Lawrence: The first six Americans killed in Trump's war died because Hegseth left them defenseless

The last one with Lawrence O'Donnell starts right now. Hey, Lawrence. Hey, Jen. We do have Eric Holder joining us, as you mentioned, talking about the Supreme Court decision today. And Governor of New York immediately saying she's going to get a redistricting plan going in the state of New York to protect voting integrity in New York state. We're also going to be joined by, I was going to say Chairman Adam Smith. That's a year early. When the Democrats win the House of Representatives, he will be. He will be. He will be the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee where that Pete Hegseth hearing took place today. We're going to get his perspective on that. And Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is also joining us tonight on that that indictment based on seashells. The the the the the scary, scary seashells on North Carolina beaches. That's that's going to be his subject tonight. That is, can't wait to hear what all of them say. You have a packed show. We do. We're going to do it. We're going to get to it now, Jen. Thank you. Sounds good. Have a good show. Today, Donald Trump became the first president of the United States in history to say that he has the unbelievable courage, that was his phrase, unbelievable courage, to be an astronaut. Astronauts have been visiting the White House after successful missions since Alan Shepard became the first American in space during the Kennedy administration. When President John F. Kennedy, who did have the courage to serve in World War II and was almost killed when his PT boat was sunk in the Pacific, after which he saved the life of a crew member, met with those astronauts, he never said to any of the visiting astronauts He thought he could have done what they did. Every other president has welcomed astronauts to the White House and praised their courage and never tried to steal that courage for themselves. Until today, when the most cowardly president in American history actually said these words. We're very proud of these people. They have unbelievable courage, unbelievable, a lot of other things too, by the way. To get in there, you have to be very smart, have to do a lot of things physically good. So I would have no trouble making it. I'm physically very, very good. Donald Trump is right. Astronauts have to be very courageous people and they have to be very smart. And they have to be, as Donald Trump put it, physically very good. Those are the exact reasons why Donald Trump could never be an astronaut. Donald Trump apparently hasn't noticed that the astronauts of his era were our best combat pilots before becoming astronauts. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, was a marine combat pilot in World War II and the Korean War. Just landing a plane on an aircraft carrier alone takes what Donald Trump would call unbelievable courage. Donald Trump might not be able to remember that he did not have the courage to join the United States military, which was the only route to becoming an astronaut in those days. I would have no trouble making it, says Donald Trump, about becoming an astronaut. He can't sit there and let those astronauts be braver than he is. He can't sit there and let those astronauts be smarter than he is. He just can't sit there and let those astronauts be physically better than he is. Every astronaut in history is braver than I am and braver than Donald Trump. Every pilot of any kind of aircraft is braver than I am and braver than Donald Trump. What is missing in the brain of a man who cannot acknowledge that there are people who can do things that he cannot do, could never do, isn't courageous enough to do, isn't smart enough to do, and isn't physically good enough to do? The casual, flippant madness of Donald Trump was on display in that moment when he was supposed to be honoring astronauts who had just returned from a dangerous trip around the moon and instead found himself saying, I could have done that. And that same mind, that same weak mind launched a war against Iran that has so far accomplished nothing and left the situation with Iran worse than the day before his war. And sitting in that same chair in that same public discussion today, the man who claimed to have the unbelievable courage to be an astronaut also said that he now lives in fear of seashells. When asked if his life is in danger, present tense, is in danger from seashells, Donald Trump said, yeah. He thinks his life is in danger because of seashells that were on a beach a year ago in North Carolina. And no one knows where those seashells are now. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor who has seen his fair share of seashells on the Rhode Island coast, will join our coverage tonight as an expert in evaluating the lethal danger of seashells to the President of the United States as described in the most ludicrous indictment ever obtained by a federal prosecutor, charging former FBI Director James Comey with threatening the life of the President by photographing seashells. Of course, Donald Trump and his prosecutors are going to lose their criminal case against James Comey, just as Donald Trump lost in court today against E. Jean Carroll. A federal appeals court denied Donald Trump's appeal of the $83 million verdict E. Jean Carroll won against Donald Trump. Last night at a state dinner At the White House, Donald Trump made it clear that he didn't understand what his guest of honor had said earlier in the day in his speech to a joint session of Congress. I want to congratulate Charles on having made a fantastic speech today at Congress. He got the Democrats to stand. I've never been able to do that. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. They liked him more than they've ever liked any Republican or Democrat, actually. I was a little surprised by that too yesterday, because as we showed you on this program last night, Republicans gave the King of England repeated standing ovations for delivering a speech that on every point was identical to a Joe Biden State of the Union address, stressing unyielding support for NATO, unlimited support for Ukraine, fighting for liberty against the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and an international cooperative effort to save the polar ice caps by trying to avert climate change, which Donald Trump says is a hoax. But King was at it again last night at the White House, trying to teach Donald Trump the importance of preserving NATO and defending Ukraine. The first president I had the honor of meeting at the age of 10 in 1959 when he came to Balmoral was President Eisenhower, who had served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces during World War II at a most critical time in the darkest days of the 20th century. American leadership helped rebuild a shattered continent playing a decisive role as a defender of freedom in Europe. We and I shall never forget that, not least as freedom is again under attack following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Today, our partnerships in NATO and AUKUS deepen our technological and military cooperation and ensure that together we can meet the challenges of an increasingly complex and contested world. The king never used the word Iran in either of his speeches yesterday, but he closed his speech last night with a clear enough reference to Donald Trump's war by using Shakespeare's words to deliver a plea for peace. At this time, when the search for peace in the world is more critical than ever, I can only turn to Shakespeare's genius to remind us of the plea for peace spoken by the Duke of Burgundy at the conclusion of Henry V. My speech entreats that I may know why gentle peace should not bless us with her former qualities. When the Pope says things like that, Donald Trump accuses the Pope of wanting Iran to have a nuclear weapon. When a man bearing what Donald Trump considers the fanciest title in the world in the fanciest accent, says it, Donald Trump applauds. Donald Trump now has a tell, and it's a big one, and the Iranian leadership knows it. Donald Trump's tell is that when he says, no more Mr. Nice Guy, he doesn't mean it. We all know he's never been a nice guy, so he doesn't mean it in any literal sense. No one thinks that. But he uses what he thinks is a good Hollywood screenwriter, tough guy, talk line when he says no more Mr. Nice Guy as a threat in tweets that promised to bomb Iran if Iran doesn immediately agree to a deal with Donald Trump Ten days ago Donald Trump tweeted no more Mr Nice Guy saying that if Iran didn take a deal from Donald Trump that he was offering them, that he would, quote, that the United States would, quote, is going to knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Iran did not respond to that threat of Donald Trump committing war crimes in any way. and big surprise, Donald Trump did nothing. Donald Trump didn't blow up anything. And at 4.05 a.m. today, in what looks like another nasty fit of insomnia, Donald Trump tweeted, no more Mr. Nice Guy again, saying this time they don't know how to sign a non-nuclear deal. They better get smart soon, exclamation point. And this time he let the picture do the talking about what he would do. But in the picture, Donald Trump is portrayed as actually physically participating. Oh, let's take those words off the picture right now so we can see the picture on the screen. Let's get that. Maybe we can't do it from the control room. Anyway, that picture shows Donald Trump carrying a weapon of war, a rifle, as if he's actually participating in war, which is another way of saying to the Iranian leadership, obviously, I, Donald Trump, don't mean anything in this tweet because I would never physically participate in war. Apparently, no one's told Donald Trump in the movie he thinks he's living in, you can't only say no more Mr. Nice Guy once. You only get to say it once. There it is. There's the picture. Donald Trump's war was the subject of the day in the House Armed Services Committee where Donald Trump's defense secretary proved he does not know what a war is. Iran's been at war with us for 47 years. That man wants to be called, illegally called, the secretary of war, not the secretary of defense. And he does not know what a war is. The United States of America has never been at war for 47 years. The