From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour comes in an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, a man that President Trump has called scum and a criminal.

President Trump all but demanded that the government attempt to prosecute and jail James Comey.

And he got his wish after he installed one of his personal lawyers, an insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience who was willing to pursue that indictment.

So Comey argues this is simple.

He's asking the judge to throw out the case against him, arguing it is a classic example of vindictive prosecution.

And now, more than 100 former Department of Justice officials have signed on to a petition agreeing with Comey.

They are Republicans and Democrats alike.

They argue that we're in dangerous territory when the president wants to decide who is free and who will be jailed based on personal animus.

Investigative journalist and RIT professor David Cay Johnston doesn't necessarily disagree with Comey on the merits, but he says the judge should not throw out the case.

Johnston wants the judge to do something else, which could turn the case on its head.

We've invited David Cay Johnston to come back on the show today to talk about this and a lot more.

He's a professor of criminal justice, the law, journalism and political science at it.

He's the author of a number of books on the Trump administration and a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist who found a D.C.

report.

Welcome back to the program.

Thank you for having me.

So let's just kind of start with I mean, there's a lot going on.

We're going to cover a lot more than James Comey this hour.

But let's start there, because that got my attention last week when, you surprised me a bit when you argued that the judge should not throw out the case based on vindictive prosecution.

It is this vindictive prosecution.

There's an enormous amount of evidence that's vindictive prosecution, including what was apparently intended to be a private message between Trump and Pam Bondi that, instead, he put on truth social media.

One of those.

I thought this was a direct message.

And it went public.

Right.

And so the judge would be entirely reasonable who's overseeing the case and saying, I'm going to grant your motion.

And vindictive prosecution motions are rare and almost always fail.

But, you know, my whole career has been built on contrary, in ways of doing things.

When my fellow journalists zig, I try to zag.

And I think what the judge should do is say, you know, Mr.

Comey, there's substantial evidence of your claim, but not absolute proof.

So, we're going I'm going to grant you subpoena power to question everyone in the chain of command on this and require them to produce documents, and submit to testify under oath to find out what happened here.

And you may recall, long ago, the Supreme Court held that presidents of the United States, notably Bill Clinton at the time.

But since then, Donald Trump, in a different matter.

Supreme court has said the courts are entitled every man's evidence.

Even the president's, and having subpoena power.

Well, it would be very costly for Comey.

I suspect he could raise money to help support.

This would allow us to see how Donald Trump is using the Justice Department as his personal, vengeance, organization.

Now, could I argue that with most other human beings as president, this would be required because there would be some discretion, there would be some quiet parts not set out loud.

But this is a president who could you not argue?

You don't need subpoena power.

He tells you how he feels.

He has done it publicly.

He said he wants Comey in jail.

He literally put an insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience in this U.S.

attorney's seat just to prosecute.

And he's basically said, why do you need subpoena power in this case?

Well, well, I understand that.

And as I said, I think the judge could reasonably toss the case out on this issue.

Sure.

I'm in favor of having a full public record.

Otherwise Donald Trump will go to lunatic judge, and a lot of people will believe him.

And even with a full record, not everyone's going to believe what happened here.

But I think that it's very important that we establish a record when you have someone who's an authoritarian.

And that's what Donald Trump is.

I've been warning people since 2011 that, Donald has no idea what our Constitution is about, and he sees himself as a dictator.

In fact, at the time in 2011.

And I've covered Donald since 1988, when I wrote about him becoming president someday.

I said that if Trump gets to the white House, he will never leave voluntarily, and he believes he is the only person fit to be president.

In fact, he should run the whole world.

And I was mocked for that at the time.

Well, earlier this year, what did Donald Trump tell The Atlantic magazine?

I run the country and the whole world, and that's that's his mindset.

And I think it's when you have someone who is trying to consolidate a dictatorial regime that it's really important we do everything we can to create a record, and also because of the effect it should have on people down the chain of command who are doing Donald's bidding, but may well be themselves violating the law and exposing themselves to jeopardy.

In the years that you have covered.

Governments at every level but the federal government, I think it is a recent phenomenon.

Correct me if I'm wrong here.

I think it's a recent phenomenon that the DOJ response to the former DOJ official response isn't a bigger story.

Here's what I mean.

You've got more than 100 former DOJ officials, Republicans and Democrats signing a petition saying they support Comey.

This looks like vindictive prosecution.

This isn't about politics.

This is about abuse of power and that big of a bipartisan push in the past, I thought would make a bigger splash.

And now we kind of just shrug at it.

What's going on?

Well, there's been a 50 year campaign that began with a man named Reed Irvine and an organization called Accuracy in Media to discredit honest reporting, and I've been the target of some of it along the way.

And as a press critic, I've written about it as well.

I've exposed lots of bad things done by journalists over my career.

You know, back when I was, started out 17 years old and was a reporter at one of the biggest papers in the country, a front page staff writer at 19 politicians paid very close attention to reporters and what they were writing.

