“Impeachable!” Marc Elias drops BOMB on Trump

This is Democracy Watch. Mark, there is a statement that Donald Trump put out that has caused a legal earthquake. So I'm going to put that right here on the screen. I'm going to read a little bit from it. Pam, I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that essentially same old story as last time. All talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam, shifty shift, Letitia? And then he skips ahead and says, we can't delay any longer. It's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice and indicted me five times over nothing. Justice must be served now."

So Mark, it very much seems like Donald Trump is just coming out and saying here that because these people sought justice against me for the crimes that I committed and that juries found grounds to indict me for, that I need to exact political revenge against my political opponents and that you, Pam Bondi, need to be the one to do it. And so, first and foremost, can you talk about the legality of this move, of this statement being put forward by Trump?

RL Yeah, look, this is worse than anything Richard Nixon did. I mean, this is, this is, to say it's unprecedented would understate what unprecedented means. I mean, the President of the United States seemingly in what was intended to be a private message posting on social media, that he wants the attorney general of the United States

to find a prosecutor, right? Because remember this is in the context of having fired the Republican who he appointed in the Eastern District of Virginia, who then did not indict, chose to decline an indictment of Letitia James,

got fired over that. And now there is an effort to put someone new in. And so you see in that post, the name Lindsay Halligan, which is another lawyer that he now has said he wants put in place. But what he is telling Pam Bondi is,

find a prosecutor to prosecute these people. I have decided they're guilty. I don't care what the evidence is, that this is making us look bad and we cannot delay any longer. And this is absolutely grounds for any indictment to be dismissed. I think it should be grounds, frankly, for any prosecutor who proceeds now to be face disbarment. I think it should be grounds, frankly, for the House if Democrats take control to look at impeachment. I mean, this is so far beyond so far beyond what is acceptable that, you know, I can't I don't even have words for it.

I'll say this, though, one last thing. The legacy media is treating this like just another sort of blip in the ocean of blips with Donald Trump. I mean, could you imagine, could you just imagine for a moment if Joe Biden had suggested that, you know, that the person who had accused Hunter Biden of something

be criminally prosecuted? I mean, it would be a tidal wave of coverage and yet you have to go hunting and pecking to find coverage of this. You know, I was proud that Democracy Docket was among the first to have it up on the full story

up on their website and we will remain dogged at it.

And look, that underscores the need for fearless independent journalism like you have. So for anybody who's watching right now, especially in light of all of the failures at the hands of these legacy media outlets, do yourself a favor, do Mark a favor, and please go ahead and subscribe to Democracy Docket. I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of

this video. This is a time at which we need to reward the people who are actually meeting this moment with the urgency that it deserves. Mark, it's worth asking here, as far as Pam Bondi is concerned, I'm going to throw a clip from her confirmation hearing right here on the screen.

And it would not be appropriate for a prosecutor to start with a name and look for a crime. It's a prosecutor's job to start with a crime and look for a name, correct? Senator, I think that is the whole problem with the weaponization that we have seen the last four years and what's been happening to Donald Trump. They targeted Donald Trump. They went after him, actually starting back in 2016. They targeted his campaign. They have launched countless investigations against him. That will not be the case if I am Attorney General. I will not politicize

that office. I will not target people simply because of their political affiliation. Justice will be administered even handedly throughout this country. Senator, we've got to bring this country back together. We've got to move forward or we're going to lose our country.

So that was her being asked point blank about this very concept, about this idea of finding people and then creating in retrospect some pretext to be able to prosecute them afterwards. That that's not how the justice system works,

that you follow the evidence to the person and not the other way around. In light of the fact that she said one thing and now she's being ordered by Donald Trump to do another, and it very much looks like she's a willing participant in this scheme, is there any legal exposure

that Pam Bondi shoulders?

