White House MELTDOWN Over Epstein Files w/ Legal AF's Michael Popok

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It's an excerpt from their book, Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. And it's all about the summer of Epstein. Remember that period of time when the White House thought was telling us, no big deal, we don't care about Epstein at all. It's like the hoax, Democratic, witch hunt, nothing real. Well, no, they were having a freak out in the situation room regularly. The place reserved for raids, you know, again, so some of them lauded and one that took them out. Like this is where the brain trust of an administration goes to deal with crisis. And that is where Trump's top officials from DOJ, Todd Blanche, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Kash Patel, FBI, the FBI, JD Vance, the vice president. Top aides are all going there trying to figure out how do we contain the fallout around Jeffrey Epstein? So, Michael, thanks so much for coming on the show to talk about all of this. Absolutely. It's what we suspected. You know, we had in our world of reporting and commentary, we had the big pieces of the puzzle, but this ties the puzzle altogether and fills in some of the gaps. We knew that there was meetings at the White House, at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and because reporters on the ground saw traffic going between these various buildings in and around the time these Epstein decisions needed to be made. The timeline that she lays out in the freakout, Maggie Haberman and her colleague, is right, explains for us exactly what we were observing. First of all, let's talk about who was not in the situation room before we get to the list of people that were in there. Donald Trump was not in the situation room. These were all his coterie, his advisors, his enablers, who all got together, he was left outside the door. That's one. Two people were not in the room, but phoned in, which I think is important to the reporting, because when Maggie and her colleague do the reporting, it looks like somebody is taking either copious notes or is recording the conversations, because she is not shot. This isn't like paraphrases or in the third person. This is like this person, Steven Chung, said this about the pardon of Galeen Maxwell. We can't pardon a child sex trafficker, because it'll be a PR nightmare. That is not a paraphrase, that is a quote. Now, the two people who were not in the room besides Donald Trump, but were on the phone, and Lord knows who was on the phone with them, is Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, okay? Who were at war with each other at the time, by the way. Who would be taking copious notes, because they knew that there were already leaks happening, like immediately after Pam Bondi came out and said, case closed, believe it was July 7th. There was a leak afterwards that Dan Bongino, excuse me, was furious at her. This is the podcast host, Deputy FBI, Deputy FBI, and it's like, he was just thinking about his return to podcasting, his million dollar podcast deals, and how he had made an entire audience based on the Epstein scandal, and how this would hurt its credibility, the fact that they would. You're right on the note, you're right on the note. So you have, that's why you and I, that's why I like doing your show, because you've got two people who are on thin ice, and Lord knows who's on the phone with Pat Kash Patel. And if it's Bongino, as you said, taking notes or recording it, it then gets- So future podcast? Well, I don't know what they're recording, but Maggie and her colleague got a hold of it, because this isn't, they don't publish this in the New York Times, after it goes through, as you and I know, but we'll tell our audiences, after it goes through a vigorous examination by the media lawyers, first amendment lawyers, Yeah, standards. Inside and outside the New York Times for vetting before this thing gets published, she's got a transcript. Somebody, there was a bug and a mole, and you know this is going to drive Donald Trump crazy, there's now going to be a mole hunt over who cooperated with Maggie Hamerman, how did she get this data, this information? So that's the first thing. First thing is somebody was taking great notes or recording it. I don't think it was the people in the room, my two guesses are yours, Bondi and or Kash. Well, it's a skiff, right? Isn't the situation room a skip, so you can't even bring a recording device into it? They have to bring in, when they have articles, like when the Wall Street, this cheerports on it, when the Wall Street Journal broke about the birthday book, the birthday album, they had to bring in hard copies of the Wall Street Journal, they couldn't even bring it up on their phones, because there are no phones, there's no digital. Exactly, it's a skiff. It's a skiff. Yeah, let me get the exact definition of a skiff. Yeah, it's a secret compartmented, right? Well, now I'm getting the definition of a small light boat for rowing. That's a secret compartmentalized information facility, something like that. Sensitive compartmented information facility, you're totally right. There it is, there's like