Share This Podcast

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Hi everyone! It is still a little cold for the beach here in New York, but not so in the great state of North Carolina. It was around this time last year that former FBI director James Comey was on the beach in the Tar Heel State, apparently beachcombing. We know this because Mr. Comey posted a picture on Instagram of seashells laid out on the sand spelling 86 47 with the caption, cool shell formation on my beach walk. Cool shell formation for Jim Comey or a death threat in the eyes of Donald Trump. Yes, according to Trump’s personal lawyer and the acting head of the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, Comey’s beach-combing post was a threat to inflict bodily harm against President Trump. That is the claim of the criminal indictment brought against James Comey by the Department of Justice. For real. It’s been widely criticized as a joke. We have something called the First Amendment and also seashells. Really, guys? But Todd Blanche says there is more to come. Here’s what he told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday.

[clip of Kristen Welker]: How do you prove intent, Mr. Blanch when Mr. Comey himself said he didn’t understand that some people would look at that and think about violence.

[clip of Todd Blanche]: You prove intent like like you always prove intent. You prove intent with witnesses, you prove intent with documents, with materials. So so again this is not just about a single Instagram post, this is about a body of evidence that the grand jury collected over the series of about 11 months. That evidence was presented to the grand jury and it’s not the government, it’s not the Department of Justice, it is not Todd Blanche that returned an indictment against James Comey. It’s a grand jury.

Alex Wagner: Have you ever heard the saying a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich? Yeah, this would be the ham sandwich. And even Republicans understand how weak the case is. Even Senator Thom Tillis and MAGA apologist, Megyn Kelly.

[clip of Thom Tillis]: Hopefully there’s more to it than just the picture in the sand. Otherwise, I just think it’s another example of where we’re going to regret this because we’re setting a fairly low bar.

[clip of Megyn Kelly]: Keep your powder dry a little. I too think it looks rather weak on its face, but I don’t know what Todd Blanche has. So I’m open-minded to hearing what more there is.

Alex Wagner: Now, this is not the first time James Comey has been targeted by Trump’s DOJ. He was also indicted in September of 2025 for allegedly lying to Congress about the FBI’s 2016 election probe, an indictment which fell apart spectacularly. Mr. Comey, has not forgotten about that debacle and he sounds pretty confident about his chances going forward.

[clip of James Comey]: I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So let’s go.

Alex Wagner: Comey is, of course, not alone in being targeted by the DOJ. The department has set its sights on a number of Trump’s critics, people standing in his way or otherwise refusing to bow down to the president’s whims. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and even John Bolton, Trump’s own former national security adviser. Because this is what happens when the president takes over the Justice Department, from its top brass to its foot soldiers. From the attorney general to the U.S. Attorneys, and replaces all of these people with loyalists, MAGA loyalists. Hardcore MAGA-loyalists. Here, for example, is Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney in Alabama, podcaster Phil Williams, talking about the January 6th riots, which, by the way, he attended.

[clip of Phil Williams]: The pundits wanted the story. So they took a word out of the law and created their story around it and then said the facts were what they were, but they weren’t. It’s an amazing thing. And I hope it never happens again. It was like the Salem witch trials on a national scale.

Alex Wagner: Phil Williams ain’t alone. There are lots more U.S. Attorneys like him. And even if these clowns can’t win in court, what are they doing to the federal justice system in the meantime? [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, Donald Trump’s perversion of American justice. It is all there in the Comey indictment and in the U.S. Attorney appointments. Even the number of people Trump is pardoning majorly undermines the work of the justice system. Yes, this guy, Mr. Law & Order, is at the end of his term on track to set a record for the greatest number of presidential pardons in eight years.

[clip of Donald Trump]: In every place they control radical left judges, politicians, and activists. And they’ve adopted a policy of catch and release for thugs and killers.