They were very concerned because the public trusted that the journalism they were going to get was useful, and they saw reporters as people who were looking out for their wallets in terms of taxes, which was a big part of my career.

Land use for local governments, the quality of schools, etc.

politicians today, they just blow off journalists.

They don't care because the public, by and large, has been trained.

If this isn't a piece of news that appeals to what you wish the world to be, pay no attention to it.

And that's been seriously detrimental to democratic values.

If we're going to govern ourselves, which is the whole principle of our constitution, we're not going to have a king tell us what to do.

We are going to ennoble the human spirit to see what we can achieve.

And then you get someone who wants to be a king, a man who, in fact, you know, has put out repeatedly images of himself wearing a royal.

He says that's just he's got a sense of humor, and you don't.

Interesting that Donald says that, because if you watch Donald trying to tell a joke, you'll notice it's like watching a hostage video.

And I've had conversations with Donald where he he just isn't able to joke.

I said one to him one time.

The point that I had all eight of my children had been born.

I said, yeah, Donald, if you can't laugh at yourself as a parent, you know, you're just not going to be a good parent.

And he looked at me, you know, with this tough look, like, what are you talking about?

Because he has no capacity for for humor and the things he has done in that regard, particularly the, the diarrhea laden jet.

Yeah.

Those are so juvenile so far outside the norm, and they are inherently attacking American citizens who are exercising constitutional rights that under his oath of office, he's supposed to be defending.

Or is it that you're just an elitist who doesn't see that the people finally have a president who speaks like the people?

Well, he speaks like a member of the people, no question about that.

And Donald is, listen, I admire Donald's skill as a con artist.

I've exposed to a number of con artists, some of whom went to prison, after I exposed them.

But I've never known another con artist in Donald's league.

I mean, he's really, really good at what he does, and I find it funny when people say, you're an elitist.

You know, I went to work at ten and full time at 13 years old to help my family, so I sort of didn't grow up in an elite circumstance.

I went to, state schools under the War Orphans Act, talking to David Cay Johnston.

This is just a brief aside here.

I know we've talked about this before.

The president, does he laugh?

I don't think I've ever seen him laugh.

Maybe he does.

Maybe I just have.

I have never seen an I spent hundreds of hours with Donald.

I have never seen him laugh.

I've seen other people laughing.

And he just.

He doesn't get it.

It's it's very.

I mean, be glad that you're not Donald Trump.

Be glad that you did not have his monster of a father and his very cold and distant mother, because you'd likely be like him.

And it's very sad and tragic on a personal level.

Yes.

Yeah.

In terms of who you are as a human being, after all, even if you have a public life, you and I and Donald Trump, we all have public lives in different ways.

But you have a personal life, an interior life, a family life, a romantic life.

He doesn't.

He doesn't.

Those things are not for him.

Like they're for the people.

Everything is a transaction.

Even his marriages, those are commercial relationships.

They're not romantic relationships.

Before we move on to some other subjects, let me just close the loop on not only Comey, but the the prosecutions of John Bolton, Letitia James, that the president was not shy about telegraphing that he wanted to go after who he perceived to be his enemies.

We had a group of retired judges on this program a couple weeks ago.

I heard that two Republicans and two Democrats, and they all agreed that it is not a healthy direction to be going in when the leader of a country is just telegraphing, I'm going to use this to go after people that I don't like.

And if I have to install my own personal lawyer who's an insurance lawyer who's never prosecuted a case, I'll do it.

But they also said, don't assume this is over.

There could be more indictments, more attempts coming here.

Do you do you feel like the system will hold?

Do you feel like the courts will hold, or do you feel like he will win this?

Well, Trump has been losing roughly 24 out of every 25 cases at the district court level.

And in most of those cases, the overwhelming majority of those cases, circuit courts of appeal have upheld trial judges, including judges appointed by Donald Trump.

The problem is that the US Supreme Court, we have six judges on the court, who are behaving in ways completely contrary to their testimony under oath during their confirmation hearings.

And we shouldn't forget that the Chief Justice of the United States, John Gulliver Roberts Jr, began his career as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, whose job was to suppress black votes.

So, that should speak to us volumes about John Glover Roberts.

And he's a brilliant lawyer.

I read his decisions and teach them some of them in my classes.

But don't miss who he is.

Let's not forget that Justice Alito flew a flag indicating that he is not a loyal citizen of the United States as it exists that, he shouted out liar!

During a state of the Union address when President Barack Obama said something which was not a lie at all, it was quite true.

So we were then.

Supreme Court, throughout our history, has been behind the curve, has been a huge obstacle to fairness and equity.

And I'm far from the first person to say that there's, there's volume bookshelves of books about this legal law reviews.

So things are going to get much worse before they get better.

The Comey case, the James case, those aren't going straight to the Supreme Court.

No, those cases are if if they were to go to trial and I doubt they will, are going to be handled by a jury.