that. We all learned that during the Mar-a-Lago raid. So the other person, but the reason I mentioned that the person, not in the room is Donald Trump, because the way she frames this is that Trump does not want to release the documents, and he's made that clear to his enablers. I don't want to release them. They believe, wants to bury them. He believes, and Susie Wiles probably does too, that this is a fringe conspiracy theory that's being promulgated and being promoted by liberal media or independent media. It's just the towers of the world and bends of the world, legal a- and it's not getting any traction with voters. So they don't care. They want it to go away. But JD Vance is sweating, and because he's part of those conspiracy theories, he likes those conspiracy theories. But it's not a conspiracy theory. That's another thing. It's not actually a conspiracy theory. It is a real thing. Vance knows it's a real thing. They all know this is a real thing. And Vance is thinking about 2028. I mean, everybody has their own agenda in that room, right? And I think Vance is really interesting to me, because he's the one who's saying, let's be transparent. Let's do all of it. Let's just do it. Let's just do a dilution of information. People are going to be so overwhelmed, but get it out there. But it's bad. I mean, they have to meet in the situation room to talk about one of the allegations against Donald Trump. And it is about a victim of Jeffrey Epstein in a 302, which is sworn testimony, as you know. This is when you go to the FBI and you tell your story. It's a sworn testimony. She says that she was, I guess, assaulted by Donald Trump, and he bruised her nipples. He was flicking them, and it was damaging to her. And there was another woman that they interviewed, Sarah Ransom, who said that she saw the nipples afterward in the bathroom and could speak to the fact that they looked bruised or in some way harmed. And they're talking about this in the situation room. They're trying to figure out how to deal with this crisis. And JD Vance, from his perspective, is like, let's just get it out there. There's been worse said about Donald Trump, but really what he's thinking is, I don't want to be aligned with an administration that is not transparent about this, because I'm going to run for president in 2028. And it's the guys, the MAGA dudes, who are in their 24-year-olds, I think it was the exact age bracket that he brought up that he doesn't want to lose. And they were the ones who were falling off, and they were the ones who were at the top of it. Yeah, the podcast pros. His problem, Trump's problem, is you got Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, who, as you said, spent a career in right-wing podcasting trying to get to the bottom of it. It's the only thing we agree with, trying to get to the bottom of the Epstein scandal, and who's responsible for it. And then they come into government, and they're expected by their followers to do that, to be transparent. But all Donald Trump wants to figure out in that room where the people in that room want to figure out is, how can we do a, this was the quote from Maggie, a gesture of transparency. So they don't want to really be transparent. They want to see how little they can give to the American public and get away with it. And they're trying to manage that in those series of situation rooms. While they're meeting there, right, then the Wall Street Journal article hits after Donald Trump failed to get Rupert Murdoch not to run the story. We've now all seen the multi-volume birthday book, Volume 3, page 230, pressed in, somebody's submission on behalf of Donald Trump or Donald Trump himself. And he's the only person by the way, Tara, right, in four volumes that claims it was a forgery. Everybody else has taken their lumps and said, yeah, that was my picture. That was my submission. Donald Trump, that was a forgery from 30 years ago. Are you kidding me? So you got the birthday book story that breaks the Wall Street Journal at that time. And then let's talk about Pam Bondi. Whose side is she on? She decides without, according to Maggie Haberman, without showing the contents to anybody, screening it, it doesn't screen it with anybody in the White House. She decides to print up, like go to Kinko's FedEx office, print up Epstein file binders and start handing them out to podcasters. And they hope- By the way, there's nothing new in them. It is literally, it is Virginia Ju-Fraise, the court documents. Like this is not new. They have been out there on public record. Again, but there's also Trump stuff in the binders, according to Maggie. Yes, there was. I mean, that came out. And it was pretty embarrassing actually that night. When people, they had to actually, they had to create an embargo at the last minute for the binder so that they could get through a press conference with Kier Starmer, British Prime Minister, so that the questions wouldn't be all about why does the binder mention President Trump? And that's the problem with all this, is that the Epstein files, and they knew it, they were riddled with accusations against Donald Trump because he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein for a very long time. And women had already accused him of crimes in connection to Jeffrey Epstein. And here they are trying to diffuse it without actually engaging the man who is the one who was accused of all of these things. I mean, when I was reporting this summer, like I was told there was an emirate on Jeffrey Epstein, you could not mention him in the White House. And, you know, Susie Wiles is basically the proxy for Trump in these meetings and her, and they're just like, bury it, make it go away, make it go away. And the one that is so fascinating to me is Todd Blanche. So this is his former defense attorney, he's the deputy attorney general at the time. And he's saying, I've got an answer to all of this. Let's interview a convicted sex offender, okay? Child sex offender, Galen Maxwell, who's been accused of perjury, all right? And I think she was actually, she was indicted. I don't know if she was, it was in the trial with, with, with, with, with, let's have her on the record, okay? Even in an interview with Tucker Carlson, as if that is some sort of bar, right? Saying that she can clear President Trump of any wrongdoing. Like as if that's going to pass. And then he floats the idea of a pardon in exchange for this. So Tucker Carlson obviously was the clearinghouse that they were going to use for all this stuff, right? Jan 6th. Or Joe Rogan, or Joe Rogan. But by the Tucker Carlson, they, they dumped the Jan 6th, circuit video of what happened on Jan 6th, right? He was going to do a whole show on it. And, and that was going to be the way it was going to get out to the American people. So he was, he was in on it as, as to Galen Maxwell. The only count I think she didn't get convicted of was on false statement, but she did have five related to child sex trafficking and a 20 year, 20 year sentence. Within the civil suit against Virginia, she was. Oh, that's different. I don't, I don't know. Yeah, that was different. The perjury, she was, yeah. Oh, okay. So she's a perjury. But in any event, she's a convicted child sex trafficker. And, you know, it's, it is. We charge a fine for that. Yeah. It is a, it is a sad state of affairs when a president of the United States needs a convicted child sex trafficker to vouch for them and give them a letter of recommendation. I mean, if you have to go that low, like, hey, it'd be like, hey, I need Charlie Manson to give me a, or Jeffrey Dahmer to give me a recommendation. Great idea. So, so she, that's weird anyway. And then the other things that we, you and I covered separately is, and I don't think it's by accident, and I've spoken to the lawyers for Maureen Comey. Maureen Comey, who's the prosecutor for Glein Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, who knows every piece of evidence like the back of her hand, who knows all of the testimony, who is the perfect person to go into a room. If you're giving somebody immunity, that they can violate by not telling the truth, then you want to have the person that handled the trial against Glein Maxwell, sitting next to you when you take that, that testimony. Because when she says something like, I don't think that that happened, that you know, you know, she can pull it up on her laptop and go, well, actually, here's a document. Here's what happened in the trial. That's totally wrong. But Blanche didn't want that. He didn't want somebody with knowledge of Glein Maxwell's heinous crimes in the room with him during it. He just wanted to go in with a yellow pad, completely willfully blind, so that whatever she said, he could not challenge. I mean, I've done hundreds of depositions and witness statements. You need to be prepared for them. You don't go in there like, oh, tell me everything you need. Oh, thank you. Thank you for that. You have to be ready to say, well, that's not exactly right. Because on the 16th, you did this, where here, this document is inconsistent with that statement. But he didn't want to do that because their sole purpose was to get her to say out loud, A, that she doesn't remember him submitting to the birthday book. Just bullshit from 30 years ago. I can sure remember four volumes of submissions. And secondly, he's a really nice guy. And I never saw him do anything wrong, except there were emails that you and I have seen that came out of the estate, where they talk about Trump alone with one of the victims for hours at a time in Jeffrey Epstein's house. Now, I don't know what they were doing, but you can't also say, I never saw him do anything wrong. Now, and also, as we know, as I know from interviewing survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, that Virginia used to say, you can't go into that house and be a pizza delivery boy and not know what was going on. So many people testify that there were naked girls everywhere walking around or pictures of them on the wall. He had been in the Palm Beach house many times. Nobody, everybody knew what Jeffrey Epstein was up to. You know, also, there is an email that is highly redacted. But the interesting part about the email is that it's an email between Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer and Jeffrey talking about his conversation with Donald Trump's lawyer when Donald Trump decided to speak to a victim's lawyer. So they were obviously in communication because they knew that Donald Trump knew things about Jeffrey Epstein. And Jeffrey Epstein knew things about Donald Trump that they were going to have to keep talking to each other through their lawyers after Jeffrey Epstein was a sex offender. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, this whole thing about being an enigma, but we all know from your reporting, our reporting, that Trump and Epstein ran together. They reached others' wingmen. They were considering opening a modeling agency. They were going to use modeling agencies and beauty pageants in order to beat women. They did, in a number of ways, do that. And, you know, there's just too many fingerprints that connect back to Donald Trump. He doesn't want to come clean with the American people. Let me just say the obvious out loud. If Donald Trump wanted to come clean, it had nothing to hide. It would have looked like this. I'm going to release all of the files. I'm going to order my Department of Justice to release all of the files. In addition, I'm going to have the Department of Justice is going to appoint a special counsel independent from the Department of Justice to not only release the files, but go through the files and prosecute anyone in there that committed a crime. Thank you very much. That's the end of my press conference. I'm not taking questions. Did he do that? No, because he doesn't, he doesn't, first of all, he doesn't really know what's in there. He knows what he did. So he's worried about things that, do you think, Tara, that his enablers have been honest with him, Pam Badi's honest with him about someone else? He gave him a heads up about- The three-oh-twos? Yeah, no, she gave him a heads up. But he doesn't want to know about it. Well, that's the other thing. He just bury it, bury it, deal with it. He thinks he can get away with murder. He said it himself. But I want to, while I have you, because I know you have to jump soon, but is this all impeachable for Todd Blanchard? At the very least, when it comes up in confirmation hearings, which obviously he has been appointed to Attorney General now, do you think that this could realistically sink his chances of being confirmed? Well, let me break it down. I certainly think that if and when the Democrats get control of the House, that there will be articles of impeachment that will be drawn against Todd Blanchard, against others, Pete Hegseth, Cash Patel, whoever's around and still in office. You can't impeach those that are no longer in office. So it's always amusing to me that Todd Blanchard has been fighting so hard to become the Attorney General. He, what he thinks will be the last Attorney General for Donald Trump the remaining two years. He's also right in the crosshairs of impeachment, let alone his bar license. You know, he's regulated by the same New York bar that I am, the first appellate division in Manhattan. He's already got one bar complaint against him. And yet he's sold, he's soldiers on things that came, that have come out of Maggie's reporting, will be the subject of articles of impeachment. Along with a number of other things, going after the Southern Poverty Law Center, the willingness to indict Donald Trump's political enemies, the willingness to sacrifice the independence of the Department of Justice, and just hand it over to Donald Trump, who he says, I love, I really love the man. There will be a number of articles of impeachment against Todd Blanchard and others as well. I mean, I could see one against Amiel Bovi. Don't think just because he became a federal judge, an appellate judge on the third circuit, that what he did at the start of this administration can't be an impeachable offense, even though he's now a judge, because he worked side by side with Todd Blanchard for the first several months, and did a lot of the hatchet man job, you know, for the Department of Justice. As to, it certainly will be front and center, among other things, in the interrogation book against Todd Blanchard. The problem is, there's just no balls on the Senate Republicans to oppose Donald Trump when it comes to things that he wants, like this one. That's why, you know, even though they're taking the toys away from Bill Pulte, you know, this guy's going to be the acting interim part-time director of national intelligence. He doesn't have to be confirmed, but he's going to do that for the next 120 days or so. So, Todd Blanchard is going to get grilled to within an inch of his life, but I don't think we have the ability, based on the votes, you know, again, elections matter, to stop him from being confirmed. But I sort of want him confirmed, because then I want to impeach him. We spent a lot of time on the show talking about power and influence. That's why I use ground news. Right now, outlets are covering Alabama's redistricting fight very differently. 