most incompetent Secretary of Defense in history was shown to be incapable of actually planning for the most obvious contingencies of war, including the possible closing of the Strait of Hormuz, and the most important, which is the preservation of life, the lives of the American military sent by Donald Trump into his war. The first six Americans killed in Donald Trump's war were killed because Pete Hegseth left those soldiers defenseless. It is not the first time that American war commanders have been responsible for unnecessary casualties. The commission studying the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II found that the admiral and general in command of that American military base in Hawaii were gravely at fault in leaving the thousands of Americans who were stationed there and who were killed there that day virtually defenseless in an attack that the American commanders should have been ready for. The American commanders at Pearl Harbor knew that they were going to be questioned sharply about how they let that attack happen, and they knew it was their responsibility to answer those questions. And they could not have been surprised that they were held responsible and relieved of their commands. Pete Hegseth offered a truly Trumpian refusal to bear any responsibility for what happened to those six soldiers or to dozens of others who survived that attack on the second day of Donald Trump's war with much more serious wounds than Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense admitted they suffered at the time. And so Pete Hegseth's incompetence has a price. Just as command incompetence at Pearl Harbor in 1941 came with a terrible, terrible price, 2,403 American dead at Pearl Harbor. For the families of the six U.S. soldiers killed on the second day of Donald Trump's war, Porto Ava is their Pearl Harbor. March 1st, 2026 is the day that will live in infamy for those families. New York Congressman Pat Ryan, an Army combat veteran, spent his entire question time asking the kinds of questions that were asked after Pearl Harbor. And at no point did Pete Hegseth think to offer any particular words of praise to the soldiers who were killed. He offered no direct sympathies for the soldiers who were wounded. He approached the questioning as if he was the only person in this story who mattered, and he was somehow now the victim in this story. Here, in honor of those six lives, and in honor of the suffering of the wounded that day that continues to this day, are the questions that any decent Secretary of Defense would have already asked in his own investigation of that incident. Questions to which the families deserve answers. Everyone in the American military deserves the answers. The American people deserves the answers. and Pete Hegseth refuses to give those answers. Congressman Pat Ryan spoke for everyone today when he told Pete Hegseth, those soldiers are braver than you are. Head wounds, heavy bleeding, and then just shrapnel all over. So folks are bleeding from their abdomen, bleeding from arms, bleeding from legs. Secretary Hegseth, do you know who said that? I'm not sure I do. It was one of our soldiers describing the devastating Iranian drone strike at Port Shweba, March 1st in Kuwait. As you know, six of our soldiers killed, over 30 wounded. Secretary, do you know the range of the Shahed 136 one-way attack drone, approximately? It depends on the variant, but it's got serious distance. Several hundred miles. Do you know how far Port Shweba is from Iran? There's a reason why we took extreme measures of force protection because we understood the proximity challenges. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to reclaim my time. It's well under 100 miles. Before the war started, there was clear intelligence that Shweba was high on Iran's target list. Internal analysis had said the site was indefensible from aerial attack and should not be used. used yet you sent our soldiers from the 103rd sustainment command there anyway is that true or false true or false straightforward question are you going to give me a chance to answer or just play gotcha did you send them there or not i always we have we took proactive measures from the beginning to ensure force protection and defensive posture would maximize across the theater let's talk about what defenses they had prior to the attack officers on the ground knew our troops were vulnerable. In fact, they requested additional force protection. Did they receive it? Wherever humanly possible, force protection and counter UAS was always made available. They did not. In fact, when asked to describe the base's defense, one survivor who's come forward from the unit said, quote, I mean, I would put it in the none category from a drone defense capability, none. So let's be clear, no counter drone capabilities, no counter rocket systems, no counter mortar or counter artillery, not even the basic overhead protection that you and I had 20 years ago in Iraq. And now six of our soldiers are dead. The next day, you downplayed the attack. You said it was a squirter that squeaked through fortified defenses. But since then, thankfully, brave survivors have come forward to set the record