In the case of Letitia James, it's a kind of bizarre case.

The paperwork shows that she declared this house she was buying was a second home.

And by the way, you can have two principal residences.

I didn't know that sell a few years ago.

And when I found out.

Yes, under the law, you can have two principal residence.

If you can prove you live in two places.

If a member of Congress, for example.

Yeah.

And have two principal residences.

And then later she decided to render house up.

Well, I've done that.

I've rented out my house, because I no longer lived in it.

There's nothing illegal about any of that.

Which tells you that she's not the Letitia James isn't any risk of anything but the expense of defending the case.

The John Bolton matter is a different, kettle of fish.

He apparently clearly had some national security documents in his home, just as we've seen with numerous former national security officials in white Houses, of both Democrats and Republicans.

You know, they end up for their convenience, taking things home.

They're not supposed to.

But the criminal intent issue has always been that you hear about it, hid the documents.

You lied and denied.

In Trump's case, with the documents he took to Florida, he lied and denied he, in fact, suborned perjury.

He sought to get people to lie on his behalf.

That's when we prosecute national security cases for having documents that should be in a secure facility, not in your bathroom.

So your your analysis is that his justice Department is going after John Bolton for something that he actually did in a more grievous and more egregious way.

Yeah.

And this wouldn't be new in American justice.

I mean, one of the things I teach my law students for the last 16 years is that the law is not like a brain surgeon scalpel.

It's much closer to a butcher's meat ax.

And we have innocent people who get convicted.

We have guilty people who are never even prosecuted.

A number of people prosecuted because of my work, where law enforcement wasn't doing its job, where they had screwed up, including a, murder case where I hunted down the real killer, and gotten and saved an innocent man from life in prison.

The justice in America, the way we have established it is not what it could be in terms of equity and fairness and thoroughness.

And so I there going to be more prosecutions.

The Trump administration has already signaled that they're going to go after the principle Democratic Party fundraising, vessel something called actblue.

And just to be clear, I'm not a Republican or a Democrat.

I've been a registered Republican in the past.

I've been a registered Democrat in the past because I wanted to vote in the primaries.

But I have so little interest historically in my career in Partizan politics that when, review was written in one of my books that described it without ever telling people what the book was about, corporate subsidies in terms of, some entered and seen fight in the Democratic Party.

I had to go to the internet and look up what are these organizations?

I have no idea.

Okay.

But, but last point for I grab a phone call the system.

Now, when you talk about 24 out of 25 cases, when you talk about everything but the Supreme Court, the system, in your view, is holding this.

Yes.

I think the judges have been upholding the law quite well.

The problem is five white supremacists and a man who has no business being on the Supreme Court.

Clarence Thomas.

I'm not even sure he's qualified to be a traffic court judge.

That's the problem.

And these are people who, interestingly, when you're talking about people who hate America, these people hate America as it is, and they are very eager to follow through on Donald Trump's MAGA promise, which is not Make America Great Again.

The subtext, understood by many of his supporters, is make America white again.

Make sure that black and brown and Asian and Indigenous peoples and women know their place.

All right.

Two, your phone calls me.

Go, Mark in Webster.

Hello, Mark.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Evan, this is Mark Johns.

How you doing?

Hey, Mark.

Go ahead, go ahead.

Sir, I'm talking to the two smartest guys in Monroe County.

So, about that, I don't know about that, David.

Okay.

Me, I don't know.

Yeah, well, you're a close second, but, look, I, you know, I don't like to bad mouth my, my colleagues, Democrat or Republican.

So I talk about reform and real reform.

I know you guys probably don't agree with this, but real reform starts with term limits.

And the reason why that's important is because if you don't have term limits, the only thing you care about is getting reelected and reelected and reelected and taking the big money from the lobbyists and the special interests that want the favors.

So you can get reelected and reelected.

And, you know, the beat goes on.

If you had term limits and legislative 12 years, you know, 12 in a row, you got to go.

You can run for something else.

I mean, no one's stopping you from running from different for different positions.

But 85% of the voters want term limits.

And the thing that sets people off, that starts Trump derangement Syndrome is when he says, we're going to get rid of, term limits on the presidency.

And, you know, everybody freaks out.

But the fact is, the Republicans don't want that.

We talk about no King's day.

Well, guess what?

We fought wars to get away from kings.

Kings are nothing but dictators for life with robes and crowns.

We don't want that.

We want term limits.

And when you're done, move on.

Either get out of politics or run for something different.

And if you're not of TLC, if you're not, a term limits candidates, but you're living in these gerrymandered districts, then find a new Democrat.

Find a new Republican.

But when I see primaries, I outside of Mark Johns.

Apparently nobody even talks about term limits.

Now then after that, we need campaign finance reform.

The real thing.

We need independent redistricting.

But it starts with term limits, because that way, you know you're not going to be in that position forever.

And there's less reason to have to constantly be doing what you've always done.