Alex Wagner: Law and order, or is it catch and release? Just a little more than a year into his presidency, Donald Trump has already pardoned 1,700 people, the majority of whom were January 6th insurrectionists, people who broke into the Capitol and trashed the building and killed multiple law enforcement officers. By comparison, radical left leaders Barack Obama and Joe Biden pardoned 212 people and 80 people at the end of their respective terms. To get an inside look at just how Trump is destroying the DOJ, I’ll be speaking with Mike Gordon, a former assistant U.S. Attorney who was working on cases in the Capitol’s siege section until he was abruptly fired in June of last year. As a well-respected prosecutor who had just received a perfect performance review and successfully litigated over three dozen January 6th cases on behalf of the government, Mike just had to go. We’re going to talk about how his firing reflects seismic changes at the Justice Department, what’s going to happen as the department is overrun by Trump loyalists, and whether he has any faith that federal prosecutors can regain judicial respect. Then I’ll sit down with law professor and strict scrutiny host and my friend, Kate Shaw, to put all of this Justice Department perversion into context. The MAGA-fication of U.S. Attorneys, Trump suing his own government, And of course, Jim Comey’s criminal beach combing. But first, my conversation with attorney Mike Gordon. [music plays] Mike, welcome to Runaway Country. So Mike, I know you were working at the Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. Attorney for four years by the time January 6th happened, and then you were fired in June of 2025. Can you talk to me a little bit about what happened and what led up to your firing and maybe why you think you were fired?

Mike Gordon: Sure. So I ended up all in all working for DOJ for eight and a half years. And when January 6th happened, it was overwhelming for the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office to handle the number of cases that were coming out of that. So they asked for volunteers from around the country. I was selected to work on those cases, and for two years, that’s what I did. I was in charge of handling the most high profile trials of individual rioters, the ones that were going to get the most media attention. Those were my cases. After two years of that, I came back to Tampa, and I switched my focus to doing white collar cases, fraud, public corruption, cyber crime, that kind of thing. I was doing that for a year and a half when then I was abruptly fired, you know, on a 4:30 on a Friday afternoon at the end of June in 2025. And I think it was my work on the January 6th cases, particularly that high profile work, which is why I became a target.

Alex Wagner: What did you feel when that happened?

Mike Gordon: First of all, I was shocked. I had expected that if they were gonna fire January 6th prosecutors, they were going to do it on day one or at least week one of the administration. And so when it had gotten, you know, six months into the administration, I had initially been on guard, but I thought I was in the clear. I had also just that week probably had my biggest success ever. I had been kind of hand-picked to take on the most important case in our district and I had just succeeded in helping push you over the finish line. The boss, the attorney, had been full of praise for me. It had been a huge win for me, for the department, for Florida, and so to then be fired, I was stunned.

Alex Wagner: So as someone who worked in both Trump 1 and Trump 2, do you see a meaningful difference between Trump 1.0 and Trumps 2.0 as it concerns the DOJ?

Mike Gordon: Oh my God, it’s gargantuan. So Trump 1 was from largely a normal presidential administration from the perspective of DOJ, for the most part. It’s totally normal as administrations change for the department to change its focus. Some administrations are going to focus more on violent crimes, some on drugs, and some more on immigration crime. There’s nothing outrageous about policy positions changing. The political leadership of the department under Trump 1 were sort of true believers to some degree, but they weren’t outside of the bounds of what’s normal. They didn’t ask prosecutors to do anything that violated the justice manual, essentially our policies and procedures. They didn’t ask prosecutors, to violate their oaths, essentially. Whereas Trump 2, that became a regular practice. It wasn’t just a question of Trump putting in his own pick for attorney general, that’s normal, but it was putting in loyalists who prioritized kind of fervor over competence all the way down, all the down to U.S. Attorneys and section chiefs. So the effectiveness of the department became compromised, but so did its ethics and its procedures. And the cost of that has been felt in courtrooms all over the country on a daily basis.

Alex Wagner: What did you think of the indictment that was put forth, the Comey indictment?

Mike Gordon: The most recent one.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Mike Gordon: So it’s outrageous for a number of reasons. The first being they used the wrong law. It’s one of these things that you look at, and it just, like, leave aside the partisan politics behind it for a second, which don’t belong at DOJ at all. Just the way it illustrates the degree to which the excellence of the department has fallen is stunning. So the important thing is that there used to be one formulation for what a threat meant. And the Supreme Court changed it, right, in 2015, about 10, 11 years ago. And they based the indictment on the old formulation. This is the kind of thing to say it’s a rookie mistake is unfair to rookies, right? Even rookies learn in law school, like how to look things like that up. There’s that, there’s the fact that it is nakedly, obviously a sort of political hit job trying to go after somebody who’s an enemy as opposed to an actual threat. They have to prove that he intended to communicate that as a real threat that someone would reasonably anticipate and that could be carried out against the president. And there’s just no way a picture of seashells on the beach does that. So it’s just an attempt to go after the man because he’s an enemy. So it’s not the first of these cases. And I would look at the you know, the supposed fraud prosecution against Jerome Powell is another example, right? The four different times they’ve tried to go after Letitia James for housing fraud, right, these are all examples of the department identifying targets first and crimes later, which is exactly opposite of how it’s supposed to function.

