fits in with everything he's done in the last six months.

It's like the guy's fucking accepting $400 million jets from the Qataris.

I forgot about the jet.

I was going through all the list of Trump things.

I forgot about the jet, the crypto scams.

We're talking here Thursday.

He's off going.

He's going to go play fucking golf on his golf course in Scotland this weekend.

He's, you know, he gives the big tax cuts to the rich people.

He's always around his fucking rich friends.

He's jacking up prices on everything that everyone buys from overseas.

The inflation's outpriced up.

He doesn't give a shit about.

people.

He gives a shit about himself.

And

if you're rich and you're one of his buddies, he'll protect you.

And if not, he won't.

And he'll, he'll probably go after you

for some people.

I mean, Democrats have been trying to make this point for a decade now because it's so obvious.

The guy shits on a gold toilet.

Like he's not, he's not a man of the people.

There's a reason it is broken through here because one, it's a violation against his own base as opposed to a violation against liberal values.

It's too often we...

Too often we attack Trump through our view of the world.

And this is one where he has violated something through his view of the world.

And then the other reason is conspiracy theories are the currency of the internet.

Like there's a reason that Jeffrey Epstein's conspiracy theory is such a gigantic deal because it's been living online for years now.

And so now you have the combination of a issue that already had a lot of currency online being jacked up combined with real, like real news breaking from traditional news sources and high levels engagement from across the political spectrum.

And so it is breaking through to people in a way that a lot of our policy-based arguments have not because they don't reach outside of that political news bubble that we struggle to get out of.

I also think everyone has always known about Trump that he is a rich celebrity and has been for a long time.

And the reason that a lot of people still

like him or view him as like, you know, a hero of the working class is because they've seen him as a traitor to his class, right?

He goes against the establishment that he used to be part of, right?

And he's taken on that, he's taken on the elites who he knows.

And so that has sort of protected him against the fact that he's just shuts in a gold toilet, like you said.

But if he's seen as actually, oh no, maybe he is part of that establishment.

Maybe when push comes to shove, he does protect those elites that he hangs out with because he actually does care about them or doesn't care about them, but he cares about himself.

And he's just part of that culture.

They don't want to think he's part of that culture, but look what he's doing in the Epstein case.

Sure looks like he's protecting the establishment.

So I do think there's like a story that makes sense to people because it's true.

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So, Trump, of course, realizes that if he wants to change the subject, he's got to make sure he turns up the crazy to like an 11 or a 12.

You can't be just doing your standard issue conspiracies.

You really got to turn it up.

Which is why he spent all week accusing his predecessor of a crime that's punishable by death.

Let's listen.

The leader of the gang was President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama.

Have you heard of him?

This was treason.

This was every word you can think of.

And you should mention that every time they give you a question that's not appropriate, just say, oh, by the way, Obama cheated on the election.

I have great respect for Tulsi and the documents they found on President Obama.

Frankly, it was an Obama thing, but it was the people that worked under him also working with him.

So many, you wouldn't believe the documents they found on Obama.

They just, they were, they were his just his pockets were stuffed with them and they all said treason plan.

Step one.

Step one.

Here's how I'm going to do the coup.

You might be wondering what the actual allegation is.

Unfortunately, the administration official who cooked it up can't really explain it either.

Here's Tulsi Gabbard not answering questions from CBS's Ed O'Keefe about the years-old information she's trying to repackage as a new scandal.

Senate Intelligence Committee spent several years looking into this and unanimously agreed in a bipartisan fashion.

Secretary State Rubio was a member of that committee that there was no political interference.

There was a years-long Justice Department investigation into this as well that also concluded no political interference.

So help us from a 50,000-foot level explain what do you now have?

I'm not asking you to take my word for it.

I'm asking you and the media to conduct honest journalism and the American people to see for yourself.

President Obama directed an intelligence community assessment to be created

to further this contrived false narrative that ultimately led to a years-long coup to try to undermine President Trump's presidency.

I'm telling you to look at the evidence.

Look at the evidence and you will know the truth.

You think she has looked at the evidence?

I'm not so sure.

I don't think she can explain the evidence.

I guess the crime is the creation of a false narrative.

I didn't know that a false narrative could be a coup.

But there wasn't even the creation of a false narrative.

That's, I know.

We can get into it.

There's like so many, there's so many steps that you have to get to.

I mean, it's wild.

But anyway, Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn, they're also calling for Trump's DOJ to appoint another special counsel to conduct another investigation into Russia Gate because apparently the several investigations conducted by Trump's party and Trump's DOJ in Trump's first term weren't enough.

As for Obama, his spokesperson issued a statement that said,

Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response, but these claims are outrageous enough to merit one.

These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.

What do you think, Dan?

Do you think they can can will this scandal into existence just by repeating treasonous coup and false narrative and manipulated intelligence over and over again?

I don't think we should call this a scandal.

Like, I don't even know what else to call it, like a crock of shit.

Like, it's not.

A scandal suggests that there was an allegation of something.

There's a,

at least credible allegation of something.

There's, there is, they can't even explain the allegation.

It makes no sense.

This is the most easily debunked thing in the world.

And the shortest way I would do that is,

how could it possibly be a scandal when,

how could it possibly be that Obama was trying to steal the election from Trump when during the election, the FBI was investigating Trump and told no one, but the FBI instead announced an investigation of Hillary Clinton three weeks before the election?

It's all part of the plan.

Yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's so stupid.

Can they get

MAGA media to report on this and talk about it and maybe take some attention away from Epstein there?

Sure.

Can they get the base who wants to believe everything Trump says to believe this?

Yes.

Can they make anyone take it seriously other than that?

I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't think so either.

It's wild.

Like, I don't, I mean, I guess I'm not surprised that Tulsi would do this.

She doesn't seem like the brightest bulb.

And obviously, Trump yells treason.

It's not the first time Trump has accused.

Barack Obama of treason.

I don't know if anyone remembers.

He's been like, he's done it multiple times before.

Probably won't be the last.