And in closing, I just want to say in 22, we had a so-called independent redistricting in New York State, the Democrats in the state and down south, the Republicans do it.

I'm not picking any party, but New York State was the first to redistrict again.

We did it in 24.

And guess what?

Now you got Texas doing it, and then you're going to have the other dominoes fall.

Pat Buchanan used to talk about term limits that Supreme Court judges back in the 90s.

Now all of a sudden the Democrats who were against it then are for it now.

Well, let me just jump in, Mark.

I appreciate the phone calls always.

So a couple points here.

I'm going to work through a number of things in Mark's call.

Number one, he didn't say this, but term limits for the Supreme Court.

What do you think David Kagan I think it would be very wise to both expand the court and justice.

Chief Justice Roberts keeps saying, you know, the workload is too heavy, although they're hearing far fewer cases than they did ten, 20, 30, 50 years ago.

But a single 18 year term, I think, is entirely reasonable.

I generally don't like the idea of term limits.

We do it for the president because of FDR being elected to a fourth term during a war.

But, it's something that we, I think need to have more debate about.

But I think the deeper problem is that the campaign finance reforms championed by liberals after Nixon have backfired.

And you combine the Supreme Court decisions that, money is free speech.

And what you're really doing is turning our democracy into a government of, by and for the billionaire class.

So if we get through this and we recover our democracy, that's not the end.

That's the beginning.

The courts have made it clear that there's no enforcement provision for the Emoluments Clause.

And we see Donald Trump literally selling pardons to people to, murderers, drug the crypto guy, etc., the crypto guy, the Silk Road guy to sexual predators, he's the $400 million airplane is an absolute affront.

And by the way, it was solicited.

It wasn't.

Oh.

We'd like to give you this plane.

It was okay.

We're going to give you the plane because you're demanding it.

It's an extortion racket.

And but the courts in the first Trump term told both private citizens and state attorneys general, you have no standing to bring an Emoluments Clause case.

And underlying all of this is the campaign finance system.

I've interviewed more than 100 members of the House and Senate.

Now, admittedly, the most recent interview on that was 17 years ago.

But every one of them hates the campaign finance system we have.

But they're risk averse, as the economists would say, and they don't want to change the system because the unknown is more scary than the known.

The humiliation of the known.

And if I can take redistricting.

Yeah.

I think the redistricting, especially in the South, where it's clearly aimed at removing black Democrats, especially Jasmine Crockett of Texas, is not something that people who are opposed to Trump should be up in arms about.

I think it's an enormous opportunity.

If you've got lemons, make lemonade.

In order to create a district to removed from office black Democrats in the South, for example, that means you have to take a reliably, overwhelmingly white Republican registration district that's, say, 55% registered Republicans.

And you're going to have to dilute it down to maybe a 51 or 52% district.

Well, that means that if Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republicans get the vote out, they not only can win, but they can change this almost evenly divided House into one that has a substantial new majority that is not beholden to Trump.

But it requires work.

It requires getting the vote out, not just, moaning and groaning on the internet.

Let's, let's get back to your phone calls here.

This is Kevin and Victor next with David Cay Johnston.

Hi, Kevin.

Go ahead.

Oh, hi, Evan.

It's good to have you back.

Yeah.

David Cay, first off, I just wanted to say that you see much your $500 that Trump would not line up people on firing squad.

So be patient.

I do hope that you'll pay me in 2029 when that happens, you know.

Yeah, I haven't I haven't I don't remember that any bet and I don't bet but there's no you're not really betting he's going to have a firing squad David Kay all not all authoritarians.

And Kevin we'll get right back to you I'm sorry.

Yeah.

All for carrying all of the same pattern you're seeing in Donald Trump.

First of all, you appoint family members because you can trust them.

And then you appoint deliberately incompetent people who will do whatever you tell them to do.

We saw this, in Mussolini's Italy.

The trains did not run on time when the fascists ran Italy.

Then you take actions that demonstrate your invincibility.

I can do anything I want.

And Donald Trump has said article two says I can do anything I want.

Well, I just taught article two to my law class.

That's not at all what it says.

You're not in short form.

Article two of our Constitution says the president of the United States is the errand boy of Congress who will do what is directed by Congress.

Plus, he's commander in chief of the military.

But all dictators ultimately have to turn on their closest people on the inside in order to instill discipline and fear.

And eventually, yes, they kill people all dictators kill people.

And right now we have a president of the United States who, in the opinion of numerous retired military lawyers, judge advocates, General is committing murder, multiple murders on the high seas.

And Trump the other day.

Oh, attacking the boats?

Yes.

Trump was asked the other day by a reporter on his way to Malaysia.

Well, if you think that we're under attack, don't shouldn't you ask Congress for a declaration of war?

Trump said, now we're just going to go on killing people.

It shouldn't surprise me, but that's not a firing squad.

No, but eventually you have to turn on on your own people.

Evan, there's so many books about how authoritarians work.

