Welcome back everyone. I am Cass PNC and I'm joined as
usual by my partner in crime, Bennett Tomlin.
How are you today? I am angry and ashamed of our
country. How are you, Cass?
Yeah, feeling similarly, feeling disappointed.
And I'm like a disappointed dad today is what I am and an angry
dad. So let's talk about why the
primary thing we're discussing right now that is happening as
as we're recording it. We don't know what the outcome
of this is going to be. It's not necessarily something
we do talk about, but we're going to be talking about it
because it does relate to us. We're going to be talking about
the Southern District of New York and how the administration
is attempting to get them to drop a slam dunk case against
Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.
So Bennett, can you, can you just go into it?
On February 10th, Emil Beauvais, the Acting Deputy Attorney
General of the United States, issued a letter in which he
stated the intention for the charges against Eric Adams for
his almost cartoonish corruption to be dropped in light of the
difficulty they were presenting to Eric Adams in cooperating
with the Trump immigration enforcement activities.
This seemed to all reasonable observers like a blatantly
illegal and unconstitutional quid pro quo in which Eric Adams
ability to cooperate with the policy aims of the Trump
administration were exchanged for these charges being dropped.
After this letter was released, Danielle Sassoon, a former clerk
for Antonin Scalia, a Federalist Society associated lawyer and
one of the two prosecutors who helped put Sam Bankman freed in
prison for 25 years, wrote her response to this.
And it went over exactly how problematic this ask was.
And there's a couple of things I want to pull out from here,
including perhaps the most telling one.
And fans of The Wire will recognize the problem with this
part. There's a footnote that says I
attended a meeting on January 31st, 2025 with Mr. Bove,
Adams's counsel and members of my office.
Adams's attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid
pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist
with the department's enforcement priorities only if
the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of
my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the
collection of those notes at the meetings conclusion.
Are you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
Bove asked the attorneys working underneath him.
Because it is of course typical for these attorneys to take
notes like this. We saw these type of notes out
of SDNY in the Ryan Salami case after their meetings with his
attorneys when they were discussing, like his proffers,
his plea deal in the various details around that.
These contemporaneous notes by the attorneys of these various
United States attorneys general offices are an important part of
the record of how their negotiations with these opposing
counsels and how their investigation into these cases
going. But both wanted to make sure
these weren't written down because it would represent a
record of this blatant corruption.
Sassoon's letter also included, I do not repeat here, the
evidence against Adams that proves beyond a reasonable doubt
that he committed federal crimes.
Mr. Bove rightly has never called into question that the
case team conducted this investigation with integrity and
that the charges against Adams are serious and supported by
fact and law and said things like Adams's advocacy advocacy
should be called out for what it is, an improper offer of
immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a
dismissal of case. It is a breathtaking and
dangerous president to reward Adams's opportunistic and
shifting commitments on immigration and other policy
policy matters with a dismissal of a criminal indictment.
Nor will a court likely find that such an improper exchange
is consistent with the public interest, she continued.
I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which
this decision was reached. In seeming collaboration with
Adams's counsel, and without my direct input on the ultimate
stated rationales for dismissal, Mr. Bove admonished me to be
mindful of my obligation to zealously defend the interests
of the United States and to advance good faith arguments on
behalf of the Administration. And Danielle Sassoon, one of the
best prosecutors in the place where the biggest white collar
fraud cases are prosecuted, was like, this order makes that
impossible. To do that, I think it's worth
talking about another attorney who has now spoken out.
So before that we should get to after this, at the end of the
letter she says if you are going to continue with this order,
consider this my resignation. Emil Bove then wrote a letter in
response where he accused her of losing sight of the oath and
said that it is her obligation to interpret the Constitution
exactly how the President and the Attorney General do or she
is derelict in her duty. And he also claimed he also
confirmed that he did order members of her staff to stop
taking notes and his stated reason is leaks.
It's complete bullshit. And then this leads into what I
think you were leading up to, which is.
The Assistant US Attorney of SDNY, Hagen Scotten.
Who was the lead prosecutor on the Eric Adams case?
Lead prosecutor on the Eric Adams case wrote a response to
this. Because they're essentially
there was suggestions about like it's like, I don't know they're
how much they care about America or something.
Like I don't even know how to interpret that reply.
Scott and said this. There's a tradition in public
service of resigning in a last ditch effort to head off a
serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you
were committing here in the light of their generally
negative views of the new administration.