straight. One of our surviving soldiers told CBS, quote, painting a picture that one squeaked through is a falsehood. Another said the unit was, quote, unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position. Another survivor said the building's protection was about as weak as one gets. Secretary Hegseth, that is obviously in direct contradiction to what you said from the Pentagon podium the next day. So are you saying that these soldiers, our soldiers who survived this horrific attack are lying? What I'm saying is before the commencement of the conflict, we put in maximum defensive posture. We could. It's a direct conflict. We moved 70. In this directing, can I speak or are you just going to monologue falsehoods all over the place? It's not a falsehood. We moved 7,500 troops off of the X based on the intel. Stop. Based on the intel. Stop. Reclaiming my time. Because you yell doesn't make you right. Just because you yell doesn't make you right. I'm claiming my time on behalf of these survivors. You just said what they said is a falsehood. There's a much larger picture. There's a much larger picture at play here that included integrated air defenses, bunkers, moving people off the X to ensure that they were not part of the target. We moved those troops and all across the theater, thousands of troops off the X, off of their bases, because we knew what Iran was going to try to strike. And we knew there was a tragic moment. There could be a tragic moment where something could get through. Of course, that's the consequence of conflict. And we remember those six every single day. But don't play games with raising your voice and pointing fingers. I'm not playing games. I want to finish with one more quote. from a survivor of the attack, and I'll put this on the record. Telling the truth is important, and we're not going to learn from these mistakes if we pretend these mistakes didn't happen. Secretary Hags, those soldiers told the truth. Those soldiers are braver than you are. I commend them They are asking for accountability They deserve accountability and I asking for the same starting with you And as I said a year ago you need to resign immediately I commend those I yield back Leading off our coverage tonight is Congressman Adam Smith of the state of Washington. He is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Congressman Smith, so if I understand the answer to what I was just hearing, Pete Hegseth's testimony is he had too much to do or we had too much to do to actually bother to provide actually defensive protection for those soldiers who were killed or to remove them from that vulnerability. He was just too busy. Yeah. No, I think this speaks to how they rushed into this war without clearly planning it out. And yes, I think Pat Ryan did a brilliant job of showing how these soldiers were left vulnerable. And then the other big part about this is the lack of accountability. I mean, look, in war, things do happen, but this administration refuses to take responsibility for it, just like the bombing of the girls' school in Iran that killed over 150 Iranian schoolgirls. It's obvious that we made a mistake and hit that target, but now two months later, they still won't admit that. Look, in the entire time that he's been Secretary of Defense, no accountability, no responsibility for anything. He drives out the press. He drives out the inspector generals. He drives out any sort of independent analysis and refuses to take accountability. And I commend Pat Ryan for doing such a good job of bringing that out and remembering the lives of those six service members that we lost. In your questioning of him, when you were asking him about Iran's nuclear stockpile before the war, now, was he trying to tell you that Iran was capable before Donald Trump's war of sending off some kind of nuclear weapon somewhere? I couldn't quite understand what he was saying about the status of nuclear development there the day before Donald Trump's war? Look, what President Trump and Secretary Hagseth have both done is in an effort to justify this war, their analysis basically goes like this. Iran, nuclear weapons bad. Therefore, whatever we say or whatever we do is good. That's basically it. You know, if you think that Iran having a nuclear weapon is bad, it justifies every single decision that they've made. And it's really a lot more complicated than that. I mean, to begin with, it was no imminent threat. You know, we have the intelligence. Iran was not about to develop a nuclear weapon or deploy it. And then, of course, we have the inconsistency, which I brought out today. Operation Midnight Hammer was supposed to be the spectacular success that, quote, obliterated Iran's nuclear weapons stockpile. And then, what, six months, eight months later, we had to start this war because of an imminent nuclear threat that they'd been telling us for the last six months didn't exist? Look, this just shows the lack of planning and sort of the seat of the pants approach that Donald Trump took to launch a war when he didn't know where he was going, and he certainly doesn't know how to get out of it. So what did you establish in the hearing today that has been accomplished so far