Tim Snyder, who left the country and went to, University of Toronto, Sarah Kenzie are the former journalist who left to get a doctorate in authoritarian studies and studied one of the former Soviet republics.

Many, many other books and articles are out there.

There's a clear pattern.

There's a a retired a corporate executive here in Rochester who studied seven authoritarian regimes.

And I took his class at Chautauqua this summer.

So eventually, yes, you have to discipline your followers.

So you have to go after some of your most loyal followers to instill fear and discipline.

And at some point, yes, you find people and you round them up and you find ways to kill them.

You don't necessarily have to have a firing squad.

You can send the military into cities and use it to open fire on people, but, that there will be extralegal murders within the United States.

If Donald Trump is not stopped, whether it's going to happen next week or ten years from now, I can't tell you.

I can only tell you.

Every authoritarian regime in the world does that.

All right, back to Kevin.

Go ahead.

Kevin.

Okay.

One thing that you said today that really bothers me and probably bothers a lot of people is you said on the Supreme Court there are five point supremacists and then one incompetent black man.

Now, that's a disgusting thing in several levels.

I don't think it's true.

It.

So, you know, you feel stuff like that all the time.

And, you know, in some ways I'd like to like you, but in some ways you're kind of interesting and charming, but in some ways you just say things that are just absurd.

Well, and really, Kevin, what is it that I stage?

Kevin, let me ask you something.

What is it you think is absurd?

John Glover, Robert's first job was to suppress black votes in the Reagan Justice Department.

He has a consistent.

Oh, yeah.

You said that before.

How did you do that?

He was part of a unit in the Justice Department.

Whose job?

Well, there's plenty written about this.

You can read in the record, right?

I do, I just get to the chase.

How did he do it?

They attempted to get he the unit he was in, sought to get rules that made it difficult for black people in particular to vote.

And this is this.

I'm not telling some something.

That's news.

This is well known.

It was written about at the time.

It's not new, Southern Poverty Law Center.

They don't want to know.

No law review articles by serious scholars.

There were news articles at the time.

Remember, this is 40, roughly 45 years ago that he was hired into this unit in the Justice Department.

And remember, Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for president in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town known for only one thing the murder of three civil rights workers.

It was a dog whistle about the Reagan administration, which did all sorts of things, not just at the Justice Department, to try and suppress nonwhite voters.

This isn't new.

There are a whole books written about this.

Okay, I guess I have to look up the book.

Okay.

So tell me about the other justices.

How are they white supremacists?

Well, they they took the the major portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and they issued a decision that said, oh, the South is changed.

We no longer need these rules that Congress adopted in 1965 to protect the interests of black voters, because we've made this progress literally.

On the day that decision was issued, lawmakers in southern states began introducing legislation to suppress black votes the very same day.

Furthermore, while the Supreme Court has the authority to say this law is unconstitutional, they didn't say it was unconstitutional.

They said social conditions have changed.

That's quite a stretch for justices.

We have what they clearly have changed.

Well, not different in 2025 than they were in 1965.

Not not, not not the way that the court took it.

I mean, look at the Jerry, the effort to redraw districts specifically to remove black members of Congress, reduce the number of black members in Congress.

We had litigation over this in Louisiana, Alabama and, Texas.

No.

Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, where legislatures have sought to do this.

There have been all sorts of efforts to make it difficult for people to vote who are perceived by, the more right factions of the Republican Party they think are hostile to them.

Good example at a local level is Dodge City, Kansas, the iconic city of the American West.

There's a single polling place in the last election in Dodge City.

If you didn't own a car, you had to take a bus for an hour, and then you had to walk for an hour, and then you had to walk back for an hour after voting and ride the bus for an hour.

In Harris County, Texas, the biggest population in Texas that essentially is metropolitan and Houston, there is a single location the Republicans established to deposit ballots, and you have to do it by car.

You can't walk up to where the the boxes to drop your ballot, and you can only deliver ballots of people who are in the car.

It is impossible within the time period that that place is open to receive ballots for everyone in that county to deliver their ballot.

So there's a there was an immediate surge of these bills to reduce voting by black Americans, brown Americans, Indigenous Americans, in South as soon as this decision happened and, saying that that's a white supremacist tactic, I don't think that that's, anything but spot on, factual and defensible.

All right.

Finish up, Kevin.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Okay.

Since, I there Republicans aren't white supremacists.

They just want to defeat Democrats.

If if there's a, part of the city or the part of the state that's mostly black and they're mostly Democrat, wasn't that they don't dislike them because they're black.

They they're against them because they're Democrats.

That's just politics.

I, I hope you spend all your time talking.

Well, let Kevin finish your good.

I just want to ask you one more thing.

Yeah.

I listen every time you're on because you are interesting.

Last time you were on and you said that Donald Trump used to take airplane loads of dolled up 12 year old girls to his casino.

No, I never said.

I told him, listen, you said that, and I. I'd like to hear the rest of the story.