I do not share those views. I can even understand how a
chief executive whose background is in business and politics
might see the contemplated dismissal with leverage as a
good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant US attorney
would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using
the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much
less elected officials, in this way.
If no lawyer with an earshot of the president is willing to give
him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone
who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your
motion. But it was never going to be me.
So you can feel the contempt with which these attorneys have
for this administration in the way that they're behaving.
And I think to be clear, like I said, Danielle Sassoon clerked
for Antonin Scalia. This lawyer clerked for John
Roberts. Higgins Scott and clerked for
John Roberts. They're conservatives.
These are former SCOTUS clerks who clerked for like the top
conservatives on the court. These, this is not some like
crazy woke liberal anything. These are conservatives who are
steeped in the conservative legal tradition around the
Constitution and they are aghast at what is occurring.
Since that letter, there has been reporting that suggests all
of SDN wise public integrity line attorneys have been brought
into a room where DOJ officials are basically telling them one
of you is going to sign this motion to drop these charges or
all of you are being fired. Utterly unspeakable interference
by the executive in the like proceedings of the Department of
Justice and like the process of the justice system in the United
States. It is like an order of magnitude
more egregious than the Saturday Night Massacre that eventually
led to Richard Nixon's impeachment and resignation.
This act alone should be enough to damn politically every single
person involved and may even involve like, illegal,
unconstitutional exchanges of goods that should land some of
these people in prison for their actions.
But most foundationally, they represent a fundamental attack
on this nation, our nation. And like failure to grapple with
that in the very near term is going to have massive
ramifications. In the hour or so since we
finished recording, the total number of officials who have
resigned as part of this is up to six.
And reportedly, according to Reuters, one has agreed to file
the motion. People have speculated that this
is going to be a very interesting hearing to see how
this lawyer presents this motion.
Just wanted to come in here from the editing Bay quick to
interject that. Yeah, we're in big trouble.
I need people I like. I, I can't, I, I, I don't, I
can't shout. I don't want to yell.
I don't want to be obnoxious to people.
I'm trying to convince so, and I'm trying to convince you.
I, I, I know how crazy this sounds, but it's for your own
good. There are people who are really
just keen on this idea that like, oh, if you break the
system down, then the rebuild will be better.
And none of them speak from a point of experience they've
never lived through that. They've never seen it play out.
And I can guarantee you that having a dictator as opposed to
a democracy that we have had the wonderful luck of having for,
for as long as we have, it's not going to be good.
So I that is where we're headed. And another reason that we we
can confirm that is because it seems like the White House now
and Elon Musk and his and, you know, unelected officials can
now just take money from whatever city they see fit.
Yes. So we've already talked on here
about how the administration has been illegally and
unconstitutionally impounding payments authorized by Congress.
They were ordered to stop this by a court and yet there are
multiple states who are suing ordering that the administration
is actively not complying with that court order.
Since that court order, they have gone further and are
attempting to use ACH automated clearinghouse reversals to take
funds that were already distributed to various cities in
organizations back, presumably under the automated clearing
houses fraud provisions, which is an utterly false pretext to
take these funds back. And again, these have already
been appropriated by Congress and this is another form of
impounding and them ignoring the court order.
Which is even more troubling when you realize that both Elon
Musk, the current special government employee with the
broadest mandate humanly possible, and JD Vance, the Vice
President of the United States, who is 1 tainted burger away
from controlling the world's largest nuclear arsenal, both
have said on X, the Everything app, that they are likely to
ignore judicial orders that interfere with the functioning
of this administration. That is fundamentally a public
acknowledgement that they intend to act as authoritarians.
This is an open and public acknowledgement that they are
dictators. They are openly stating it.
They have impounded congressionally improved funds
and intend to ignore the judiciary.
They are placing the executive above all, as though Elon Musk
and Donald Trump are A2 headed king.
And people, I know there's going to be people in the comments no
matter what, there's going to be people in the comments and
people who think you guys need to focus on, you know, just pure
fraud or pure crypto or whatever, whatever.
And I, and I just want to say that we're talking about this
stuff because the, the one, the wonderful way that we've had
such a powerful dollar and, and such a, a hyped up economy for
so long is because we have rule of law in this country.
And right now we're talking about dismissing the rule of law
in this country, about being like the court is the president
and I and I don't think people understand what that means.
I really don't cry liberals. But like, no, you're going to
cry too. Like when you start getting hurt
by this and you want to say something and speak up about it,
you you won't be able to because you can get arrested for it now
or something like the the rules are different now, yeah.