Brian, you know, Joseph Stalin's head of the secret police had a saying, show me the man, I'll show you the crime. And that is effectively what is going on here. And so when you ask whether Pambandi has legal exposure, let's break this down into pieces, right? There is the what she told Congress and whether or not she was telling the truth at the time that she said it, right? She would say I meant when I said it, and maybe I changed my mind. But like, they're dubious, you know, whether or not she ever meant it to begin with, right? So that's one. The second is, you know, I assume a whole lot of people in the Trump administration

are banking on the fact that Donald Trump will do end of term pardons. Because, I mean, you have a lot of people in this chain, starting with Pambandi, but going on down, who are risking their bar licenses, are risking potential criminal prosecution for abusing the justice system. I mean, Donald Trump has immunity, thanks to the Supreme Court, from from from crimes on office. But that only applies to Donald Trump. And, you know, people deciding to investigate, no less investigate and indict, no less investigate, indict and prosecute innocent people because they are trying to help the president settle a political score. I mean, that is very, very fraught territory. And so you would think that

that more of these folks would take the lead of what we saw in the Southern District of New York with the prosecutors who resigned there rather than dismissing the Eric Adams case. Frankly, the lawyer in Virginia, the Republican who was nominated

who was either fired or resigned rather than indict this case. But one just assumes that Pam Bondi is right now dialing up insurance lawyers, slip and fall lawyers, and parking garage lawyers all around the country to see which of them want to be the chief federal prosecutor

in Virginia on the condition that they indict Tish James. And that is an absolute outrage outrage and it should outrage everyone. It should outrage not just people who are Democrats, it should outrage not just people who care about rule of law, it should outrage Republicans. I mean, it should outrage anyone that this is going on.

Why do you think Republicans seem to care so little in the aftermath of clutching their pearls and having fainting spells when Bill Clinton, who wasn't even president at the time, met with Loretta Lynch on a tarmac several, you know, more than a decade ago. And the separation between church and state of the presidency and the attorney general was apparently so, so sacrosanct that they lost their mind for months about it. Now you have Trump issuing edicts publicly in broad daylight to Pambandi and telling her what to do and who to prosecute, not because there's evidence, but because he doesn't like these people.

And it comes and goes like a fart in a hurricane. Look, I have come to the conclusion and, and I was resistant to get to this point, but I have come to the conclusion that we are not dealing with people who are capitulating. You know, that the Republicans who are going along with this are not going, you know, sadly into this. That the corporate leaders, the media executives who are paying these settlements are not doing it

because they are victims. I believe that for a large number of the Republicans behind this, and for far too many people in corporate America, they are collaborators. They are benefiting from this system.

They are benefiting. They are not reluctant. They are in for a dime, in for a dollar, because they're getting something out of this. And so rather than viewing the Republicans in Congress as just weak and ineffective and

without a spine and a backbone, I now think they are eagerly doing this because it helps them raise money, stay in office, gain prominence, gain their own sycophants, advance their own political future. And that is even worse than them just being weak people who are afraid of Donald Trump and his supporters.

Right, couldn't agree more. I wanna talk about the replacement for the so-called Rhino US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Would this be the parking lot lawyer? Oh no, no, that was the New Jersey.

That's right, that's right. Now that's Alina Haba, that's where she is. Would this be the the the woman who might enjoy an adult beverage once in a while while on Fox News? I think I think that that's that's where did they put Jeanine Pirro? Is she in Washington, Washington, D.C.? That's right. Yes. No, not that one. But keep going. You're on a roll. Okay, I give up. Which one are we up to now? So with this new prosecutor that was put in, I believe her name is Maggie Cleary, if I'm not mistaken. Is she not just being set up for extreme failure in the sense that we already know because Trump has publicly broadcasted that any prosecution against

Letitia James is not well founded, but instead because Donald Trump has ordered it. And so what grounds would there be to bring a prosecution that wouldn't be immediately struck down as a vindictive prosecution?

Right. And by the way, I suspect there may be a little drama going on behind the scenes here because you're exactly right. Maggie Cleary was, was named or was it was put out publicly that she was going to be the replacement for the first person that Donald Trump nominated for this position, who was the lawyer who refused to bring the case. But then in this

post that you that you put up, you see the name Lindsey Halligan, who is another Trump lawyer. This is a woman who you know, as was an insurance insurance lawyer who sort of fell into the Trump orbit of Nerdy Well lawyers. And she, according to Trump, is now going to be nominated to be the prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. So it's unclear what the sequencing is here, whether Maggie got the job and then was immediately fired, whether Maggie got the job for the purposes

of, of indicting Tish James only to be replaced by Lindsey Halligan. I don't know where Cleary fits into all of this.

