"To sell a nation to the highest bidder"

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1:00The depths of the corruption of this family shouldn't surprise us because that's what happens when you grow up in a family in which money literally is the only thing that matters when your entire sense of self-worth is tied up in your financial worth. But they have stolen or grifted billions and billions of dollars. And yet they still need somebody to foot the bill for a wedding. What that says to me is that these people are so egregiously on the take. They will sell themselves and the American people to the highest bidder regardless. Hi again, everybody. It's now 5 o'clock in New York. Scary to hear that from someone inside the Trump family. That the man leading our country and the people around him, including his sons and family members, can be sold to the highest bidder. But that is where we are. That is who we are. That is the reality. We are facing when it comes to corruption so blatant on a scale so unimaginable

2:03and so undeniable that we're now even seeing members of Trump's political party. She'll compelled to speak out because the public is revolted by it, particularly regarding the self-dealing of the president's son. Republican Senator John Curtis, he's from Utah. He is calling out the findings of that bombshell pro-publica reporting on Donald Trump Jr's wedding and the hypocrisy among those in the Republican party at the very same time. This Republican Senator, Senator Curtis says this quote, a toaster is a wedding gift. A private island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden's foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now. Trust us was not enough then and it is not enough now. And a letter to the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, this Republican Senator, Senator Curtis, requests they subpoena Donald Trump Jr. to investigate his foreign ties and enrichment.

3:07Now while this counts as another bombshell and is a very welcome development that a member of Trump's party, a Republican Senator, is acknowledging that corruption is bad, no matter who it comes from, that it's something to be investigated. Curtis taking this stance right now shows us just how weak and politically impotent Donald Trump might finally be. As our friends are along well, Senator Curtis said in response to Senator Curtis quote, see, people start getting a little brave now that Trump is approaching the bush line and quote. Trump's approval is hovering right around that bush line, a 32% and a handful of polls when we showed you yesterday found him at just 29%. Our next guest is no stranger to sounding the alarms about the brazen corruption by Donald Trump and his family. Senator Chris Murphy says this quote, more Republicans should follow suit after Curtis. Putin's growing financial relationship with the Trump family is a national security crisis. Calling out corruption is where we begin this hour with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut,

4:11joining us from outside the United Nations. He's a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator, thank you for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. What is it that people say to you at this United Nations with this president, banning media, his son having islands rented out by Russian oligarchs and his speech, you know, incomplete sentences, and named nonsense and annihilation. Well, the world is just walking away from the United States right now and they're walking to China. China is now the stable power if you want an economic relationship. If you want to partner with a country on AI, you're going to do it with China. So I think the meetings that the Chinese are getting here are much more significant and ultimately going to be much more substantial than any of the meetings Donald Trump is doing. I mean, every country just treats this guy with kid gloves. They're just trying to sort of stay out of the news,

5:14which also means that they're not doing anything to help the United States. They're just trying to make sure they don't show up on Trump's social media feed. The exception are the countries that put money in Donald Trump's pocket or into the Trump family's pockets. And that's where this Russia story comes into play. We now know that the Russians were feeding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump family, paying for Donald Trump's wedding reception. We already also know that the Russians were probably sending a lot of money to Trump through his cryptocurrency scheme. As a mean coin, there's evidence that there were Russian buyers, major Russian buyers of the cryptocurrency. Well, maybe that starts to explain why Russia has been getting a free pass from this administration, why we Trump temporarily, but substantially ended the sanctions against Russian oil. Why there hasn't been an outcry as we've learned that Russia is providing intel right now as we speak to the Iranians as they're hunting US soldiers in the region. So mostly countries here at the UN are just staying clear of the United States of America,

6:19but there are a handful of those that are willing to put money in the Trump family's pockets that are going to still be doing meetings here at the UN and repeatedly with a fundamentally corrupt administration. If the midterms bring about what the polls suggest is entirely possible and Donald Trump seems to be reading the same polls based on how he's acting and Democrats take control of the House and even the Senate, what can you do in terms of clawing back either the money that has been thefted or the credibility and integrity that's been sold? Well, the first thing we can do is just exercise our power as Congress over foreign policy. This war doesn't have to continue if Congress stands up and says no. We've brought a whole bunch of resolutions to end the war before the Senate, Republicans won't join us and so the war continues. But Congress has the power of the purse and if Democrats are in charge of the House and the Senate, we're going to listen to the American people who increasingly, whether you're a Republican or Democrat, don't want this war to continue.