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That's the plan that I'm using. You can only get 40% off the unlimited access vantage plan by using my link. So go to groundnews.com slash Tara. That's groundnews.com slash Tara. Can he be impeached as acting or no? Yeah, you can be impeached as acting. But my point is I don't want him going anywhere. Although as compared to Pam Bondi, he is the smarter Bondi. Isn't that scary? Yeah. And he's willing to do things she wasn't willing to do. I mean, there is reporting that she did not want to do the C. Shell indictment against James Covey. She did not want to go after the Southern Poverty Law Center. And I don't think she would have done the weaponization fund. And there's nothing he won't do. Yeah. I mean, he did get apparently millions and millions of dollars for MAGA Inc., which is Trump's super PAC during the campaign. Oh, I'm not surprised. He left his big cushy law firm job where he's making $5 or $8 million to go on his own to represent one client. You know, and leave his entire past ethics and career behind him. So sure, he had to get, I don't know if he got eight or $10 million a year for every year he represented Donald Trump, but I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's really, it's really something. I want to end, I know you've got to run. So I want to end our conversation, although I'm going to stay on to take questions from the audience. But I want to end this conversation with something that the authors write in the book. Okay. So this is from Maggie Haveman and Jonathan Swan in their book, Regime Change. The Epstein crisis had exposed something that some of Trump's closest advisors spent months refusing to see. The president could break institutions, redirect the federal government against his enemies, and bring their world's richest men into the Oval Office bearing tribute. But he could not, it turned out, make Jeffrey Epstein. So on that note, yeah, Michael, I think they're absolutely right. I actually wrote about this for Vanity Fair back in November. I was like, the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein is haunting him. He, it is everywhere. Yeah. He cannot wag the bone enough to make it clear. And it's interesting that like this book comes out, I know that Iran had provoked and had attacked Israel and attacked US helicopters over the weekend, but it is interesting the timing of the latest attack yesterday. Well, certainly after this bombshell. He definitely has decided that he wants to be a wartime president and he wants to put himself on war footing. And usually it is a wag the dog moment. Things are going terribly domestically for him. But by the way, things are going terribly globally for him, you know, because he's an incompetent, he's an incompetent, demented guy. So things are not going well for him in Iran by any stretch of the imagination. So yeah, I mean, the timing of it, you know, I know they were like, Oh, Monica Lewinsky came up. So Clinton did. Well, forget all that. We are really watching somebody who makes decisions about our global security based on how his polls are doing or how he thinks he's doing. And you're exactly right about Epstein. There's for me, for Donald Trump, there's two third rails that he continues to grab and electrocute himself because they are just things that all Americans are united on. One of them is that, that we're not comfortable. I mean that sarcastically with a any president who tries to cover up a child international child sex trafficking ring. I mean, Donald Trump likes to be the first of everything, right? First time a president has ever had to deny he was a part of a child sex trafficking ring. First time a first lady had to hold the press conference to say that she wasn't involved with a child sex trafficking ring. And the second rail, the second third rail is Jan Sixth insurrectionists who beat up the police and almost toppled our democracy getting paid. And those are the two things that, you know, I interviewed Katie Fang and Allison Gill. Muller, she wrote together to talk about stepping out and becoming plaintiffs in their cases. And I said, are you getting trolled? Are you getting MAGA attacked because of your case, Katie, about the Epstein files? In your case, Allison, about the Jan Sixth fund. And they said, separately, they said remarkably, no, because, because there is unanimity among everybody, all stripes, that Jan Sixth fund sucks. And Epstein file scandal is something that Donald Trump, even though he's he rubs and rubs and rubs, he can't get the spot out. He can't get the stain out of his hands. Yeah. Uh, Dan Bongino, the famous podcaster, former deputy FBI director, said that they don't understand that this will be Trump's Iran contra. Hmm. Wait, when did he say that? Since he's been out? No, he's told them that when he was told of that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he warned them at the time. He saw it. Yeah, no, that, you know, we're, we're all taking bets like a Deadpool as to what will be Donald Trump's final undoing. Um, you know, and look at the end, the, the poll numbers, it has seeped into the water table, right? Like people now in the beginning, I was like, how is this guy still polling at the numbers he's polling? He's not any longer. He's dropping like a stone every month. He drops two, three points a month in polling and now is going down to a historically abysmal, you