by Donald Trump's war? Yeah, the only thing it's accomplished, it has degraded Iran's military capability. It has certainly done that. They have fewer missiles, fewer missile launchers, fewer ships, fewer planes. But the fundamental point of this war was to change Iran's calculus around terrorism, nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles. None of that has been accomplished. And oh, by the way, now the Strait of Hormuz is under Iranian control, which wasn't an issue before this war started. And think about Iran's current negotiating position. Basically, pay us to open back up the strait. So the best negotiating offer we have right now is to get us back to worse than status quo. Because Iran, when they say open up the strait, they mean pay us, set up a toll. So we have not accomplished the principal goals of this. Yes, we've blown a lot of stuff up and our military has performed amazingly well, hitting targets to no strategic effect and at an enormous cost, including at the lives of those six service members that Pat Ryan talked about today. Congressman Adam Smith, thank you very much for starting off our coverage tonight. Thanks a lot. Coming up tonight, Democrats are already fighting back against the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the Trump majority on the Supreme Court, who have now chopped away again at the Voting Rights Act. Former United States Attorney General Eric Holder will join us next. after supreme court decision today that according to justice elena kagan's dissent leaves the voting rights act quote all but a dead letter new york governor kathy hochel said the supreme court has been chipping away at our elections for years it is clearly carrying out Donald Trump's will with this decision. New York has always led the fight for voting rights and will lead again on working with the legislature to change New York's redistricting process so we can fight back against Washington's attempts to rig our democracy. Joining us now is former United States Attorney General Eric Holder. He is now the chairman of the National Democratic redistricting committee. General Holder, thank you very much for joining us tonight. What was your reading of this decision today? Well, it's the culmination of an attempt by the Roberts Court to really destroy the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which is the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. People tend to forget that the unifying thing of the movement was to obtain the right to vote. And if you look at what happened during the civil rights movement and the results of that movement, you saw a dramatic increase in the number of black elected officials at the federal, state and local level. And that, for whatever reason, is something that has disturbed conservatives, Republicans since the passage of the act in 1965. John Roberts, as a young man in the United States Department of Justice, indicated a lack of desire to see the act continue. And now, as chief justice of the United States, he, I think, has finally accomplished his goal. So we saw an immediate Great reaction from the governor of New York. Redistricting in New York actually takes two years. But she's going to try to do something so that at least would be a factor in the next presidential election. Yeah, and I think we have to look at all the ways in which we can combat that which the Supreme Court has done, which Republicans are continuing to try to do. We've seen what they're going to try to do in Florida by gerrymandering there, even though the map in Florida is already gerrymandered. They want to put a gerrymander on top of one. Republicans are basically afraid. They don't think that they can go to the voters with the policies that they have put in place, with the candidates that they have. They know that the big, beautiful bill is wildly unpopular. They know that this war is wildly unpopular. Beasles are up. The price of gas is up. There's nothing that they can go to the voters with. And so what they're trying to do is rig the election, cheat so that they can ensure that they hold on to power that they illegitimately got as a result of the gerrymandering that they did a decade ago. Hold on to that power in spite of what the will of the people might be. And so we as Democrats, progressives and people who care about our nation's democracy have to fight back in every way that we can, doing what Governor Hochul is going to do, doing what we have been doing at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, to try to bring fairness to the redistricting process. I mean, you know, what they're trying to do is entrench power. And you do that by making it more difficult to vote, by drawing unfair lines. And that is the way in which they think that they will hold on to the power that they have. Was this decision today a surprise to you? No, I can't say that it was. The court indicated you could see during the oral arguments that they were going to do something negative to the Voting Rights Act, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The question was, how bad? But it is still something that is hard to take, especially when one looks at precedent. This is the same court