7:19So we have the ability to end the war through a, through the congressional purse strings power. Second, we're going to get to the bottom of this corruption. I mean, Trump gets away with it all because there's nobody subpoenaing the records or the documents that underlie the corruption. So you're going to see congressional investigations. You're going to see the kind of subpoenas that Republican Senator John Curtis is calling for this week. So we can end the war if Democrats win control of the House and the Senate and we can start to unmask the way the corruption works and who's getting rich off of it. I feel like people like me do a disservice to our audience and to voters when we lump them all together. So let me just pull out and let's deal with Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding and Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, I think her name is Bettina, put out a statement calling this Russian oligarch a quote, dear friend. This Russian oligarch isn't like an old oligarch.

8:19This is someone in such good standing with Vladimir Putin today. As you said, as Russia is providing targeting information for Iran, where 18 to 22 U.S. service members have died. What would you do to investigate why someone in such good standing with Vladimir Putin today as he helps Iran target U.S. soldiers right now is quote, dear friends with the president's son and new wife? What's funny is that, you know, Eric Trump, nobody closer to Donald Trump Jr. than Eric Trump. Eric Trump got asked about this close friend of his brothers, so close that he paid for the entire wedding reception that Eric Trump was at. And Eric Trump said, I have no idea this guy is, I've never heard his name, which gives up the game, right? This is not a friend of Donald Trump Jr. This is just a Russian plant that is putting money in the Trump family's pockets in order to get something in return. So I don't know exactly what investigations can uncover, but we will try to get at the paper trail

9:26that allowed the Putin to get so close to these guys. And then we'll also put legislation on the floor of the Senate. You see, Senator Kurt is calling for subpoenas. You see Republicans running for the Senate saying the war has to end. It's going to be hard for Republicans to vote against a bill, for instance, that says that the President of the United States's kids can't receive gifts from the Kremlin. We'll put legislation in front of the Senate and the House that will make it absolutely clear that this stuff is illegal. It's insane that you even have to utter the sentence. I mean, you to look at the polling, 89% of Americans believe their leaders are corrupt. I think the economist asks the word most applicable to Donald Trump, 53% choose the word corrupt. It's something you've been saying, I think, since the transition. Since Trump wins in November before he's sworn in in January, you're warning of a kleptocracy. What do you make of the fact that the public really understands that part of the reason,

10:27their personal economic situation is as bad as it is, is because Trump is busy lining his own pockets? Yeah, I mean, listen, I've been talking about this and talking to you about this from the very beginning. Because it is exceptional. We've never had a White House this corrupt. And back on in Connecticut, I talked to a lot of Trump supporters who were starting to second-guess their decision based not on his policies, but based on his corruption. And so this is a major wedge issue inside the MAGA coalition. But here's the big picture. I don't think voters are going to take Democrats seriously when we complain or investigate Donald Trump's corruption unless we take on the whole corrupt scheme that is happening in our government today. Corporations and billionaires have enormous power over elections and over policy, both with Republicans and Democrats. And so if we take power in the Senate and the House, we have to pass legislation to ban billionaire and corporate money from our politics

11:32to disclose all of their contributions to stop members of Congress from being able to engage in insider trading to stop the revolving door between lobbying and congressional staff jobs. If we don't go our own ox, if we don't expose the fact that the whole system is corrupt, then they're going to think that we're talking out of two sides of our mouth. Because there's a lot of voters out there who don't pay attention to Trump's corruption because they just think we're all corrupt. And we're just seeing it transparently with Donald Trump. So yes, we've got to investigate his corruption, but we also have to pass laws that clean up the entire underlying nature of corruption in all of American politics, or people just won't take our complaints about Trump is sincere. It's not always national news, but I know ICE has been very aggressive in the state of Connecticut, and you've been on the ground. Tell us what's happening. Yes, so ICE came in in big numbers into Dan Bering's Stanford Connecticut a couple weeks ago when they used a new novel and truly evil tactic.