He likes to do that when he, you know, that's his, that's his, that's his card to play.

When things get really bad.

You got to go right for Obama.

I don't think it's the smartest move to

accuse the most popular political figure in the country of treason based on a concocted scandal that no one can fucking understand.

But,

you know, he's trying.

It's funny.

I was home and Emily was like, what is the whole Obama thing?

And I'm like, okay, well,

I go, it's bullshit, you know?

And she's like, yeah, but like, what are they trying to say?

And I started explaining it.

And within 10 seconds, she's like, I don't fucking, I don't know what you're fucking talking about.

I can't.

Just move on.

And that is what is benefiting them is that it is, you, once you start, you could, you, once you start explaining it for like 10 seconds, it becomes so fucking confusing because you have to go back to season one

and you have to have everyone remember what happened with RussiaGate and the hacking of the DNC and the WikiLeaks and the disseminating of the emails and all this bullshit.

And it's just, and I, just to explain this, to talk about it,

to try to rebut some of it on Twitter, have gone down the rabbit hole and whew,

it is like, it is PTSD, man.

I mean, just, it's worth when I saw the tweet this morning of John Cornet from Lindsey Graham saying that he and John Corner were calling over a special counsel.

I was like, oh, this seems like a big deal.

And then it took me a minute to remember that they actually appointed a special counsel

named John Durham to do this exact thing.

And he found, he basically affirmed the conclusions of the Senate Intelligence Committee report and what the Obama folks put out, and that there was no conspiracy to hurt Trump in any way, shape, or form, other than some paperwork problems in the Carter page, a name I totally forgot, FISA warrants.

Well, it tells us it's like, Tulsi is like, and there was a meeting then that Obama called in December.

And it's like, yeah, everyone knows about that meeting.

That was a public meeting, as Ben mentioned on Pod Day of the World.

He wrote about it in his book, this meeting.

And then it's like, and then in that meeting, he directed his national security team to develop an intelligence assessment that pulled together everything they knew about Russia and then manufactured this narrative.

And it's like, okay, so then what did they find a month later?

Well, a month later, they find that Putin conducted an influence campaign aimed at the election with the goal of undermining faith in the democratic process and hurting Clinton's candidacy and her potential presidency.

The dispute is, so no one disputes that part, right?

Even Tulsi is in her stuff now is not disputing that Putin interfered in the election, which it seemed like she was at first, but when you read the report and now what she's saying, they agree that Putin interfered.

Their dispute

is that Putin didn't interfere to help Trump.

That's the conclusion that the Obama intelligence assessment came to that they have a problem with.

And they think that this conclusion that Putin didn't just interfere in the election, but he interfered with the intent of helping Donald Trump win, that that, that narrative, which is false, which Obama knew was false, is what I guess led to Trump firing Comey, which is what led to Mueller becoming the special counsel, which is what led to the Mueller investigation, which is what then led to no charges against Donald Trump and his presidency continued on.

I honestly don't know.

And it's like, oh, you know how we knew that Putin interfered, not just to undermine democracy, but because he wanted to help Donald Trump?

Because he fucking told us.

he admitted it later.

And all of a sudden, they're like, well, some people in the Intel community weren't sure that Putin wanted to interfere to help Donald Trump.

And it's like, you know what I had forgotten about until I read Glenn Thrush's excellent piece on this.

Please tell me this is the end of the New York Times story.

Yeah.

Well, dude, I read, well, so it linked to another New York Times story from 2019 that I hadn't even read.

I was talking to Tommy about.

Apparently, the CIA, and this is just a fun spy story, but the CIA decades ago cultivated an asset in Russia that ended up working his way up through the ranks of Russian officials until he was a senior official who regularly saw Putin.

And so like we had this guy, we had a CIA agent inside the Kremlin that was seeing Putin regularly.

And it was so secret that apparently when Obama was president, and I know this from the New York Times piece, I am not,

I didn't know this at the time, I didn't know this until last night, But this was a 2019 New York Times piece.

That it was so secret the existence of this source in the Kremlin that it didn't even appear in Obama's Intel briefings that Brennan sent it to him separately in an envelope just to him to let Obama know what was actually going on because they didn't want anyone else to know.

And this was the source that first said, later confirmed by a million other pieces of intelligence, which Tulsi leaves out.

This was the source that said that, oh yeah, Putin wants to help Trump.

He has a preference for Trump.

So the idea that some other asshole in the Intel community is like, I don't know if we have the evidence.

Well, clearly they did.

Clearly they did.

And by the way, the reason we all know this now is because since we had to have the intelligence assessment out there, all of a sudden everyone got worried in the CIA that this guy was going to get found out.

by Putin, because Putin likes to kill people who do that.

And so they extracted him from Russia.

They brought him back here.

And I guess he's here somewhere in the United States.

It's very the American Dan.

I just thought it was a cool side story for all this.

I don't have a source in the Kremlin, but you know what?

No, we have none.

That was one of the problems.

We lost our big source in the Kremlin.

But the piece of evidence I have that Putin wanted to help Trump was that he's telling us later.

Well, that, I mean, that's one clue, if you will.

But also, he only hacked Hillary's campaign.

Well, that was the other.

That was just like a, just if you're like looking for clues as to what you're talking about.

Well, no, no.

Dan, you gotta, you see, you gotta go down the, you got to go down the rabbit hole.

According to Tulsi, the reason he hacked Hillary's campaign is because he decided that Hillary was definitely going to win, that Trump wasn't.

And so he was holding stuff back to undermine Hillary's presidency.

There's always another reason.

And look, that's possible.

He probably did want to undermine her presidency, and he might have even thought that she was a shoe-in like the rest of us did.

But that doesn't mean that he didn't want Trump to win.

Yeah.

That didn't mean that he didn't try to interfere to help Trump win.

Well, then he would have held the information back till after the election.

Well, he held some back.

That's right.

But he didn't.

No, he used it all.

He didn't.

And if we all remember, what happened in the summer right before Russia, through WikiLeaks, dumped all of the Clinton emails?