know, with, with the margin of error. He's in the twenties, you know, for his, and you don't recover from that. People are like, well, Trump's always been, you know, the polling has been incorrect. Or yeah, screw that. Um, if the, if the Democrats don't take 240, 245 seats at the, um, at the midterms, I'd be shocked. Now, whether we get the Senate plus, we'll have to see, but, um, you know, that, that's what Tony Fabrizio, who's his pollster, he put together a memo in late March, 2026, which was really just a few months ago. If you think about it, it's almost a year after this exploded. Um, and he found that the Epstein files were the sixth most important political issue for a lot of Americans ahead of crime, which is what he ran on, right? Military and being pro working class. So this is a real negative. He said with some of these voters, Yeah. He said, he's had that, I've seen causing some real problems. Maggie refers to him too though, because he also did polling that showed that nobody gave a shit about the Epstein files he was being held on by, by the left. And that was wrong. So let's hope he's right about, it's a top six issue for, for Americans. It's just, it's just a very, it's a gift to the Democrats that Donald Trump just refuses up because he can't, he just refuses to acknowledge, um, that, that first of all, the Epstein scandal and the victims and survivors and their dignity and justice. Matter to the American people. And that there's many things that will tolerate in a president, but a heartless president that also has the whiff of scandal involving Children and sex is not one of the things that that we will tolerate. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah. Um, so we have a bunch of questions from the audience. Michael, love for you to stick around. I know you had a heart out. Uh, well, you got, you got, you got listen, keep me for another, where are we? 27, keep me for another five minutes. Let's go. Okay, let's do it. So we have a few that are more my, um, would, would be more in your, your wheelhouse. So this is how can anyone stop doj slash Todd Blanche from Elmster from destroying documents? That's, you know, you know, that's a very, that's a very good point. I mean, look, records are supposed to be the subject of, um, various federal statutes and laws that protect them from being shredded. Not just the president and the vice president with the presidential records act, but there's other things. That's why we have the freedom of information act, but that also presupposes that That government's not shredding. Has there been shredding? Of course you and I just talked about Iran contra. Yeah, they were shredding. Oliver North and his, and his assistant, I forget her name now, but she was a famous at the time. Busy shredding, shredding, shredding. And we know that in the last administration, Trump on the way out was like burning things in his fireplace. Mark Meadows was burning things in his fireplace. Right. But, you know, listen, we're gonna have to have people as they did in the impeachment era and in the Jan 6 era step forward and and to investigators who are independent Tell the truth. If they are being destroyed. That's another, those are crimes That he would be charged with. Um, but we're gonna have to have, um, other human beings come forward and provide that testimony as Senator Blumenthal has told me more than once. We rely on whistleblowers. So people are gonna, and there are, there are, oh, you can see it already. Somebody, somebody is cooperating with Maggie Haberman with probably Audio tape recordings because she's so confident in the quotes and they would never, The one thing I've learned about covering Trump and the people around him is that they know That it is a vipers nest, right? And they will all Want to write history and this isn't just in Trump's administration. This isn't any political organization You know any administration democrats too. They're fully aware that books will be written about the time in which they work They want to set the record in which that paints them in a light um, where they're not the uh antagonists you could say like they're not they're they Their their perspective is propainted the way that they You know believe it happens. So they they they take notes. They write journals They try to have documents that they can use to back up and defend themselves if they are You know destroyed in the press. I have like they're they're constantly managing a lot of these staffers They're managing their own and especially cabinet official level if they're managing their images the entire time They want to be seen as great american heroes and that's what I you see happening I mean they said that there were many accounts that they could incorporate. They didn't use them um, but yes in the case where they're quoting people you have to think that they either had someone literally transcribing in real time or So many people remember that exact line that they could use it or maybe they were recording Um, which I think is illegal frankly, right? Is it are you allowed to record without consent? Well depends if you're in if they're in dc I think you probably need two parties to consent But