12:35They were at the school bus stops. And what they apparently did was they waited for the kids on the first and second day of school to board the school bus. And then after the kids boarded the school bus, they detained and disappeared their parent, meaning that when the kids came home from school that day, first day of school, second day of school, they got off school bus their parent was gone. And they just, you know, I guess, guessed that they had been abandoned. Dan Bering in particular came out in huge numbers as soon as that happened. Thousands of people on the green citizens like in Minneapolis tracing and following ICE legally around the city. And I'll tell you what happened, ICE back down. It's not that ICE has gone in Dan Bering, but they stopped those tactics, they withdrew the big numbers. And so it's just another signal that when people stand up to ICE, when people stand up in this administration like they did in LA, in Minneapolis, and now in Dan Bering, they don't want to fight. So democracy is still alive in this country. That's the headline. And it's the little skirmishes like we saw in Dan Bering just over about a week or two ago that tell me that we are probably going to survive this by the skin of our teeth.

13:41But we're probably going to survive in the people of Dan Bering have a lot, we'll have a lot to do with that story when it's sold. What are you sensing? I know you're on the campaign trail beyond Connecticut. What are you sensing in the electorate? Well, as I mentioned before, one of the things I'm sensing is that Trump's base is just super confused, right? They thought he was going to do two things and the wars and lower prices. And he seems to be doing the exact opposite. He's intentionally raising prices and he is getting us into more and more wars. And so one of the things we're hearing is that Republicans, you know, maybe you're not going to vote for a Democrat, but they just may not show up. And that will be the difference in states like Alaska and Texas and Iowa. And then the other thing that we're hearing loud and clear is that you know, there are new people coming out. There are new people showing up that maybe stayed on the sidelines coming off of Biden's presidency, but now actually see this existential fight for our democracy.

14:50And so I do think that you're going to see, as you saw in the last Trump midterm, a lot of young people showing up, a lot of first and second generation immigrants to this country who see how he is demonizing anybody who isn't originally from the United States showing up. So new people coming to the polls and getting involved in campaigns and a lot of Trump voters from 2024, just likely going to stay on the sidelines. And that may mean a big margin of victory in the House and Democrats controlling the United States Senate. What are your thoughts as someone who's pointed to the parallels to autocracies and weakening or ailing democracies around the world about Trump's attempts to, you know, within 24 hours, both ban. Networks he doesn't like, including this one and then launch state run TV Trump TV. Well, I have been hardened that the other networks have come to MSNOW and CNN's defense.

15:53That frankly had not been happening over the past year and a half when he came after the first universities and the first law firms, the rest of the industry, stood by silently and let it happen. So collective action is how you defend a democracy from an autocratic takeover. I think we also have to understand what's happening with the takeover of Paramount. I was very disappointed, frankly, that the attorneys general settled this suit in a way that allows Trump effectively to now have control of both CBS and CNN. We're going to have to, frankly, fight harder as Democrats if we want to stop Trump from being able to develop effectively a state run TV. So I think there's been good and bad news. The collective defense of your network and others has been good news. The imminent takeover of CNN by a Trump allied family is really bad news for our democracy. But this is the playbook, right?

16:53Putin, Orban, Erdogan, they all go right after the media. They take control of as much of it as possible in order to suppress the opposition's speech. I don't think it's going to happen in time for it to be operative on this fall's elections. I think people have kind of baked in and their view that Donald Trump has been awful for the country and they want to give Democrats a shot at doing oversight in the House and the Senate. But this is going to continue to be a fight up until the 2028 election and when we're going to have to be vigilant about it. Senator Chris Murphy, thank you for all of your time today. We're grateful to get to talk to you about all these stories. Thank you. Appreciate it. When we come back with Donald Trump in political free fall plagued by allegations of corruption mired in his lowest poll numbers ever, our more and more Republicans going to do what Senator Curtis did and find his spine. Are they going to start to find that body part in distance themselves from an historically unpopular aspiring autocrat?

17:55We have a little bit more evidence that few of them might also had. It's one of the most closely watched Senate races in the entire country. And now brand new reporting in pro-publica again reveals how the FBI was investigating allegations of political corruption, involving people close to main Republican Senator Susan Collins. That was until the Trump administration stepped in to stop it. We'll bring you that reporting later in the hour. Daedan White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trump via offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trump via is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Trump via proper training is required.