that two, three years ago, in a case that my organization was a part of, ruled that in Alabama, Section 2 was a viable part of our law, applied Section 2, and told Alabama that they had to redraw their lines so that African Americans in Alabama would, for the first time in the history of the state, have the ability to elect two black congressmen, have just that ability. And what we saw as a result of that ruling was increased participation, increased numbers of people going to the polls. And it shows not only who gets elected, but who participates, when people thought that their vote would, in fact, matter. And so, yeah, you know, same court, same basic set of facts, different decision. This is not a court that is constrained by precedent or by principle. They focus only on personnel. They have the votes, and they're going to do that, which they've wanted to do for decades. JUAN GONZÁLEZ, And so, is a kind of counteroffensive of redistricting the only option here for Democrats to consider? MICHAEL GONZÁLEZ, Well, I think that's what we have to consider in the short term, so that we can save our democracy and then ultimately heal it. And I think the way we ultimately heal it is for Democrats to take control of Congress, to have a Democratic president, and then to pass federal legislation that bans partisan gerrymandering, that bans racial gerrymandering, that requires that redistricting be done in a fair way, that advances fair electoral processes. It was something that came out of the House of Representatives during the Biden administration, where we got it through the House, the John Lewis Fording Rights Advancement Act, that did a whole bunch of good things, but couldn't get it past the Senate, couldn't get past the Senate filibuster, if that is what is necessary in a new Democratic administration, with a new Democratic Congress, then I think that we have to consider that which is what's more important, the arcane archaic filibuster or the protection of our democracy So in the short term yes we have got to do that which we can to save our democracy But ultimately ultimately we have to I think pass federal legislation Former Attorney General Eric Holder thank you very much for joining us tonight Thank you. And coming up, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was the U.S. attorney in Rhode Island, where he never prosecuted anyone for taking pictures of seashells on Rhode Island beaches. We'll get his reaction to Donald Trump saying today that he thinks his life is now, currently, threatened by seashells. Senator Whitehouse joins us next. Today, Donald Trump tried to do a truly terrible rewrite of The Godfather while telling us how scary seashells can be, especially if they appear in a photograph like this posted on Instagram a year ago by former FBI director James Comey. Do you really think that he was endangering your life or threatening your life with that? Well, if anybody knows anything about crime, they know 86. You know, it's a mob term for kill him. You know, you ever see the movies? 86 him. The mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, 86 him. That means kill him. I think of it as a mob term People think of it as something Having to do with disappearing But the mob uses that term To say when they want to kill somebody They say 86 The son of a gun I'm trying to keep the language nice and Clear, they don't use that term Son of a gun, they use another term But that's a mob term for kill Do you really think your life was in danger? Probably, I don't know Based on what I'm seeing out there Yeah. Merriam-Webster says this about 86. It comes from 1930s soda counter slang, meaning that an item was sold out. In the 1950s, the word underwent some functional shift and began to be used as a verb and later took on the slightly extended meaning of to get rid of, to throw out. Joining us now is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. He's a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Budget Committee. He's the top Democrat on the important Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. And Senator, I don't remember every word of movie dialogue, but I know the 86 thing does not occur in Godfather 1, Godfather 2, or Godfather 3. But I defer to you and your experience as a former federal prosecutor. What do you make of Donald Trump's review of mob language and wiretaps you've listened to. And how scary are the seashells in Rhode Island? Seashells in Rhode Island are very terrifying, Lawrence. Let me start by answering your question, not as a prosecutor, but as a senator who gets lots of threats. I mean, that's just the way things are right now. There are lots of right wing loonies out there who make threats. And I can promise you, if an 86 threat came up, it wouldn't even be brought to my attention. It just doesn't register. And it particularly doesn't register if you put it up against the stuff that Trump himself says, like about my colleagues, that they have engaged in seditious behavior punishable by death? What kind of a signal is that? And this is in an operation that Trump, Musk, Stephen Miller, and others run, where they can send out that kind of language, and they know that there are what