Alex Wagner: Do you have a sense of how it’s playing inside the department? I mean, I just cannot imagine having to go home and tell your kids like, what’d you do today? Well, I’m trying to get a guy locked up for beach combing. I filed a brief with the court about the ballroom, which was really a Truth Social post. I mean, you have a sense that I would assume it’s demoralizing.

Mike Gordon: Incredibly. So I have, you know, I still have, say, friends across the department and U.S. Attorney’s offices all over the country. And, you know, the vast majority of them every day face this sort of crisis of, okay, I love my job and I love what I do. And I personally, right, people are thinking, I personally have not been asked to do anything unethical or illegal. And so do I keep doing my job to the best of my ability and following my oath and doing the right thing and know that like in my little corner, things are proceeding the way they are? Or am I complicit in the rest of what’s happening in the department just by staying and keeping kind of the trains running on time? Should I stay or should I go? People have family obligations. They have law school loans. They have all kinds of reasons that.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Mike Gordon: They want to stay and also the knowledge that if they leave they’re not they’re going to be replaced by somebody who’s not as you know sort of ethical or dedicated to the role of law as they are. So I have friends who have left in principled resignation and I have friends who had stayed because they think that’s the right thing to do. But every single one of them I know who stayed feels conflicted or feels that they are just crossing their fingers that they get through another day without being asked to do something that they can’t stomach.

Alex Wagner: It’s just amazing how uniform that feeling is across different branches of the government. You know, we’ve spoken to newly fired immigration judges who loved their work and felt like it was really important and are very sad to see what’s become of an already, you know, admittedly compromised immigration system in the U.S. but knowing that the people that are in the, you know holding the gavel or in charge of the process are much worse or not qualified or don’t have the body of knowledge. It’s painful to see these agencies. I won’t say gutted, but the attempt to hollow them out and, and repopulate them with people like, I mean, I want to ask you about the U.S. Attorney’s appointments because the more we learned about the caliber of person that Trump is trying to appoint for these very important U.S. Attorney positions, the more chilling it should be to every American. I mean these are people who are completely unqualified and who really are only in the job because they are vocal proponents of President Trump. It’s just personal loyalty above professional qualification. What is your reaction to some of the names that have been floated like the U.S. Attorney for Alabama? There are a number of people that are just unique [laughs] in their sort of strident, publicly partisan musings that would otherwise, I think, disqualify them from the job of U.S. Attorney.

Mike Gordon: Yeah, that’s 100% right, I agree with you there. I do disagree with you though in terms of it being a broad brush. I do have, for example, a few U.S. Attorneys, David Waterman in Iowa, Greg Kehoe in Tampa, who are former prosecutors, tremendously ethical, excellent lawyers who are good stewards of the Constitution in their role. But then you see people like Lindsey Halligan, Alina Habba, right, people who have never been prosecutors before.

Alex Wagner: Or Jeanine Pirro, who’s the television prosecutor.

Mike Gordon: Right, and so what you have, the job of being a prosecutor takes tremendous judgment and you get that judgment not just through your own personal ethical code, but you also get through experience of knowing what is sufficient evidence, what isn’t, how a case is gonna play in the jury, how to interact with agents, how to run an investigation, how to analyze the law and the facts, how to decide is a case worth the department pursuing. Those are all judgment calls that you need experience to do well. And so when you appoint somebody, not because of their experience, not because their knowledge or their skill, but rather because of their partisan fervor or their donations, right? Or the degree to which they sing a politician’s praises. You’re not just undermining justice in kind of a theoretical way. You’re harming individual cases and therefore whole groups of people that live in the places where those prosecutors are in charge.