18:56Trump via is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trump via today. Visit Trump via radio.com. There is so much NFL on ESPN right now. Monday night football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL live, NFL prime time. Everything you need to stay on top of every game every week. Unbelievable. And now NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on. All season long. On ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

20:22It's given them a new level of confidence in math and in school overall. Visit mathnasium.com to find a location near you. Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Groceries cost too much. You have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly. And, guess what? That was the Republican. There is nothing like the threat of losing an election to help you tell the truth and find a spine. As Republican candidates wake up to the fact that Americans really, really, really, really don't like them. They don't like Donald Trump's grift. For me, gas lines for the presidency. They are increasingly scrambling to find ways to put space between themselves. And Donald Trump, the man they have embraced for the better part of 11 years, up to about, I don't know, five minutes ago. As diesel surges to $6.53 and regular unleaded is close to $4.50 a gallon.

21:24Republican candidates are quickly realizing that Donald Trump's political stench is rubbing off on them too. And as we've been reporting, Trump's approval rating has now plunged to new depths, going as low as 29%. So now, Republican candidates are doing the thing they refuse to do for the last nine years and the first two years of Trump's second presidency. They are distancing themselves from dear leader. Even Trump loyalists like Florida Republican, Ryan Donalds, the Miami Herald reports that Donald's campaign website was previously dominated by references to his Trump endorsement. A button to chip into support endorsed by Rand Donalds was at the top of the homepage. Trump endorsed proven conservative fighter by Rand Donalds was the page's main text. All of those words and letters have been deleted. This campaign also removed a photo of Donalds and his wife, Erica Donalds, posing with Donald Trump.

22:27While Republicans are gradually starting to put some delay between themselves and Donald Trump in public, MSNOWs Michael Snell reports this, quote, privately GOP lawmakers say they see the writing on the wall, recognizing that even some relatively safe districts could be vulnerable. Quote, we're going to get crushed when House Republican told MSNOW, who called this midterm cycle, quote, a gasoline and ground beef election. When you've got ground beef at $9 a pound and diesel at $650 to $750, we're getting screwed, the member said. I'm going to bring in Tom Nichols. He's the staffer of the Atlantic and professor emeritus at the Naval War College, also joining us. Media Matters for America President, Angelou Carassone is back with us. Tom Nichols, it is such a bad moment for the American people that I don't have any glee in seeing Republicans realize what they've created because they are to blame. People should be more mad at the Republicans because who the hell knows what Trump thought.

23:28But the Republicans by and large knew better. What do you make of their very transparent efforts to both distance themselves with 40 days to go before the elections? And to acknowledge the reality, albeit privately, to journalists? Well, the first thing, and I think you really see it with the Microdger's Act, add is just how much contempt they hold their own voters in. These ads are, and these sudden website changes are happening as though they're expecting that people have no memory every morning. Microdger's in that ad is talking about grocery prices and the war in Iran. As if somehow the Republicans aren't actually the majority party and the president isn't a Republican who started the war. It is really kind of an amazing ad from a Republican who's basically running as though Congress and the White House are controlled by Democrats.

24:33And the admission to journalists about this just says that they know they've known all along that Trump is toxic. I think the argument that it's a gasoline and ground beef election is true, but it doesn't take in the full problem, which is that when people look to the White House, when they look to the National Leader, the President of the United States, they say, well, what is he doing about it? He doesn't say things like, I understand, people are suffering. We've had some bumps, we're going to work this out, we're doing, we've got this. Instead, he says things like, shut up, you whiners. It's a small price to pay, it's not a big deal. Groceries aren't that expensive. And then of course, with all the other, then he goes off about sharks and electrocutions. So I think that's actually adding to the problem is that the leadership, the Republican leadership doesn't even look like it's trying, which is forcing other Republicans to run as though they're part of an opposition party, which is really for Republicans.

25:37You know, with Nicole, you know, this is as I do, it was a former Republican. That that violation of party discipline is really an amazing thing to see in any election, but especially one with Donald Trump. Yeah, I think it's so important to point out that people who have been on the pro-democracy side and skeptical Donald Trump for 11 years are not the audience, right? It is a chunk test. It is actually a contest for what is on the line is how abusive can you be to your coalition? How badly embraced and like, can you lie to your voters when you put a banana in a basket and say, man, stuff's expensive, stuff's expensive because you voted and refused to hold accountable Donald Trump for the war in Iran. You endorsed a person who ran on no forever wars, who ran on releasing the Epstein files, and who ran on improving affordability, who stood in front of melting groceries at Bedminster in the final days of the 2024 presidential election, and then you betrayed every single one of your voters.