Oh, I remember.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Do you remember?

Did Trump stand before the world and call on Putin to hack the Hillary's email server?

Did that happen?

Yes, he did.

Specifically call on Russia to do that?

You said that out loud.

Kids, you can Google that.

Look on the YouTubes.

You'll find some great clips from 2015, 2016 of Trent saying, Russia, if you're listening,

I would love you to dump emails.

And guess what they did?

In a short time after, they dumped the emails that they hacked.

It is so funny.

And then you get all, of course, we watch Fox in our office all day.

And you get all these people and they're like, yes, but then Obama, they said that he colluded and there was collusion above us.

Like, no, no, no, no, no.

This whole Obama treason coup thing, the intelligence assessment didn't say anything about Trump's relationship or the Trump campaign's relationship with anyone in Russia.

There was nothing about collusion.

There is nothing about their relationship.

That just wasn't in the intelligence estimate, which none of these fucking MAGA influencers know because they're too stupid to look at the fucking information.

I have had this like weird fantasy over the last couple of days.

I'm like, I...

I cannot wait to hear what comes next.

I just want to,

I am dying to debate one of these people who is taking this seriously just anytime, any place.

Come on Pod Save America.

The only thing I won't do is do like a three-minute hit on Fox where like someone just yells over me and then they cut the commercial.

But I would sit down on a podcast with Matt Taibbi, any of these, Megan Kelly,

any of the jokers on Fox.

Anyone in the administration, I guess, if they want, and

talk about this because this thing would fall apart in five minutes.

Five minutes.

Would you debate 20 Russia conspiracy believing MAGA guys at the same time?

This is my way of trying to get on.

See, Austin's smiling.

He's so excited.

This is my way of trying to get on Jubilee.

And look,

I thought I was debating RussiaGate.

Suddenly, I got a bunch of Nazis around me.

Anyway, anyway, it's weird because, look, the treasonous coup, we've known about this and Trump says that the evidence is overwhelming that he's just guilty.

It's been happening.

It's now been going on for a week, over a week.

They still haven't arrested Obama.

What's going on?

Where's the arrest?

I don't understand.

You got the FBI?

You got the Department of Justice.

Where's the warrants?

Oh, the DOJ?

DOJ came up with a strike force?

Ooh, put out a press release.

We're developing a strike force.

Strike force is going to look at the evidence.

Okay, guys.

I just want to come back to the fact that you just disclosed that you've been having this fantasy about being on a podcast with Charlie Carlos.

I know.

I know.

I just it's just so it's I guess it's like my I'm still I'm I shouldn't be this naive this far into this but it's just wild watching them be like they seem genuinely like outraged that this is such a scandal and they can't believe this I'm like did you read did you read the documents did you know I got it I'm the more cynical of the two of us although you're rapidly catching up but not on not in this exact moment but I just want you to know that if you do this, there's not going to be a point where one of these people just says, you know what, John, you're right.

I know, I know, I know, Dan.

That's why I, that's usually when I move on to the next thing.

Okay.

Because then I'm like, it's not going to, I can say whatever I want, but it's just not going to work.

But we'll see.

What do you think of Obama's response?

Because I mean, like, I will say, I'm like, okay, I'm glad it didn't.

I'm glad in a response that sort of standard and official didn't come from him and came from a spokesperson.

Because if he speaks about it, I would like him to have some fun with this.

I know it's a serious topic, but I think he should have done it.

It's not a serious topic.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Like, I'm sure everyone needs to take it seriously because, you know, it's like Trump is running the government and law enforcement and there's no more independence.

And, you know, so it's a, it's a real, it's live ammo here.

But

I don't know.

I think that, I think that Obama should mock it because it is very mockable.

I think the best part of the response was the last line, which is these findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee led by then chairman Marco Rubio.

Who's been so quiet.

So quiet, Dan.

We have not heard a word from Marco Rubio.

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, last I checked, right?

Yeah.

Last I checked.

And National Security Advisors.

He's also a head of the National Archives, too.

And he's the archivist, yeah.

The archivist is the best part.

But

doesn't the State Department do a briefing every single day?

Yeah, yeah.

They were busy at the briefing, also not answering questions about why the guy convicted of triple homicide in jail in Venezuela is now set free in America.

I don't know what Tammy Bruce is doing, the spokesperson at those briefings, but certainly not answering questions about whether the Secretary of State stands by the committee report that he led that said Putin did interfere in the election on behalf of Trump.

There's an entire group of people whose job it is to go to, who are reporters who go to work every day at the Department of State.

When Marco Rubio travels,

when he gets some time off from his archiving duties, he travels with reporters.

I assume at some point he's going to have to answer this question.

I'm sure being the archivist, he has access to all of that information.

Do you think he has access to the Epstein files?

Marco's got it all.

He's got it all.

It's just sitting there.

Anyway, if anyone can find Marco Rubio

and ask him the question, get an answer out of him.

He's just deep in the stacks right now.

Marco Rubio, if you're listening,

you can either answer this question or debate John Favre on a podcast.

Your choice.

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Trump always needs villains to blame for his own failures.

This is why we're doing the treasonous crew right now.

But it's become a lot harder now that he controls everything.

So it's hard to find someone else to blame, which is why he's been trying to pin inflation and high prices on Fed chair Jerome Powell.

So we talked the other day about how Trump seems to realize he can't fire Powell unless it's for cause.

That's what the law says at least.

So his goons have been cooking up this allegation that Powell has spent so much money renovating the Fed building.

I can't do it with a straight face.

It's so absurd.

It's the stupidest.

All of this is the stupidest scandal that it might be a crime or at least cause for him to fire Powell.

So I guess to get attention for this ploy, Trump decided to visit the Fed headquarters today, Thursday, which presidents don't usually do.

And it's all under construction.

And I just, it was just on before we started recording this.

And so there's this just, you know, live shot of Trump and Jerome Powell and Tim Scott, Scott, because I guess he's on the relevant committee.