But the question remains, whoever gets in there is in there for one reason, and that is to indict Tish James. But when they move forward with this, with this inevitable prosecution, we already know because he's broadcast it in public, that the only reason it's being done is because Trump found a name and he's looking for evidence to indict them on.

And so how could Tish James not just go in and absolutely steamroll them when she comes back and says, this is a vindictive prosecution?

Yeah, look, I think you're exactly right. I think that any indictment at this point is going to face an uphill battle with a federal judge when there is a motion to dismiss filed for selective prosecution, political prosecution, vindictive prosecution, pick your terminology. Yeah. But the functional outcome is the same, which is that you had a process by which she was investigated,

which was highly unorthodox and inappropriate. And we shouldn't lose sight of that. The entire predication for this investigation was tainted, and they would have had a good motion just on that. Then you had the investigation that culminated with the new US attorney saying,

we're not gonna to bring the case, then you have that person being fired publicly for that reason. And now you have one lawyer, maybe two lawyers, who knows, being brought in who are seem to be being screened only for the purposes of bringing this case. Like, I mean, a federal judge is not going to miss these facts and the defense lawyers that are not going to miss these facts. The question, Brian, to me, is not what happens to just James. It's what happens to Adam Schiff. It's

what happens to James Comey. It's what happens to John Bolton. It's what's what happens to Congresswoman MacGyver. It's what happens in all of these cases and the future cases where we don't have a posting on social media that Donald Trump either erroneously sent in his adult brain or purposely sent in his even more adult brain. Like the problem is not what's going to happen here in this case in Virginia, because I think you're quite right. I think just James will will will have a very successful motion. And by the way, I would still put the odds of her getting indicted less than 50-50

because they are gonna have to find some line prosecutors to go into a grand jury, recommend an indictment. They're gonna have to get a grand jury to indict this case, having read, heard all about this. So there are a lot of steps between here and there, but assuming that that happens, I think you're right.

She'll be okay in terms of the case being dismissed. But what about everybody else? What about all of the other weaponization? Where is the legal establishment standing up today? Why, when you open the newspaper today, I said earlier that the legacy media has been derelict here.

But where are the large law firms? Why aren't they speaking out? Where are the business leaders? Why aren't they speaking out? Where are the business leaders? Why aren't they speaking out? Where are the largest civil society organizations? Why aren't they speaking out? Why isn't this generating the kind of outrage that it needs to generate? And why is it, Brian, that it is you and me who are always doing videos about these issues as

we watch the legacy media with their billions of dollars and their hundreds, I mean, I heard a podcast that the evening news on these networks, there are like 110 people who work on the evening news show alone. And you and I do these videos and sure we have,

you know, you have some people, I have some people, but like fundamentally we're carrying this load and where are these large institutions? I'll tell you where. They're nowhere because they see that they are better off not just capitulating, but collaborating with Donald Trump.

And if that means that they pay a few million dollars here and kick a comedian off there and bench an anchor, you know what, the return on their investment is worth it when they're able to get through the FCC, a merger that is prohibited by the rules. When they're able to have a sale of a large media company

go through to another large media company. And that is the challenge that we face in democracy today. So this right now is, you know, sitting in a, you know, metaphorically in a courthouse in Virginia looking for this prosecutor, but I agree, Tish James will be okay, but what about everybody else?

Yeah, well look, that underscores the need for, again, fearless independent journalism like yours. So for everybody who's watching right now, if you'd like to support this kind of journalism, please sign up for Democracy Docket. I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. I use it on a daily basis. I promise you, you will not regret it.

If you are not yet subscribed to this channel, I'll put that button on the screen as well. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen.

I'm Mark Elias. I'm Mark Elias.

This is Democracy Watch.