26:37And I wonder, Angela Kerason, I know there's this thing baked in where Trump voters, the best we can get, Chris Murphy just said it, Senator Murphy just said it, so they stay home. I think if you have humiliated the much belly-humane atmosphere, the possibility is out there that they vote against you to punish you for lying to them. Yeah, so look, I mean, we should, when Trump sort of came in and it gets to your point about these specific segments of the magma media, those broadcasts, those parts of the podcast, and parts of the right way media, it was about vibes, right? And one of the big elements that was fueling those vibes was this idea of revenge, spite. And the problem with sort of having an entire campaign and then a presidency that is largely built on revenge and spite, even if it means to cut off your own field, no, suspect your face, is it end up without a nose? And they're also realizing that right now, and this is where the tie it is, because they're already changing their behavior in significant ways. And this gets into the not just staying home, but potentially even moving from being regretful to defecting. And it's in their behavior, it's very revealing, you know, in your intro, you played that clip of Senator Curtis where he was criticizing Trump.

27:44You really can't, you said, look, let's, let's subpoena Don Jr. And what I think is significant about that is not that he did it, right? Because that's a bare minimum self preservation that you, you know, to instinct, I'm surprised no one else has done that yet, but it's actually what happened in the rest of the, the exact apparatus that you described, which is no one criticized him. Nobody attacked him. No, look at 140 episodes in the last two days. Nothing, not a single criticism of Curtis for saying we should subpoena the president's song, not one. That is extraordinary. That is incredible. And what it reveals is exactly the sort of dynamic that you're describing that they're not willing to carry water for Trump anymore. And they're even signaling, hey, there's a, well, let you get away with certain things, right? If you're going to criticize Trump on the Iran war as Mike Rogers did, or you're going to start to talk about some of this corruption stuff, we're not going to defend him. If your salazar, you'll get attacked, right? So there are some things that the media coalition is saying we're not going to change our minds on.

28:45But the thing that they seem to be willing to say it's okay to have more room on and this gets to the daylight point is, yeah, we're not going to shred you if you decide to get out there and talk about the corruption, talk about the Iran war, create more distance between us and Trump. So how you get from being purely regretful to something that's more tangible to an actual defection, a change of behavior for the very audience that is sort of simmering in those narratives that those shows percolate. I mean, Tom, can we also pause on the fact that salazar and Donalds are in Florida? We basically cover Florida the way we cover Alabama. These are Florida mega Republicans purging Trump's name from their websites and in the case of salazar putting out an ad against him. Yeah, that is remarkable. And it suggests, and this goes along with some of the comments, Angela just made. It's almost like Republicans have lost their fear of Trump that he's now a spent force and it reminds me of all of the kind of petty authoritarian regimes where there's absolutely no break in support for the leader until the day there is when people just say, okay, this isn't going to last.

30:01I'm on the wrong side. This is going to go bad. And I need to start, you know, planning my exit here. And I think you're starting to see that. And yeah, to say that you have to like take Trump and do our off your ads in Florida, you know, is really a pretty remarkable thing. But again, you know, if the mega base is, well, the mega base will come up. But if the kind of associated folks, the kind of leaners and the, you know, the people that give you that big margin of victory, they're going to stay home. Then you really need to say, you know, you really need to get out there and say, well, you know, that that Trump fella had some good ideas, but that's not really why I'm running. Because, you know, that's just plain fear. And it's for once, thank goodness. These are public and seem more afraid of the general electorate than they do of Donald Trump. And that's a big change. Angelo just quickly, do they seem to be reorienting themselves around the benefits of being in the minority? Are they not quite there in the conservative media news cycle?

31:08They're not quite there yet. They're picking a few specific things that carry on. But they're self, the self preservation is still very limited. They haven't found courage and they haven't found self preservation either yet. They're sort of, you know, we need to change. We don't know what's going on mode. So interesting. Thank you for watching it for all of us. Angela, Tom, thank you very much for joining us today. When we come back, more stunning reporting about an FBI corruption investigation that examined campaign donations involving a very vulnerable Republican senator. We're learning about that investigation, what it was and how it was shut down. Donald Trump won again. One of the journalists on that story will join us next. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trump via offers self injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trump via is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

32:13If your doctor decides that you can self inject, Trump via proper training is required. Trump via is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trump via today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trimfireradio.com. There is so much NFL on ESPN right now. Monday night football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL live, NFL prime time. Everything you need to stay on top of every game every week. Unbelievable. And now NFL network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch.