And they all got helmets on, they all got construction hats on.

And they stopped to talk to reporters.

And the reporters, who are all sick of fants, apparently,

I don't think there was a real reporter in the pool.

We can get into this.

Apparently not.

But the first question is like, oh, Mr.

President,

aren't there so many budget problems?

And

hasn't the Fed spent too much money on this renovation project, blah, blah, blah.

And then this is what happens on live TV.

Let's listen.

It looks like it's about 3.1 billion.

It went up a little bit, or a lot.

So the 2.7 is now 3.1.

I'm not aware of that.

Yeah, it just came out.

Yeah,

I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed.

You just added in a third building, is what that is.

That's a third building.

Well, no, but it's a building that's being built.

It was built five years ago.

Are there things the chairman can say to you today that would make you back off some of the earlier criticism?

Well, I'd love him to lower interest rates.

Other than than that, what can I tell you?

You are Jerome Powell.

You are the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

You are responsible for setting the interest rates

for the country, for our monetary policy.

And you are in the middle of a construction site arguing with the President of the United States over line items in a building reno.

I just

and had to correct him when, and, and, and was, oh, sir, that the number that you're saying there, that's a building that's already been built.

Trump's like, I don't know what you're saying.

Like, what the fuck?

It is so

stupid.

It's like ham-handed jawboning of him, and Trump feels like he's in his element because he's at a construction site, and he's kind of somewhat incoherently talking about how buildings are built and basements and reverse bathtubs.

There's like a lot of discussion in there about this stuff.

And the one thing you can take away from this is that Jerome Powell thinks that Donald Trump is the dumbest person who's ever walked the face of the planet.

And he cannot hide that sentiment for one second.

No, and he was, he was

through most of it, he's like trying to look up.

Like, I don't know, like he was hoping someone would like extract him from the situation.

From like one of those overpriced beams that fall on his head.

That was the look on his face.

Like, what am I?

How did I get here?

What am I doing here?

Did he just, I mean, I don't, I'm curious about how he ended up there.

Did he decide he had to go because Trump was coming?

Did Trump invite him and he didn't want to say no?

I mean, I'm glad he was there to correct the record on the random.

It was a great thing that Trump had it on a piece of paper in his pocket so that Jerome Powell could then look at it on live television and tell him he's an idiot.

I know.

I was worried for Powell for a minute because I'm like, who knows what this paper says or where Trump got it?

Like, if I was Jerome Powell, like he presents you with the paper with a random number on it, you're going to be like, I don't know.

But clearly, Jerome Powell knew that it was,

he knew what the money was.

It was a five-year-old building.

Yes.

Also, to your point about Trump with the construction hat and how he's the

Fox people, as they were cutting to him arguing with Powell, they're like, and there he is.

He is in his elements with that construction hat on.

He is a builder.

Folks, he is always, he's been a builder.

He's confident there.

This is what he does.

This is who he is.

Now let's listen.

So anyway, yeah, so he, you know, in front of the Fed chair, he's yelling about interest rates.

He also said later, so later at some point, they get back to Trump.

They ask him more questions.

Powell has left at this point.

Trump says he doesn't think he's going to, he's not going to fire Powell now because he thinks it would be too much.

It would be too big of a move,

too much turmoil.

He says he has two or three other people in mind for the job when Powell's term ends.

And then they shout a couple other questions at him.

Of course, they shout a question about Obama's treason.

We heard that clip when he said that they found all sorts of documents on Obama and the imaginary search.

And not a single question about Donald Trump being in the Epstein files.

Not one question, Dan.

Truly insane.

Like, I know no one cares about this, but...

This is the moment when it matters that the White House now picks, handpicks the reporters who travel with the president.

Because I don't know who was in this pool.

I haven't seen a list, but it appears to be either,

it appears to have only been pro-Trump reporters, right?

Because we know the wires or services aren't in there anymore because the AP is banned and they discovered if all the wire services, a way to get around the AP banned.

We know that the Wall Street Journal is not in there because they've been banned from the press pool for the temerity to report on the president of the United States.

And so I assume that because the questions were all friendly and there was like a whole bunch of questions about the renovation, like a lot of them.

Like, did you see anything when you walked through?

Did you see anything that seemed overpriced?

Did you see any crimes?

When you were walking with the chairman, did he happen to commit any crimes while you were walking?

Like how the biggest story, as you see, not just like in politics, but in the country is Donald Trump being in the Epstein files.

He's in front of the press for an extended period of time and no one asked him about it.

Even I was thinking, even if you had a bunch of like MAGA media influencers who have been talking for years about wanting to see the Epstein files, you'd think that maybe one of them would have asked a question about it.

They wanted, no one wants to tell the pool.

Well, hope they had a good time.

Okay, we got a few developments on Trump's increasingly unpopular deportation regime.

Two federal judges ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Obrego Garcia must be set free while awaiting trial on questionable, to put it generously, human smuggling charges in in Tennessee, and that ICE couldn't just grab him and deport him during that time when he was free awaiting trial.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called those rulings, quote, lawless and insane, before reiterating the government's position that Abrego Garcia will, quote, never walk America's streets again.

His attorneys are taking that promise seriously, which is why they supported the government's request to keep their own client locked up for another 30 days, because under the Trump regime, an immigrant like Abrego Garcia is safer in jail than on the streets where ice can disappear him.

And yet one person, the Trump regime apparently has no problem letting walk the streets, is a dual Venezuelan-American citizen who had been serving 30 years in prison in Venezuela for committing a brutal triple murder in Spain.

This guy was one of the 10 prisoners that the Maduro regime released in exchange for the 250 or so Venezuelan immigrants Trump disappeared to an El Salvador prison without due process, where some now say they were tortured and abused for 125 days.

Many of them had come to the U.S.

legally, had no criminal record, and were accused without evidence of being gang members.

Meanwhile, the State Department has so far refused to answer questions on the whereabouts of the triple murderer we traded them for.

They've only said, through a Rubio statement, that he's just, he's somewhere in America right now.