The the most liberal prosecutor in all of the United States
Attorney General's office is probably less liberal than I am
right now. And Hagen Scotten and Daniel
Sassoon are not at all liberals. These are like Federalist
Society people. Antonin Scalia and John Roberts.
My fucking God. Like they this is JD Vance is
publicly called it de baathisation.
Like this is fundamentally like Hitler clearing the Strausses
out of the Nazi party or Stalin clearing everyone except for
Stalin out of the Communist Party in Russia.
Like this is fundamentally not even them staying aligned with
the broader conservative movement.
This is a small number of people who have seized the levers of
power and are instituting a dictatorship in front of your
eyes. Yeah, so many people talk about
being constitutionalists, and it's like, well, these people
don't clearly don't give a fuck about the United State's
constitution, but let's. Not be incompetent.
They can't even host the fucking WordPress website without
letting anybody who wants fuck it up.
Yeah, that's because so they, they're they've been talking
about all this transparency. Elon Musk did a press conference
with Donald Trump where he used his his child as a shield the
whole time, basically like had him on his shoulders, you know,
this little boy who did not need to be there.
It was so creepy and so weird. And then he didn't actually
answer any questions. And similar to to things I've
heard from people in power before, when he was pushed back
on something, he got very wrong. I believe it was that condoms
had been sent to Gaza. And he said, why are we sending
condoms to Gaza? And then they were like, it's
Gaza, Mozambique, it's not Gaza, Middle East.
And he was like, well, you know, people are going to make
mistakes and change it afterwards.
And it's like, what? So you're cancelling the condoms
you sent there because you didn't understand it.
And now you're like, whoops, it's so unreal and there is no
transparency there. Your website or like posting on
X when you don't know what you're doing anyway.
That's not transparency, that's you breaking shit and not
caring. Yeah.
So when when people have pressed Elon on his multitudinous level
of conflicts of interest and clear brazen disregard for the
law of the constitution and the history of the Republic, his
response was we can't be doing anything wrong because it's
transparent. When asked about this he pointed
towards the doge website, orthewaste.gov website just
connected to the doge website. And at the time he said this,
that website didn't exist. They quickly stood up the
website using non government servers and non government
services and then mirrored the Doge X account over to the
website and said now there's a website.
Since then, these people, these technical geniuses, these cyber
security aficionados, they left the database like completely
open and unprotected and people have been just pushing random
edits to the website. And really the most insulting
part of all this is Doja supposed to be looking for
government departments that are not doing their job efficiently.
They are operating out of the United States Digital Service,
which was a group set up after the HealthCare.gov website
debacle to ensure that United States websites and technical
services operated better. And then they issued a website
and technical service that doesn't operate well.
So DOGE is a government department that is failing at
its congressionally stated purpose.
They want to eliminate a government department that's not
doing what it's supposed to. Hey, let's talk about DOGE, you
fucking idiots. Doge, which I think is still is
it. It's still not a real, it's not
a government department. They run their employees out of
the United States Digital Service, which is the real
department, kind of, but is also not acting head of USDS.
And the acting head of USDS has said that you've had like no
contact with Musk or the Dodge team.
And so that just further emphasizes how Dodge is a mirage
meant to give a bunch of tech like libertarian pilled drapers
from Silicon Valley access to the United States government,
the United States Treasury, all of the United States assets.
Yeah, we're fucked. And anyone who's celebrating
that and things like liberal tears, like enjoy it now.
Enjoy it now because they're the autocrats don't just come for
the for the people they don't like at 1 moment.
They'll come for you eventually too.
So that's where we are. I think I'm super disappointed
and it seems like the only way out of this genuinely is like
the military dues doing something or US marshals doing
something. And that that puts us in a
really tough position because that means we already aren't a
democracy anymore. So I like if that's where we're
headed, it's a lose, lose situation for us.
We don't want to be in the position where you have a
military junta setting up a provisional government, right?
But we are also in a position where the leaders of this
administration have publicly stated their intention to
violate court orders, and they seem to actively be violating
court orders. Which means we're in a position
where it seems the US Marshals have an obligation to arrest
certain people in order to enforce the court orders and
ensure the appropriate separation of powers.
And so Elon Musk needs to be arrested to save the Republic is
the place we are AT. And that's dangerous and absurd,
but it is where we are. And you know, it's a lose, lose
for America, for every citizen in America, for the government,
for the judiciary. It's it's really a lose, lose
for all that. But I will say it's a win win
for cast coin.