33:15Football's on. All season long on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app. Parents, have you heard your kids say, I'm not a math kid. Well, with Mathnasium, every kid can be a math kid. They customize their math instructions so kids who are struggling are able to catch up and get ahead. And advanced kids are challenged to reach higher. Mathnasium makes math fun, so kids learn to love it. Parents say that Mathnasium has not only improved their kids' grades, it's given them a new level of confidence. In math and in school overall, visit Mathnasium.com to find a location near you. There are bombshell new revelations today about how Donald Trump's purge of the FBI may have resulted in the scrapping of a sweeping pay to play investigation that was circling one of Congress's longest serving Republican senators. She's now locked in one of the most closely watched midterm contests of the year.

34:18ProPublica reports this, quote, in the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Senator Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. So Scott Reed, head of the Collins Super PAC, was meeting with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatec. After the meeting, Navatec CEO, Martin Cowl, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins Super PAC using the Shell Company. Two months later, he told Novatec executives that Susan Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts. That's according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica. Then years later, quote, Cowl hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme. The Corner Bakery meeting he asserted was just one episode in a sprawling pay to play operation that embroiled some of the most powerful figures in Congress. Then Trump returned to the White House.

35:20Trump's Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion former officials said. The investigation sparked by a cow's revelations is dead, and the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress. In a statement, Susan Collins, Deputy Chief of Staff says this, quote, the seven-year-old allegations made against Senator Collins and her staff in this piece are categorically false. There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation. And Scott Reed, the Super PAC leader, tells ProPublica in an email that he had no communications with Collins or her staff about Cowl or Novatec. Joining me at the table, Assistant Managing Editor of ProPublica, Jesse Isinger, and joining us as well, former Assistant Special Agent and Charge at the FBI, our National Security and Intelligence Analyst, Michael Feinberg is here, take me through the reporting.

36:21Sure, thanks very much. So my reporters went to a bunch of different sources, including people familiar with what happened with the FBI's public corruption unit and the DOJ's public corruption unit. They've been wiped out. They've been wiped out exactly. And so our question was, what were they looking at? What was lost when the Trump administration wiped these things out? And one of the explosive things that we covered was this sprawling pay-to-play investigation. And so we've been working on this for months. We're actually, it's the first of a series. We're going to have more stories to come. And this was first on Susan Collins because Novatec and Martin Cowl's biggest benefactor was Susan Collins. So they were donating to her campaign in multiple different ways. And they were getting contracts in return. And the question that the FBI was investigating was, is this actually bribery?

37:21Is this actually paid play? And it's very difficult to prove. But this is the question that they wanted and sought to open up a formal investigation into. I mean, the story talks about an informant. Had they made a deal or within the process of making a deal? He was trying to get a lighter prison term. So yes, he was, that was one of the big problems was when you build a white collar case, you're often dealing with liars and crooks and criminals. And so the FBI was rightly cautious. But the FBI actually corroborated a number of his allegations with internal emails. And then when it died, what the public did, what my reporters did was reconstruct the investigation. We found internal emails and documents and sequences of events that actually corroborated a lot of what he said. So yes, he's a criminal, but criminals sometimes tell the truth. Why was a Hawaii defense contractor giving to the main senator?

38:23I mean, it's a great question. And it has to do with the fact that Susan Collins is sits on one of the most important committees in the Senate in all of Congress, which is the Appropriations Committee. So what Navatech had and what Martin Cowhad was, what they called internally the method, which was to target people on the Appropriations Committee and then give them donations and then secure meetings and then try to get contracts. And what happened was Collins would then go to the Navy and push that Navatech would get these contracts. The kicker is that the US military never bought a single product from Navatech. It was all useless. They said it was in the company used to joke that they were working in the Valley of death because nothing ever got purchased. That's incredible. I'm just for to bring Michael Fimer into the conversation. We'll do that after a very short break.

39:32We're back with Jesse and Michael. Michael, these public corruption cases take years and years and years. They are the thing that makes the American people feel about the worst about their government. And Trump isn't just asleep at the wheel. He he burned the car down that was driving us away from rampant pay to play corruption stuff like this. Yeah, this is one of the really heart breaking things from the perspective of democratic norms that's been happening to the FBI. You know, the current director cash Patel when he was in his phase of life where he mainly wrote children's books and appeared on podcasts once dismissively said of the FBI, your cops go be cops. As if highly trained investigators are doing nothing more than patrolling in urban city street. What he's quote and what his actions in dismantling the public corruption swatted issue here and firing so many other agents misses is that agents are not fungible.