You know, I'll tell you exactly what I said and you can read it in my book, The Making of Donald Trump.

There were formal proceedings.

Donald Trump had children who were 12, 13 and 14 years old, not only gambling in his casinos, but he plied them with liquor, limousines and, hotel suites because they had money to gamble.

Nobody mistakes a 12, 13 or 14 year old for a 21 year old.

Now, I gave a speech at a church in Philadelphia when my first book, Temples of Chance, on the casino industry.

And it's about a third of it's about Trump, where I told this story and somebody shouted out in the audience, you know, you're a liar.

And somebody else spoke up and said, no, my teenage son has a frequent gambler card at Trump's casino.

And another person got up and said, and pretty soon there were 4 or 5 people who said, yeah, my kid or my grandchild.

They have a frequent gambler card at Trump's casinos.

He was flouting the law very openly.

And there are formal judicial proceedings about this.

You can read about it in Temples of Chance, which you can buy on the internet these days for like a buck plus shipping.

Or you can get it if the Rochester Public Library.

But I'm going to ask Kevin to answer one thing for me before we go to our only break here.

The one thing I don't understand, there's actually there's a million things I don't understand.

We don't have time for it.

But I'm going to give you one.

I don't understand the idea.

If you care about what Jeffrey Epstein was doing, I don't understand the idea that Donald Trump is some sort of a white knight, savior or hero, or even that he is not likely, certainly centrally participating.

There are videos.

I mean, it's not supposition.

I don't care if you think that the The Wall Street Journal's reporting is all forgery.

I don't understand, Donald Trump said in the 20 before that he was first elected, that interview surfaced where he talked about when he ran the miss USA contest and how easy it was to woops, go into the locker room, go into the bathroom and name those teenage girls might be changing.

And he I mean, like he claimed the right to watch them when they're naked.

Yeah.

It's not it's not contrary.

Hershel Donald Trump was participating what Jeffrey Epstein was doing.

Unless I'm missing something.

Kevin, am I missing something about the Epstein files?

And do you believe that Donald Trump is sort of, is sort of like the hero of that story?

What's going on there?

Well, I don't think he's a hero.

I know that they were friends, and I know that Donald Trump was a Playboy who loved beautiful women.

Some of them were younger.

My own maples was pretty young when he met her.

But I do not think that Donald Trump was having sexual relations with a 16 year old girl.

So.

So just to be candid, you don't not 16.

He's indicated as young as 13.

And there are 24 women who've testified under oath that they were raped by Donald Trump when they were 13, 14 and 15 years old.

So you don't believe any of those women?

I have to see the documents.

I mean, you're saying that I so what do you feel about Donald Trump running for office, saying he will release the Epstein files, and now his Justice Department says we can't release them when every lawful authority I know and my own reading of the law as a law professor says, yes, they have absolute authority to release these.

Right?

I hope they do.

I hope they do.

I wish they'd release them today.

So I would not I would they keep them?

I don't think there's anything incriminating.

Oh, Donald Trump, because that many people who have seen the Epstein files said they know there's nothing incriminating.

I don't know many people who've seen the Epstein files.

The many people are Pam Bondi, who claimed that she had all the files on her desk, which is ridiculous, and Kash Patel, you know who Donald put?

Utterly unqualified man and the head of the FBI?

There are people who are familiar with big parts of this, like Julie Brown at the Miami Herald and the lawyers representing some of the women.

And we have, Miss Jaffrey, I hope I'm pronouncing her name right.

Joffrey.

Hurt.

Who who whose book has just come out, all talking about this.

And, the royal family has completely pushed Prince Andrew out the door because they clearly believe that he was having sex with underage girls at the very place that Donald regularly visited.

So why you would think Donald Trump did this track record he couldn't possibly have done this is kind of surprising.

I don't you know, Donald Trump had so many women of age, beautiful women, he why would he resort to that?

But so did Prince Andrew.

Yeah, so did Prince Andrew.

So did Jeffrey Epstein.

Yeah, so did Bill Clinton.

Yeah.

It's not I mean, that's not how human that's not how human beings behave.

So did Bill Clinton, by the way.

Why why do the husbands of women famous for their sexuality as actresses, singers or other entertainers have affairs?

I mean, that's just not how the human experience works.

We have a lot of smoke, but no clear evidence that Donald Trump is a child rapist.

The evidence is vile.

So why is the Trump administration withholding the files they promised to make public?

And the only logical conclusion the Occam's razor conclusion, is Donald Trump knows that those records will show that he was a repeated child rapist.

Is it possible that it would show that he's the hero of the story, but he's too humble to have the files released?

Yeah, right.

And and the son.

Did you think so?

Yes.

Tomorrow.

Did you consider.

Look, Kevin, thank you for the phone call.

Those files should be released.

And it doesn't matter if Bill Clinton is in there, if Donald Trump is in there, if anybody is in there.

Yep.

The promise that this administration made was put us back in power and we'll release him.