I call the flying monkeys, if you've seen Wizard of Oz. There are flying monkeys out there on the internet who are waiting to be launched, waiting for provocation, all revved up and angry and furious, and they will then deliver the threats. So I think they'd be better off investigating the president's threats and the operation of the flying monkeys that gets launched when he makes those threats. And because he's now protected by the Supreme Court by immunity, well, maybe you have to go to Stephen Miller, who called federal judges terrorists and set off a similar wave cascade of threats against those judges. I think that, you know, I'm no great fan of Jim Comey, but I do think that his lawyers are going to have a really good time tearing apart the MAGA Department of Justice over this completely trumped up prosecution. How far will this case go? Will it be, are we looking at a dismissal here? Well, from Comey's point of view, you'd like to get rid of it as quickly as you could. I think his earlier set of fake prosecutions were dismissed right at the get-go, right after the indictment came down, the indictment was dismissed. But from my point of view, I would like to see a little discovery take place. I'd like to see Comey's lawyers get all of the internal communications within the Department of Justice about this and the communications between the White House and the Department of Justice about this in order to have him be able to build the case for selective and vindictive prosecution. Those are documents and communications that are important to him building that defense. And so he has an important right to get into that material. And I think it would be it would be pretty illuminating to see the back stuff. You know, the Trump people put on a very good show when you go one inch deep. But if you dig a little bit behind it. If you actually get into the documents, they're not very smart about covering their tracks. So just for me, I really hope that it lasts for a while because I really want to see the Comey litigation team dig through the discovery that is behind this prosecution. We have to squeeze a commercial break here, Senator. When we come back, Todd Blanche said something about this today that absolutely would have earned him an F in law school. We'll see that right after this break. Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, now his acting attorney general, said something about proof today that would get him an F in a law school class. When you talk about whether proof exists, the proof that we have is in the fact that the grand jury returned an indictment. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is back with us. And Senator, today, proof became an indictment. How would that work in a law school class? the standard for getting an indictment out of a grand jury is very low the standard for convicting an american citizen of a criminal act is that you have to prove that they are guilty beyond any reasonable doubt and the inferences generally need to be drawn in favor of of innocence So you really have to actually have a case with real evidence and a photograph that he took out on a walk down a beach of somebody else's seashell display is really hard to connect back to the particularly the level of intent required to prove these cases. So if that's the best that this MAGA Department of Justice has, I think Comey's lawyers are going to have a real field day with that. It turns out it is impossible to talk about this indictment or try to defend it without saying something stupid or lying. Here's the lie. CBS asked Todd Blanche today, did the president of the United States in any way direct you to pursue this matter? and Todd Blanche's lie was, of course not, absolutely, positively not. And there's no suggestion that that's the case. The entire country has seen Donald Trump demanding James Comey be indicted for years now. Yeah. You know, those are the kind of remarks that you may be able to pull off on Fox News, but at some point this case comes to court and you have to bear the burden of explaining all of this. And the fact that they have that first vindictive and selective prosecution dismissal already on the record, the fact that they have Trump already on the record, and it was brought up earlier that a Republican influencer had done an 86-46 about President Biden. And he was asked about that. And he said, well, you know, these cases, They're all different. Everyone has to be seen on its own merits. Actually, no. When I was a U.S. attorney, one of the things we really stood by was to try to make sure that our prosecutorial standards were consistent. And if an 86-46 against a Democratic president was not chargeable and was not pursued, you'd have a real trouble trying to convince an honest Department of Justice that an 86-47 was prosecutable and should be pursued. So clearly, clearly, this all leads back to Donald Trump wanting this done and to Todd Blanch desperately trying to make himself Donald Trump's favorite to stay on as acting attorney general. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Thank you, Lawrence. We'll be right back. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gets tonight's last word.