THE POLITICS OF DOJ AND THE LAW OF DOGE

It’s our regular mash-up with none other than Molly Jong-Fast, in which Molly fires legal question that have been occupying her at Harry, and Harry reciprocates with political questions for Molly. This mash-up is in the middle of the burgeoning Department of Justice scandal over the Eric Adams prosecution, and Harry presses Molly on whether the scandal will have political legs. Molly meanwhile seeks to understand whether some of Musk’s crazier antics are legal and how they could be challenged. And that’s just the beginning! Always a lively and informative back-and-forth when these two interrogate each other!

Harry speaks with Molly Jong-Fast

THURSDAY NIGHT MASSACRE AT THE DOJ

Harry talks to Kristy Greenberg, former Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division in the Southern District of New York, about the burgeoning scandal involving the resignation of the acting United States Attorney and multiple other officials in her office and at Main Justice. The resignations all come in response to an improper command by the acting deputy Attorney General, Emile Bove, to dismiss charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, notwithstanding that there is no question about the righteousness – i.e. the solid facts and law –that undergird the prosecution. Through Greenberg’s experience in the Southern District and Harry’s at Main Justice, they are able to piece together what has happened behind the scenes to date and what may transpire in the future, and all of it pits Bove, Bondi and Trump on the wrong side of the rule of law and Sassoon and Company on the right side. This is not going away.

Harry speaks with Kristy Greenberg

TALKING SAN DIEGO PRESENTS CHRIS HAYES WITH HIS #1 BESTSELLING BOOK, “THE SIRENS' CALL"

In the latest conversation in the Talking San Diego series, Harry sits down with Chris Hayes before a live San Diego audience on the evening when Hayes’s new book, “The Sirens’ Call,” was named to the top position on the New York Times’s Bestseller List. Hayes’s focus is attention – how it has become our scarcest resource and the constant bombardment from different forces vying for it and leaving us all a little insane. Be sure to catch the “lightning round” towards the end of the discussion when Harry serves up a rapid-fire series of lighter-side personal questions.

Harry speaks with Chris Hayes

JEFF TOOBIN TALKS RIGHTEOUS AND CORRUPT PARDONS

Harry sits down with Jeff Toobin on the day of the publication of Toobin’s latest book, “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy.” Toobin’s work spans the history of controversial pardons over the last 50 years, with a ground-setting, detailed focus on President Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. The conventional wisdom about that pardon has come to be that it was a salutary statesmanlike gesture to put the national turmoil of Watergate behind us. Toobin has a contrary take: he is harshly critical of the Ford pardon of Nixon, and his analysis leads to similar critiques of the recent Biden and Trump pardons, and endorsements of pardons by Carter and Obama.

Harry speaks with Jeff Toobin

TOO MANY MUSKS ON THE FIELD

An all-contrarian roundtable—Paul Krugman, Norm Eisen, and Jen Rubin—chronicles the first signs of pushback against Trump’s constitutional assaults and analyzes the vacuous tariffs initiatives. Norm provides some dispatches from the litigation front, which has secured multiple injunctions against Trump’s lawless, harmful policies. Paul proceeds to explain how tariffs work and why they are at best counter-productive before considering Elon Musk’s strange role through the prism of economics.

Harry speaks with Paul Krugman, Norm Eisen, and Jen Rubin

SIGNPOSTS OF DEMOCRATIC DECLINE

Harry talks with Andrea Pitzer, who has reported extensively on democratic decline in countries such as Chile, Russia, and Hungary, and has written extensively about historical examples especially Nazi Germany. She discusses signal developments in authoritarian democracy that degraded into authoritarian rule, bringing the illustrations back to compare and contrast with Trump’s first few days of rule and the landscape ahead. The two discuss the most important developments that signify dramatic social and political degradations, as well as the most important indications of decline so severe as to take countries to the other side of the democracy/authoritarian divide. Harry analyzes the particular assaults on the department of justice and the judiciary that Trump is pursuing, and how they dovetail with strong man moves in authoritarian regime. A fair bit of a discussion concerns the potential analogy between Hitler’s brownshirts, who played such a major role in destroying the rule of law in Germany, and the hundreds of pardoned January 6 rioters who now stand ready to resume their violent support of Trump’s agenda.

Harry speaks with Andrea Pitzer

DEFCONSTITUTION

The worst assault by a president on constitutional norms of any week in history, save possibly only last week. A great panel stocked with political experience & law enforcement experience—Asha Rangappa, Stuart Stevens & Rick Wilson—join Harry to analyze the dregs of Trump’s nominees, whose prospects for confirmation cannot be counted out given Trump’s vice grip on Senate Rs. They then take up other of the weeks follies, including Trump’s blaming the terrible plane accident on Dems’ DEI policies.

Harry speaks with Asha Rangappa, Stuart Stevens & Rick Wilson

"F**K IT: RELEASE ‘EM ALL"

No need to mince words: it was the most damaging week for the constitution, and the Founders’ carefully calibrated system of checks & balances, since at least the Civil War. Trump put into place a series of executive orders & actions that if upheld will expand his power enormously and cut out the legs from most opposition. A great roundtable of Susan Glasser, David Jolly, and Bill Kristol joins Harry to assess the damage and what it portends for degradations of American law, politics, and life.

Harry speaks with Susan Glasser, David Jolly, and Bill Kristol

“FRIDAY NIGHT WAS THE DANGER ZONE"

Harry talks with Mark Greenblatt, one of the Inspectors General fired suddenly in the “Friday night purge” of the vast majority of Senate-confirmed IG’s. They discuss the origin, function, and nature of Inspectors General, who have saved taxpayers nearly $700 billion. Greenblatt talks about his own 20-year + service in the IG community, during which he rotated through several agencies and was elected by his peers to lead the IGs’ council. Then they zero in on Friday night and exactly what happened before moving to Greenblatt’s current thoughts about how the IG community, Congress, and country should respond to the purge, and whether and how it is possible to safeguard the paramount goal of oversight with integrity and credibility. It’s the longest and most detailed and nuance discussion with any of the fired IGs, going well beyond quick sound bites to an in-depth examination of who IGs are and what the country has lost in the purge.

Harry speaks with Mark Greenblatt

WE ALREADY KNOW A LOT ABOUT VOLUME TWO OF THE SMITH REPORT

There is understandable frustration at the failure to release volume 2 of the Smith Report dealing with the Mar-A-Lago documents case, but we are able to construct strong surmises about what is in that volume based on already available material. Harry checks in again with Marcy Wheeler, whose blog, emptywheel.net, consistently presents the most in-depth and comprehensive accounts of the public record. Through a methodical scrutiny of documents that have come to light in various ways – including a FOIA request from Donald Trump that produced 60 important emails and other documentary records – we can make a detailed sketch of much of the information that Smith likely passed along to Merrick Garland. Critically, some of the information bears on the qualifications for FBI director of Kash Patel, who asserted the 5th Amendment when called to testify about his claim that Trump had declassified the records he took away. Listeners’ alert: some of the discussion is fairly microscopic but that’s because some of the known information is quite detailed.

Read Marcy's blog.

Harry speaks with Marcy Wheeler