Pam Bondi told people she was releasing things that had already been released and was hoping that people would just shut up about it.

Well, let's remember that Donald Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lightning, who lives next door to Epstein's mansion, described what I've seen was doing and then said he's got the greatest extortion racket in the world.

And that's what Epstein was really doing.

He got not every man who went there.

He wanted a lot of the men to be able to say, I'm surrounded by powerful people, to try and appear invincible.

But he got some of these men involved with underage girls, has video and photographic evidence of it that the FBI seized.

And by the way, the estate is entitled to, if it doesn't have already either the return of those or duplicates, certified duplicates.

And so Congress has other means to get at the truth about this.

But Congress won't even swear in the latest member who was elected because it would force the release of these files.

Okay, well, we'll see if the files come out, but it's your politics shouldn't matter on this one.

No, you're right, I say the General Clinton did it.

You never lets know about whoever.

Prince Andrew, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, who cares?

Put it out there.

People have waited long enough.

You've convinced people to go down these rabbit holes and they thought they were getting something from you.

Now's the time.

All right, back we come in.

Just a moment.

I want to get David Cay Johnston thoughts on a piece of sound.

We're going to hear from the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.

And the other side of this Tony, break.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Wednesday on the next connections.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

One more quick question for you on the Epstein Files thing with David Cay Johnston, who is a longtime investigative journalist, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a founder of the DC report.

You more than probably anybody I know, know what it's like to to deal with freedom of information requests, redacted documents, document files that are incomplete.

You know, we talk about the release of the Epstein files like it's one folder that we could just go here.

Are you convinced that we will ever see everything that people have on it?

I don't think we'll ever see everything, but I think the significant evidence that we should see that either implicates or exonerates Donald Trump is going to come out.

It's a function of of time.

But it will happen.

And the there's such a serious effort to not release those documents that the House hasn't been in session for over a month.

It tells you that there's something Donald Trump is very afraid of in those documents.

Ghislaine Maxwell, a long time associate of Epstein, has said, you know, she doesn't think Trump did anything wrong.

You buy that she's a she's a perjury.

So why would you believe her?

And look what she's gotten by telling the story.

The pardons.

She's been moved into a, prison where she's not qualified to be under federal rules.

And by the way, one of the biggest mistakes Donald Trump could make would be to pardon her.

He should.

If he's going to help her, he should grant clemency.

If he pardons her, she can be forced under oath to testify.

And she can be jailed.

If she doesn't tell the truth or she withholds, if he grants her clemency, he still has his thumb on her and can make sure that she doesn't, act in any way.

That is contrary to his personal interests.

All right.

Earlier this, how were you heard?

David Cay Johnston mentioned the, in his view, extrajudicial killing at the high seas.

The Trump administration targeting boats, in numerous places.

And the administration says these are drug runners.

They are poisoning our our families.

They are hurting our country.

And we are going to take them out.

And here's what the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, said about that just a few days ago.

So our message to these foreign terrorist organizations is we will treat you like we have treated al-Qaida.

We will find you.

We will map your networks, we will hunt you down, and we will kill you.

And you've seen that evidence in the maritime domain, whether it's in the Caribbean or in the Pacific.

With the last two strikes, we know exactly who these people are.

We know what networks they work with, what foreign terrorist organizations they're a part of.

We know where they're going, where they originated from, what they're carrying.

And they know, we know.

And that will soon start to change the calculus of these boats.

Okay.

What do you hear from the secretary of defense there, David?

Well, he is proposing more murders, and that's what they are.

First of all, if you are a drug smuggler or a guns smuggler or sex trafficking, those are not capital offenses.

The way you deal with smuggling is you interdict.

That is, you stop the boat.

You bought it.

If they don't want to stop you, fire cannon or machine guns across the bow until they do, you inspect.

If you find contraband, you seize the contraband and arrest the people on the boat.

Donald Trump said, well, the reason we have to do it this way and blow them out of the water is that our Coast Guard cutters aren't fast enough to chase them.

Well, that's right.

So what you do is you have drones and satellite images.

You position your Coast Guard cutter so that the boat runs to you, and then you get your machine gun out and say, stop and be boarded, or we're going to fire over your bow.

Know there is no law that authorizes what they're doing.

And at least two of the cases, there's very good reason to believe these were poor fishermen.

Now, the Trump administration said these guys were out in the middle of the night, in their boat.

Yeah.

People in the Caribbean who fish often fish in the middle of the night because what they want to catch, to eat or sell during the daytime stays where the sun doesn't shine in the ocean and come up at night to feed on jellyfish and other things they eat on the surface.

So that's why they're out there fishing at night.

And so this is just absolutely outrageous.

And Trump was asked, as I mentioned earlier, you know, well, why don't you ask Congress for a declaration of war?

Congress has the sole power to declare war.

No president has the power to get us in a war.

Even though we've had armed combat throughout my lifetime.

President doesn't have the authority to do that.