40:34They just can't be replaced with one another. They develop deep reservoirs of expertise and out of respect for their privacy. I'm not going to mention the agents that are talked about in this article, but they had two of the most stellar reputations in the FBI's Washington field office, which is arguably the flagship office of the entire organization. And as a result, when you got rid of not just them, but their entire squad, you lost the most agile, dexterous and informed public corruption squad in the country. And public corruption has always been one of the most important things that FBI does because a failure to enforce it means that you are allowing the very underpinnings of our polity of our democracy to rot.

41:34I mean, Michael, somebody who I've spoken out about it was Jack Smith when I interviewed him over the summer, who I think ran that office. And, you know, it's not just that the cases that are under investigation go away. It's that the behavior, the recidivism that you've done it before, or the new and entrepreneurial ways to be corrupt, you know, it's like a thousand blossoms blooming. And you look at the public's perception of that 89% of Americans believe their leaders are corrupt. How do you, how do you put this all back on the other side of what will be one of the darkest chapters in the Trump story? I know what I'm going to say is a sentiment not shared by everyone, but I think unless you investigate and wear appropriate, prosecute the people who allow this blatant criminality to run ramparts. It's going to be really hard to put the genie back in the bottle. And what's so difficult about this administration's defaying of a public corruption program is that it's clearly because as many out that's ever reported, many of its own employees are just in government to line their own pockets.

42:50So they're getting rid of the disincentives for people who will help them do that. It's not very different quite frankly than pardoning everybody who was involved in January 6th. What you are doing is creating a structure where you are signaling to people who support you, whether through bribes or through violence, that it's okay to keep doing what you're doing so long as it makes the present administration. And that's a really dangerous place for a constitutional republic to go. People actually in that interview, Jackson had talked about states attorneys general picking up some of these cases, but this seems to involve the company headquartered in Hawaii, a senator headquartered in Maine. I mean, what is the status of this investigation? Well, this investigation is dead. And there may be statute of limitations issues that would allow it to be revivable if there was an overturn, you know, turnover in the FBI.

43:55But at this point, I think you have to say Susan Collins got away with it. Her top pack fundraiser got away with it. And the agents were fired. The agents were the ones that paid the price. They were the ones fired. And they were fired for separate reasons. They were fired because they looked at January 6th, you know, doing their duty, that kind of thing. They were not fired from misconduct, although they were accused of it. And so you have a system where, you know, even if there weren't laws broken here, and it's very, very hard to prove bribery at this point because the Supreme Court has narrowed the definition to, I think, absurdly narrow ways. But even if you say there weren't crimes, this was so unseemly. What we were trying to do is illustrate, this is how Washington works now. It's a pay to play operation in name, you know, not just a name only, that this goes deeper than that. That this is a way of life for these people.

45:01And we want to illustrate that this is a deep problem that goes beyond the narrow confines of the law. The public has contributed so much vital reporting lately. You guys run a real street. Congratulations. We'll have whatever is in your mugs over there. Congratulations. Jesse Eisner, Michael Feinberg, thank you for this today. Another break for us. We'll be right back. This week's episode of the Best People Podcast was a fun one, long time journalist. My sometimes wingman, John Hylman, join me. Take a listen to what he told me about how he sees the prospect of Donald Trump refusing to leave in 2028. Trump tried to do this once before. He looks like he's trying to prevent the midterms. He was obviously trying to prevent the midterms. How far he will go. We'll see come November, December. But like we both agree that it's we it's these wildly understates things to say you wouldn't put it past Donald Trump to try to steal the 20 to somehow mess with intervene and put his thumb on the scale.

46:13Declaring out our martial law do whatever to try to hang on to the last and there's only one reason he's making so much money like leaving the White House, which he has now fully turned into just a giant profit making self enrichment. Grift right just the whole thing is that called a grift actually makes out too small it's a criminal enterprise. There's much more where that came from the entire conversation is out now just can the QR code on your screen to listen to the rest of the conversation or download it wherever you get your podcasts. And as always let me know what you think on blue sky or Instagram. One more break will be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful.

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