That's all we know.

So much for getting rid of the worst of the worst, huh Dan?

Yeah.

I mean,

it, like, I imagine that there is no legal basis to do anything with him other than set him free.

He's not convicted of a crime in the United States.

But the disparity between how Comar Bregger-Garcia is treated, how people walking the streets of America are treated by these mass ICE agents and this individual just uncovers the fundamental lie at the core of Trump's immigration policy, which is it is not about crime.

It's not about keeping Americans safe from criminals.

It's not about getting the criminals out of here.

It's about getting the immigrants out of here.

Undocumented, documented, naturalized citizens.

It is very clearly about trying to change the composition of what America is to make it less diverse.

It's like, that is what Stephen Miller believes.

That is very clear.

Because

if you stand on stage and you say, we're going to get all the gang members and the killers out here, and then we just bring killers back

while taking people who are law-abiding, hard-working people who've been parts of their communities for years and disappearing them to torture prisons and to Somalia and Libya and other places around the world, which makes it very clear what this is about.

And also, how much money, how many agents, how much time is spent going after dreamers and farm workers and people who are here legally and sometimes American citizens that could be directed towards people who have criminal records, people who've committed violent crimes,

whether they are undocumented immigrants or even other immigrants or American citizens or whoever, right?

Like there is a opportunity cost to what they are doing in terms of keeping people safe.

There was this whole story about how a customs and border patrol officer was shot.

I guess they were off duty and it was an undocumented immigrant shot them and everyone was like, this is this is Eric Adams' fault and Kathy Hochul and the policies of New York.

But I was like, well, why was that undocumented immigrant that shot the CPB officer?

Why was that person free on the streets?

Why didn't you have more resources and more manpower trying to get that person?

Oh, because you were shipping people without a criminal record to fucking El Salvador, to a prison where they got tortured?

Is that why?

Because you were like running into farms to grab farm workers and their kids and send them away?

Why don't you put resources where they belong and actually going after violent criminals?

I don't know.

That's an idea.

We now are learning more about the torture and abuse in Seacott because of interviews with some of the men detained there that were just published by, there's one story in the Washington Post, one in the Atlantic.

They describe being beaten and taunted by guards, denied legal counsel, forced to spend days in a cell known as the Island, where they were deprived of water and slept on the floor in a nearly pitch black room.

Like,

you know, we were talking about this this morning before on the show, and it's like, I don't,

it's, it's a horrific story.

There's nothing we can do about it now because it's already in the past.

They are still going to ship people to third countries, to port people to third countries.

So who knows if there are other Seacots in the future.

I don't know if they're going to send people back to Seacot or what, if that's over, or they're just going to now do South Sudan or wherever.

But like, is there a world where the Trump administration officials responsible for this face accountability?

I hope.

I mean, everyone should read these stories, these accounts, because they are so horrifying.

And the idea that our country chooses to send people to these conditions.

This is not deporting people and having them end up in those conditions.

We are cutting an agreement with a government to ensure that the people that we kick out of our country are tortured.

That is a deal that Marco Rubio made and has defended and is proud of.

And America does not have the most stellar human rights record, but we should be better than this.

I would hope that the people involved in this will be held to account over the course of time, right?

That they will be, you know, be the seen as

the immoral villains that they are, that they will be pariahs in public life, that they will spend the rest of their time sort of defending themselves and explaining themselves to their children, their grandchildren, their neighbors, everyone else for what they did in this moment.

Do I think they're ever going to face, have any sort of accountability that measures up to what they've done here?

No, I don't think that.

The one thing I would say, right, because it is so dark, but I just would, and this is, this is, there's not much solace here, but if you look at the polling,

the American people reject this and they reject it pretty strongly.

Donald Trump's immigration approval rating has dropped like 17 points since March.

There was a CBS poll out this weekend that asked people specifically about how Trump was handling deportation facilities, which I think in people's minds includes Seacott, and he's 16 points underwater, right?

There are way too many people in this country who are okay with what is happening, and that should make us question a lot about who we are as a society, but it should make people feel a little tiny bit better that the majority of Americans reject this.

And I will also say, When we started talking about this, when this started happening, there were a number, maybe most, elected Democrats and others, Democratic strategy people who were saying,

this is another distraction.

He wants us to talk about immigration.

He's baiting us into this.

And I get it.

I get what the immigration polling was after the election.

I've been critical about, you know, the Biden administration and how we handled immigration in the 2024 election.

But I would just say, like, we're heading in, if we head into the midterms, Democrats should talk about this issue.

Not only because, as you said, it is now the politically smart thing to do.

The public is on our side here.

That's fundamentally, that's what polls should tell us,

that the public is on our side.

But it's also just, it's not just the morally right thing to do, it's the morally right thing to do because it is the foundation of what the country should be about.

Right?

That this is a place where you get due process, where you are not, you are innocent until proven guilty, where you are not tortured, where you're not sent to a place to be tortured.

There's one guy in the Atlantic piece from Venezuela.

He was like a DJ.

He came here

and he gets caught up by ICE and they're like, oh, you didn't complete your asylum application and blah, blah, blah.

And where would you like to be?

You know, we're going to deport you.

And he's like, I want to be deported back to Venezuela.

Like, my family's back there and it sucks that I'm being deported, but like, that's where I want to go.

All these people, all the Trump people, all of a sudden they wanted deportations, you'd think that that's...

That's what they wanted, right?

Okay, this guy was here.

He did the right, you know, he didn't do it the right way.

Didn't finish his asylum application, send him back to Venezuela.

Put him on a plane.

He tells his family he's coming back to Venezuela.

Put him on a plane, shut the windows, everything's dark.

When the plane lands, he's in El Salvador.

That's the first time he knows he's in El Salvador.

And he's not even in El Salvador and set free in a country he's never been to and doesn't know.

He's locked up in this prison and tortured.

What is the fucking legal rationale?

for doing that.

I do not understand.

I do not, it seems illegal, it seems unconstitutional, and the people who perpetrated it should face legal accountability.