if you're on the phone and you're sitting in I don't know the law in virginia. I don't know where patele was sitting I don't know where bandi was sitting So depending if she's in florida, it's a one party consent rule. It depends on it Um, or if the person who said it says, yeah, I said that or tell us. Yeah, I said that this is what I said at the time And then it could be a clock the other way you get a quote Yeah, but I do I do wonder because I I wonder what the law is to with the skiff You know once you consent to being a part of a skiff Does that also mean that you have consented even if you're not physically there? But if you're on the phone that you're not reporting Well, listen, I I'm sure that cash patele if he's not the source of it Or if he is is going to be somebody's conducting an investigation as to how this leak got out Because like I said the detail in the reporting is just too molecular or maybe he doesn't want to conduct that investigation Right, that's what I mean The team's a part of it. I mean that's the thing the ones who are always screaming leakers leakers leakers are often the biggest leakers Is what I found in my life. Um, hazos a cost hazes a costa regular on the show asks Todd blanche will get impeached. Okay. We don't know about that for sure It depends on what happens in the senate and you need two thirds of the senate And I don't think democrats are going to win two thirds. Um, the question is will he get convicted? Yeah, it's what I think you just laid it out, right? I think I think trump's gonna get impeached again I think that blanche is gonna I think there's a half a dozen most of the cabinet could get impeached howard luttony could get impeached cash patele pete hegseth And and the sitting us attorney general But that's you know, you just need you just need a majority for that. So you just need 218 For that and the democrats will have it the good news is that's not all the democrats are gonna do They're gonna do a lot of things I think to help americans with affordability and health care and And different things, you know, they're gonna be passing laws and and helping to rein in Corruption, but they'll they'll be doing impeachment hearings too. They can walk and chew gum at the same time as the conviction Yeah, I think the numbers are very daunting. You have to have yeah, you know, which is why I mean when I said two thirds of the senate Not to impeach excuse me, right, right. Yeah, you said it. Yeah, so yeah So the impeachment the way I tell people to think about it is the house Is the inditer They indict that's the impeachment and the senate is the trial for the conviction And so you have the so impeachment is like an indictment and uh, although it's bad And most presidents don't want to be impeached. Donald Trump will be impeached. I'm sure three times by the time he gets out And the rest jade vans too. I mean you could do a lot of impeaching here Yeah, uh, I lean or said Wanted me to ask you this michael about michael wolf And his evidence in the epsiote files and you know, whether he could be called before congress to have to submit them I mean, this is a little dicey because even though he doesn't call himself a journalist He knows that he's not because his work is borderline fiction. Um, You know What what do you make of the idea of him being called before congress and ban it and frankly too who who is another Was a member of the media at the time taking um having extensive interviews with jeffrey epsiote and whether that could be submitted I'm you know, I I always get a little worried about that because suddenly someone like me A journalist will be called in at some point to have to I mean, I'm not michael wolf if I had those files I would be putting them out in the public but um Yeah, I don't know What do you think about michael wolf and having to possibly hand over his tapes? Well, I'm not gonna comment about whether he is or isn't a journalist. I mean, I don't I mean, he's a chronic A chronicler of epsiote. He says he's a writer. He doesn't really I'd say he's right, right Um, you know, but he he was also an observer, right? He saw the safe. He saw the photos He was the last person epsiote spoke to he was working on a biography He's got hours of audio tape Of of jeffrey epsiote Um, and you know does as whether a fly on the wall or an observer has gone out on record And is defending against the defamation claims against him by saying he's got the goods He's got the he's got the knowledge. He's got the file. He's got the document He's got the tape or whatever it is that connects, you know trump and melani and epsiote That's his that's his stories. Those are his stories. But I'd like to know is where like with ted Ted lou asked in congress off of michael's reporting or commentary. Where is uh, where is the safe? Like where that never gets asked of anybody during these these uh, these congress hearings Like where is the contents of the safe and how they've been cataloged because according to michael, there were hard drives There were photos like where michael says there were photos He saw of donald trump with a scantily clad young girl on his lap And nothing staying on his pants and staying on his