But Donald Trump didn't.

He said, I'm not going to do that.

He didn't think he would do that.

But then he said, we're just going to kill people.

Well, that's what happens when you see yourself as a dictator is you're as invincible as all powerful.

You start killing people and that's what he's doing.

He is committing murders.

And to those military officers who are carrying out his orders, be very careful, because your oath of office is not to follow the orders of the president like it is for grunts and sailors and airmen and and regular Marines.

It is to defend the Constitution, period.

I think that's why we just saw a very high ranking officer.

Resign because he would not carry out unlawful orders.

Let me throw out an idea, though.

I don't dispute the point about the law.

And I'm very concerned about the fact that we may there may be collateral damage of innocent people getting blown out of the water.

I would not be surprised.

I have no data on this.

I would not be surprised if a pretty sizable chunk of the American population would say, keep doing it.

If you occasionally accidentally kill a fishing boat, it's worth it to get the drug.

Runners do it the way you're doing it.

And the moral answer to that is, okay, and what if it's your family?

What if they decide that we think there's, people selling drugs in your neighborhood?

And so we come in and we shoot up the neighbors.

But some of the bullets kill your children.

I mean, you have to have some principles about these things.

And if we're going to be a nation of law, which is the only way we can be a nation with freedom and liberty, then you have to hold everyone accountable.

Most of all, the president of the United States.

All right, John, emails program to say even regarding the Epstein files and whatever is or isn't in them.

This issue came up under the Biden administration, and the Biden FBI was privy to everything out there.

If there was something damning against Donald Trump, it's impossible to believe the Biden administration would cover that up and protect him if there was or is a bombshell in those files.

The Democrats in charge at the time would have made sure it was plastered on every front page.

Maybe there's no smoking gun in there.

Well, it's possible there's no smoking gun in there without a question.

That's why we need to see the files.

But there's an assumption in John's, email, Joe Biden's Build Back Better America plan that he had to rename, the Inflation Reduction Act, approved all these public works projects we're seeing around the country.

And when Biden would go to the ribbon cutting, he would allow the the Republican members of Congress in the Senate who voted against the bill to stand there next to him and take credit for the for the legislation they fought.

Biden was very much of this, very, highfalutin, I think, and politically unrealistic view that, you know, I'm the president of all the people, Trump's made it very clear he's only the president of people who support him.

Like there's been $1 of aid for the Los Angeles fires from FEMA.

So I, I don't think that the premise of the question holds, but I do think it's a reasonable question.

Why didn't the Biden Justice Department take some action on this?

And, especially since Joe Biden's position once he appointed Merrick Garland was I have nothing more to do with the Justice Department.

And there's lots of evidence that that's exactly true.

That's been the general tenor since Richard Nixon corrupted the Justice Department a half century ago.

Yeah.

Why didn't Merrick Garland act on this?

Why didn't he do something about it?

Why wasn't, James Acosta the, later Trump, first term Trump labor secretary?

Why didn't they investigate his sweetheart deal for it?

What's the Occam's razor here?

Is it the they were protecting Democrats in those files?

Or is it that there was no there there and no, I think neither of those.

I don't think so.

It wasn't on their agenda.

There were other fish they had to fry.

I mean, you have to make choices.

Wanting to do politics is both the what are the practice of the possible, but it's also making decisions.

I mean, one of the big complaints legitimately about Jimmy Carter was that all issues were equally important to him.

Well, if you were a nuclear submarine, executive officers, he had been I suspect all things are equally important.

When you're under the water with a lot of fissionable material.

And I just I don't think it was on their agenda, would be my guess.

And remember, the voices of the women and the work Julie K Brown at the Miami Herald has been doing.

They've been trying desperately to get attention for all of this.

And nobody has listened to them until very recently.

But we're down to the last minute.

So briefly, you got to do this in a minute or less here.

How you feel about the Pentagon policy on reporters kicking out?

Reporters are saying you can only report information that's been declassified.

If the Pentagon reporters adopt the motto of DC report, we'll get better coverage of the Pentagon by not being in the building.

Our motto was covering what politicians do, not what they say, not just what they say.

We broke lots of big stories in Washington on a budget of roughly $3,000 a month, whereas The New York Times has five white House correspondents $3,000 a month.

We broke story after story because we looked at the public record, we looked at contracts, we looked at litigation.

We never went to a press conference.

So that requires journalists who understand the law and policy and military contracting and a lot of other issues and have self-confidence in their judgment, about what's news as opposed to, oh, we have a press release or a press conference.

So the government is interested in this issue, but that's still the Department of Defense trying to control the information.

It's it's going to try very hard and hopefully we will get better information with a little bit of distance.

David Cay Johnston, a professor of criminal justice, the law, journalism, political science at RIT, author of a number of books on the Trump administration, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and the founder of DC report.

Thank you for being here.

As always, look forward to the next one.

Thank you Evan.

That's David Cay Johnston and listeners, a lively two hours.

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