I just,

it's crazy.

I don't, I just don't, I don't understand.

Unfucking real.

Stephen Miller.

Good, good shit.

All right, when we come back from the break, you will hear Tommy's conversation with Senator Mark Warner about the Obama accusations and what the intelligence community really found.

But one quick thing before we do that, we get a new episode out of our subscription show, Inside 2025.

Our friends Kate Shaw, co-host of Strict Scrutiny, and Ian Basson, head of Protect Democracy, former colleagues of ours from the White House, talk about what it's really like to work in the White House counsel's office.

They're great lawyers, Kate and Ian.

Kept us all out of trouble until now that we'll all face charges of treason.

They get into all the challenges government lawyers face and how Trump is shredding norms at the Department of Justice.

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When we come back senator mark warner

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I'm here with Senator Mark Warner of Virginia.

As the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he's been following Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's wild claims that Barack Obama is guilty of a, quote, treasonous conspiracy.

Senator, thank you.

Welcome to the show.

Well, thanks, Tommy.

Yeah,

it's a wild time, man.

It's a wild time.

It is very weird.

So President Trump is clearly desperate to change the subject from his cover-up of the Epstein files to literally anything else.

That's why he's pressing the treason button.

So, that's why he accused Obama of treason earlier this week.

That's why they trotted out Tulsi Gabbard to the White House briefing room to claim that Obama twisted intelligence information to say that Russia's interference in the 2016 election was designed in part to help Donald Trump win.

She claims that this is proof of a treasonous conspiracy.

Here's a quick clip from Gabbard's bizarre briefing Wednesday: The implications of this are far-reaching and have to do with the integrity of our democratic republic.

It has to do with an outgoing president taking action to manufacture intelligence to undermine and usurp the will of the American people in that election and launch what would be a years-long coup against the incoming President of the United States, Donald Trump.

Senator, let's just start big picture.

What's your response to Gabbard's claims there?

Bullshit.

I mean, it's ludicrous.

Remember, Tommy, and you know this,

but the Senate Intelligence Committee, when I was vice chair, it was run by Republicans.

We did a three and a half year investigation.

We had people like Tom Cotton on the committee.

If there had been any evidence that any of the things that Gabber just said,

you don't think the Republicans would have blown up?

We had a bipartisan.

unanimous report that said, you know what?

Russia got into some voter files, but didn't mess with the vote count.

But clearly, they had an influence campaign.

Clearly, they had a preference.

I mean, Putin himself acknowledged in 2018.

And, you know, the irony of this,

well, hypocrisy is beyond the word.

Just

there's this worldwide threat hearing where all the intelligence community once a year public lays out.

In Gabbard's own worldwide threat analysis, it still said Russia still does malign foreign influence, tries to affect elections,

and

to try to bring out kind of like the greatest hits from the 2020 campaign.

As you said, you said it's desperation on trying to

distract people from the Epstein files.

Yeah, it's exhausting.

I mean, it just feels like we've done this over and over again.

You know, you mentioned this Senate Intelligence Committee report.

I mean, I was reading it this morning.

It's like a thousand pages long.

It's comprehensive.

It was developed over the course of years.

Can you tell me about now Secretary of State and National Security Advisor and seven other jobs, Marco Rubio's role in putting together the Senate of the report.

I believe he was chairman of the committee during the production of some of this work, right?

Well, this had been something that, you know, originally Richard Burr was chairman.

He had some issues, so he had to step aside.

But what we were, what was so, I thought, cool about the report was it was so straight down the middle.

You know, when people came to get interviewed, and we interviewed everybody.

They didn't know who was a Democrat, who was a Republican.

It was researched extensively.

No one has contradicted its conclusions.

Clearly, there was a major influence campaign.

Russia does this historically.

We should not be surprised.

The irony, and again, in many ways, was that the Trump intelligence officials at that point in 2018, 2019, 2020, like Paul Nakassoni, you know, they set up major election monitoring groups.

And because of the Trump intelligence community,

we were better protected in 2020 than we were in 2016.

And now Gabbard trying to bring out this old line of hits.

And Tommy, that's the thing that I also want to raise.

A week ago, she made these accusations based upon a totally partisan, you know, Devin Nunes, the former House chair.

That was bad enough.

Yesterday, she took a report that was so classified that in the first Trump administration, when people threatened to release it, People like Bill Barr threatened to resign because it would reveal sources and methods.

And that's kind of the holy grail.

We don't want folks who are working with us to get exposed.

She dropped this report yesterday without any redactions.

I think it surprised the heck out of the CIA because I think they were going through a redaction process.

And it just shows that, you know, there's no regard.

She has no regard for the integrity of the workforce.

of the IC.

And on top of that, she has no regard for our ability to work with allies around the world because who in the hell is going to work with us this on top of the signal Signalgate scam?

And it just, this is long-term damage that you can't just say, oops, we made a mistake.

Yeah, I want to ask you a little bit more about that House Intel report that she dumped out yesterday in a minute, but just a little context for listeners.

Like, so one important reform the intelligence community made after the Iraq War debacle was

reports no longer just say the CIA believes X or Y.

It now says how confident they are in that assessment.

So a low confidence assessment could be something like, you know,

we have fragmentary or, you know, not fully vetted information, whereas a high confidence assessment could be something like, we believe ex-foreign leader thinks why because the NSA intercepted a phone call where this person said as much, right?

So given that context, like, what is the IC's and your level of confidence that Putin directed the 2016 election interference and did so in part because he wanted Trump to win?

My confidence is extraordinary high.

I mean, you know, but remember, this should not be a high hurdle.

Remember Donald Trump in the campaign saying, gosh, if the Russians have got the WikiLeak stuff, leak it.

If the Russians have got bad stuff on Hillary, leak it.

I don't think there was, we ever reached the conclusion that there was actual collusion between the two, but the idea that there was an effort and that Putin had a clear choice and had a, as you know, Tommy, a long-term animosity against Hillary Clinton because she'd actually spoke up for Russian democratic reforms in the early, like 2011, 2012 timeframe.