where are those photos Like what there was a there was a search warrant. There was raids the guy died Like there was all this stuff was obtained by the fbi. Where is it? I mean or is it in there but redacted under a big black tape? I mean here's the thing we've only seen 300 gigabytes of what the fbi has written in the epsiote files 40 gigabytes of files I mean top blanche apparently said a lot of it is child You know, they child pornography. They've stayed away from michael wolff on purpose Let's just let's just call it out for what it is the oversight committee The judiciary committee the oversight committee with comber is just there so that when the white house pushes a button That that maga congress can run interference on whatever's going on in any particular story If it's voting then they raise they they hold a hearing about voting If it's a southern poverty law center and blanche is getting shit because he indicted them Oh, let's hold hearings and bring in the southern poverty law center, you know with uh with jim jordan So whatever you see congress do for maga and oversight committee hearings or judiciary committee hearings just think that is another Call in running of interference that the white house has directed happened at that particular time. They don't want michael wolf Behind closed doors or otherwise to come in because first of all, I think malania would lose her shit I think malania would go nuts if michael wolf got it because you know michael wolf Put the lights on This is microphone on and then he's gonna start talking about if he's under oath without revealing his sources He's gonna start talking about all the shit that he thinks he knows about Alania the plane and and the meeting and the this and the photos that they don't want that They don't want you and I reporting on michael wolf or do they want to ignore michael wolf? That's why I was actually surprised that they made they they finally sent a demand letter to try to shut down michael with a billion dollar threat of defamation Um, we'll have to see what happens with that. Oh, yeah, his discovery would have been a mess, right? Um, yeah Still be well, it's you know, the question is whether they're going to file Or michael's gonna file down in floor. He's going to appeal in new york the shutdown of the case by The judge in the federal court. She said I have jurisdiction But there's no case here. You can't sue an advance of a defamation case And michael's taken that up because he wants discovery about some issues before They decide on that and if they don't like it somebody if they want to file is going to have to file a guess in florida And if it's so another defamation yet another defamation case filed by donald trump's family down in florida hoping that But you know things have backfired for him You know, yeah, you got the bbc with 47 subpoenas Uh because they want to prove that donald trump caused the insurrection Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, um, thank you so much for your time michael And by the way everybody who's listening you can support our channels by hitting that subscribe button um, if you become a paid subscriber you support independent journalism and appreciate that and um, tell your friends Tell everyone about this share it. Thanks so much for engaging and getting involved in the questions We're gonna do more of this and as always really appreciate your perspective Especially your legal af perspective. Yeah, and terry will have you will have you on legal af. Yeah, I would love that A couple of weeks you when I get back from a holiday you and I are gonna get together and do some work Okay, perfect. Enjoy that time too. All right. Thank you Bye guys That was another episode of the terror pulmary show Thanks so much for tuning in as always you can support my independent journalism by hitting subscribe Like sharing telling all your friends about this Leave a comment, you know, that's great to keep the algorithm going but go to terror pulmary.com and sign up for the red letter That's my newsletter. You get my exclusive reporting straight to your inbox I do the real journalism not easy stuff And I give you all the insights from being a reporter for 17 years. I was a white house correspondent inside of those rooms I know a lot about this You know, I want to thank my producer dan schiffmacher. I want to thank abby baker who's also producing I want to thank adam stewart who does my graphics and dan rosen my manager. See you again soon Hi, i'm tamson fidel journalist and author of how to menopause and host of the tamson show A weekly podcast with your roadmap to midlife and beyond We cover it all from dating to divorce aging to adhd sleep to sex brain health to body fat and even how perimenopause can affect your relationships and trust me it can Each week I sit down with doctors experts and leaders in longevity for unfiltered conversations Pack with advice on everything from hormones to happiness and of course how to stay sane during what can be Well, let's face it a pretty chaotic chapter of life. Think of us as your midlife survival guide new episodes released every wednesday Listen now on apple spotify or wherever you get your podcasts