So, and the irony is that factual basis of what we determined, not although my Republican colleagues have said, well, you know, I've now come to the conclusion that's not true.

Right.

And some of it is just so blaringly obvious.

I mean, the GRU, Russian intelligence, they hacked the DNC and then they dumped those emails out through a carve-out.

They hacked a top Clinton name named John Podesta.

They dumped his emails out too.

They gave stuff to WikiLeaks around the the Access Hollywood tape release to distract from that.

I mean, the Senate Intel Committee report found that no single group of Americans were targeted by the IRA's social media campaigns.

More, that was the Russian sort of group based in St.

Petersburg, Russia, that did a bunch of online bots and things.

They were targeting African Americans.

Obviously, those are the heart and soul of the Democratic Party's base.

The two top-performing intentionally false reports on Facebook were Pope Francis' endorsement of Donald Trump for president and Wikileaks' confirmation of Hillary Clinton's sale of weapons to ISIS.

I mean, it's like pretty obvious here who they wanted to win based on just that

fact pattern.

Remember as well, they had a fake Black Lives Matter site subsequently.

They had, you know, there was the one that was kind of, I thought, almost funny.

They had a site that said Tennessee Republican Party, but it was just, I think, T-E-N

and instead of T-E-N-N.

And it had more followers than the actual Tennessee Republican Party's official site.

So, you know, the GRU's sophisticated.

They took advantage of kind of our openness.

The fact that this is being relitigated at all at this point, and Gabbard is making even more outrageous claims, I mean, there's never been a director of national intelligence that has politicized

intelligence product.

Again, share with your audience.

She actually had her henchmen fire some of the most senior intelligence professionals because they wouldn't bend the knee and change the report about the Venezuelan gang Trendo Olagua.

Now, these are a bad guy gang.

The Maduro government's bad guys, but this notion that they were completely all connected, the IC told truth.

And then they've hired people.

And then she's tried to look at all of the personal chat between everybody and the IC, trying, you give up certain privacy protections if you work for the IC, but do you really want your personal chat looked at, depending on how loyalty you are to Donald Trump?

This has never happened before.

She was like on

the Charlie Kirk turning point convention last Sunday, trashing the workforce.

We are in such uncharted grounds with her behavior that, you know, again, I don't think it

her claims got much attention since, you know, it subsequently later in the day it came out that Trump's at least in some of these FTN files and we don't know what.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it's, but it's, you know, the RNA in is, this is the guy who spent his whole campaign saying we got to disclose this stuff.

And now it seems like he's, you know, trying to hide and obfuscate every way he can.

Yeah, the idea of taking all these sort of classified, highly classified, like intra-CIA communications where, you know, CIA officers are talking about like named assets and collection techniques and sources and methods, and then creating a database of all of that for Tulsi Gabbard, for the Russians, and for the Chinese to directly target seems like the dumbest thing I could imagine.

It's also worth noting, I keep bringing this up, Yevgeny Progozhin, the guy who ran the Wagner Group, this now deceased oligarch, because he decided to

drive his tanks at Moscow, which was a bad idea in Russia.

In 2022, he confirmed that Russia interfered in our elections.

He said, gentlemen, we have interfered, are interfering, and will interfere.

He was prosecuted.

He was indicted by the Trump administration in 2018.

He was sanctioned by Trump's Treasury Department for his connections to this Russian troll farm and Russian interference.

So the Trump administration, the first time around, certainly thought that Russia was interfering, and there was really no debate over who they preferred in the election.

But you mentioned this House Intelligence Committee report.

Tommy, could I just add one other thing?

And this is the, again,

some of the irony.

The Trump intelligence officials, the head of the NSA, Paul Nakassoni, Gina Haspel at the CIA during that time,

you know, they worked very aggressively so that we had a more secure system

in 2020.

And they knew and fully acknowledged what the Russians had done.

And

do you remember this?

This, again, a blast from the past, but this guy, Chris Krebs, who ran the cyber information, assistance, the cyber information security agency, literally got fired because he told the truth that our election was secure in 2020.

So

again, relitigating this now and trying to blame Obama.

It's absurd.

I thought I could see new lows, but it's pretty wild.

But let's go back to the report, sorry.

Yeah, no, I mean, there is this House Intel Committee report.

I think it was written by now FBI Director Cash Battale back in, what, 2017 or something?

What is this report?

How does it differ from the Senate report you worked on?

Well, what happened was the House Intelligence Committee was the Democrats and Republicans didn't even talk to each other during that time.

And there was a guy, Devin Nunes, who was the chair.

He now runs one of Trump's business operations.

And there was no attempt for any kind of unbiased.

They literally went out and cherry-picked individual items.

The report had no credibility, but what they also did that was so dangerous,

and since the report is out, you know, they literally, with names redacted, but still quotes of information that if you were that GRU or FSB, the Russia's got, you know, a variety of intelligents, you could look back and say, well, who would know that conversation?

And you could have people's lives in jeopardy.

I mean, this is so beyond the pale.

And the proof point of that was they tried to release this report at the end of the first Trump administration, and everybody pushed back to the point that people threatened to resign.

And now,

with no forewarning or effort to kind of redact and protect those sources and methods, she dropped this like a bomb yesterday.

And the amazing thing is,

I guess people are so jaded that it's not gotten the attention I thought it would get.

I have tried to guilt my Republican colleagues on the Indo Committee.

I'm like, how much more of this stuff are we going to put up with before we say, you know, this has nothing to do with partisanship.

It has to do with the fact that we've got to protect the men and women who work for us in the intelligence community and those countries around the world that share info with us.

So, is your concern that by releasing this report, the FSB or the GRU could target individuals who in the past provided the United States intelligence about Russian government thinking or could go after ongoing operations?

Listen, I'm not, I actually believe the reasons for classifications, I'm not going to talk about that, but I am going to say this was such a dangerous report.

Trump officials in the first administration threatened to resign if it came out.

Fair enough.

And I think this is a clear violation of what we call sources and methods.

And you can, you know, explain that to the audience, which does mean at the end of the day, yeah, people's lives could be in danger.

Yeah.

So Tulsi Gabbard, like Tulsi, you know, she's an odd duck.

Before she got the job, I I sincerely believe she was motivated by trying to keep the United States out of wars in the Middle East because of her service in Iraq and her experience there, and also concern about the United States intelligence community being weaponized or politicized.

Now, whether that was true or not, I do think it was something she talked about a lot.

Since this time, since getting the job, she's now let Trump ignore her claim that Iran had not decided to get a nuclear weapon and then contorted her views to fit what Trump wanted to do.

And now she's clearly weaponizing the intelligence community to punish Trump's enemies and help distract from the Epstein story.

What are the implications of her actions to

the IC, but also just like the United States?

Yeah.

Well, remember, Tommy, this is like, imagine you're a senior spy at the CIA.

Remember the whole way that Trump came in and those first few weeks.

So you imagine if you've been doing that job for 30 years and you're suddenly said, we got a new president and here's the plan.

Russia's our friend and canada canada is the enemy right you go that's that's wackadoodle but that's where they came from and what happens we hear almost daily from the intelligence community about morale being low the number of people that have taken you know buyouts that you can't replace overnight and i just really worry as well the signal gate the israelis were saying you know we don't want you having that kind of secret information and yesterday the word came out that hegzif got the information from a secret document obviously surprised at that or right yeah but it makes people say i'm going to think twice before i share information there's no official agreement where countries sign a document that we're going to share intel it's based on trust right and i've had leaders of some of our biggest allies in the intelligence world say warner what's going on these people getting fired i worry i have no evidence of this let me be clear but i worry that we might not get intelligence shared.

And now with this dropping of this report yesterday in the business, people's heads are exploding.

Yeah.

You know,

and we will never know that this is like an unknowable fact, though.

If somebody doesn't share with you, you don't know.

There's not a way you can trace that.

But I have heard huge concerns.

That is the kind of thing that say we made a mistake.

You still burn trust.

Right.

You know, and that's ultimately the coin of the realm in intelligence.

Yeah, and they're burning it fast.

I mean, to your point, the Washington Post reported yesterday that the Defense Department's inspector general now has evidence that the information disseminated disseminated by Pete Hegseth in those signal chats, which is a commercial app, it's not appropriate for classified information, was clearly marked as classified.

It was a designation called secret no foreign, which is the secret level of classification, and it cannot be shared with foreigners.

Hegseth, the Pentagon, they've denied this many times, but it was obvious to anyone who's ever worked with the Pentagon or seen sort of like military planning operations that those are always classified at the secret level, especially if it's prospective, it's happening in the future.

What does accountability look like?

Can I just just add one thing there, too, Tommy?

What was wild was, and Gabbard was on that call as well.

Gabbard was actually in a foreign country and didn't go to a skiff,

which is a secure place you could make a call.

But I've challenged her and Hagstaff.

You don't believe this was important information?

Come down to Norfolk or Virginia Beach.

I've done town halls down there.

And, you know, 20% of the audience either knew someone or had a family member that was on the USS Truman.

The Trumans ported.

That's the aircraft carrier that launched the attack against against the Houdies, and it's home ported in Norfolk.

And I said, come and explain to those friends and family that this didn't put their loved ones in harm's way.

People were, you know, I've seen folks pissed before, but this was a level of anger from people that I think have been traditional, you know, Republican supporters.

Yeah.

Last question for you.

So Tulsi Gabbard, the last question of her little press briefing was she was asked whether she is aware of any connections between Jeffrey Epstein and U.S.

intelligence or any foreign intelligence agencies.

She said, quote, I haven't seen any evidence or information that reflects that, end quote.

That struck me as odd because, or odd phrasing, because Tulsi is one of the few people in the world who has access to information that would allow her to say definitively yes or definitively no, especially when it comes to connections to U.S.

intelligence like the CIA.

I'm not sure if you've seen this, but it is taken as an article of faith in the kind of MAGA media world that Epstein was running a blackmail operation either for the CIA or more likely for the Mossad or maybe both.

Do you know anything about reporting about potential Epstein ties to U.S.

intelligence or Israeli intelligence?

I do not, but I have heard those rumors.

And you would have thought as the director of national intelligence, since she was coming up, she must have known she was going to get asked that question.

And you are right.

She could ask the question and get a response quicker than I could.

And even I'm viewed as Gang of Eight, which is supposed to get all the information because that's the speaker and the ranking members and the Intel chair and vice chairs.

But yeah, it was again odd in my mind too that she kind of seemed to punt on that.

Yeah, very odd.

Well, Senator, thank you so much for helping us try to debunk this thing.

Like trying to explain to sort of friends and acquaintances why what Trump is saying and what Tulsi is alleging doesn't make sense because it's just, it's so absurd.

You know, it's like their allegation is like, aha, here's intelligence that says the Russians didn't hack and change vote totals.

And then you're like, but Obama never said that.

The White House.

No one said that.

But the thing, and I know that what kind of gets lost in all this and with the information coming out that Trump is somewhere

named, and we don't know what that means.

But the part that's making me a little crazy is Again, this kind of dropping classified information without regard to the consequences, disrespecting the workforce.

13 years ago, 14 years ago, I didn't know that much about the intelligence community, but man, I've come to really believe that they are non-political patriots.

They just want to try to do the right thing.

And we know when we try to cook the books, that's how we got into Iraq.

So

I'm going to stay at it, and I hope you will as well.

But thanks so much for having me on.

Thank you so much for joining the show.

That's our show for today.

Thanks to Senator Warner for coming on.

If you want to watch the full interview, it's up on the Pod Save the World YouTube channel.

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That is absurd.

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Tommy will be back in the feed on Sunday with CNN media reporter Brian Stelter to talk about Trump's attacks on the media, the late show getting canceled and lots more.

Talk to everybody soon.

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