Alex Wagner: Do you worry about a more sort of cancerous effect of all of this, which is that, you know, the presumption of regularity within courtrooms is changing, the feeling, I mean, and some Americans already had a feeling that the Justice Department had been perverted, if not necessarily for partisan gain, then for political expediency, that the American public’s understanding of justice being blind is basically going out the window. I just worry, I worry about it. I wonder if you as someone on the inside of machinery. Worry about the dismantling of that.

Mike Gordon: I do, but it’s beyond just worrying. Like it is happening. It’s not just something I’m fretting about. It’s what I’m seeing and hearing. Just for example, in Los Angeles, the federal public defender there has won seven consecutive assault on a federal officer cases against DOJ. DOJ’s conviction rate is usually like 99.5%, right? They almost never lose, or at least historically, because they get to pick and choose which cases they prosecute. And the typical way DOJ works is you do all the work upfront and you only charge when the case is buttoned up, ready to go, unassailable, and you’re ready to take that case to trial and win. That’s being flipped on its head. Now you see DOJ bringing cases that are half-baked, cases that you never made it past the prosecutor’s desk, let alone to the grand jury, let alone the trial jury. And the result of that is that not only does the public lose faith in DOJ, but then so do juries. And then you see things like in Los Angeles, losing seven consecutive cases. That’s unheard of. I’ve like, I’ve never seen anything like that. You know, what I hear from my friends that are still in DOJ is when they get to jury selection and they start asking the questions, try to establish, you know, who on the jury can be fair and impartial? Who comes, which jurors are coming to jury duty with kind of already coming in with a bias against one side or the other. It used to be that you really had to work to eliminate everybody who might have a bias against the defendant. People who might assume just because someone’s been charged, they must be guilty. Now they’re having a problem eliminating people who are biased against the government, who assume that the government is the one lying. And that loss, that sort of just, as you put it, cancerous or corrosive effect of people’s trust that the Department of Justice is there to administer the law fairly and equally that it follows the law and the facts wherever they lead without fear or favor. People losing trust in that puts us in a place where people believe that the government just comes after enemies whether they did it or didn’t. You know that they’re there to persecute people not prosecute people for crimes. And you know that is you know we’re going to that is going to take effect not just today but over the course of a generation of people.

Alex Wagner: How does it make you feel as someone who, you know, you spent a lot of your career fighting on behalf of the government? How does that make you feel?

Mike Gordon: On one hand, incredibly sad, right? Just sort of see something that you love and believe in passionately to just be as you put it hollowed out or destroyed, you know, angry at the people who are doing this, who don’t see the long-term damage or worse, who think that they are doing a good thing. And in a bizarre way, hopeful, because I hope that people are kind of waking up to the importance of some of these things, the idea that we can’t just have these vital institutions running on kind of norms and traditions, but that we need to actually institutionalize the things that make us fair and impartial, and that when the American public gets sick of this and puts a new president in place, whether that be a Republican or a Democrat. But somebody who values the rule of law and returning DOJ to what it should be. And I do think that day will come. It gives me hope that what will emerge with is a stronger DOJ that is resistant to this kind of hollowing out or degradation in the future.

Alex Wagner: Well, Mike, from your mouth to Todd Blanche’s ears, no. [laughs] Someone else’s probably.

Mike Gordon: Yeah, I think that ship may have sailed.

Alex Wagner: Mike, it’s really helpful to get your perspective on all of this. I’m really grateful for you speaking out and giving us the truth about what’s going on inside the department and how it’s landing with people who’ve been doing the heavy lifting for quite some time. So thanks for your time.

Mike Gordon: You’re welcome, thanks for having me on.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Kate Shaw, I gotta say, man, I’ve been waiting to get you on this podcast. I am excited.

Kate Shaw: Alex Wagner, it’s so good to be here.

Alex Wagner: Um, thank you for doing this and enlightening us as to how our law is being perverted and our justice department is being destroyed.

Kate Shaw: We’re going to have to count the ways, yeah.

Alex Wagner: In a more thoughtful manner than perhaps I’m capable of. Um, I want to start with the seashell indictment. Beach-combing mob boss Jim Comey is charged with writing or I I guess he’s charged with writing it even though he says he did not actually arrange the seashells in such a fashion. But writing 86 47 in seashells and then posting that image to Instagram, and therefore, I guess, crossing state lines because it’s a social media post, all of this is so far-fetched, and that that is, according to the Justice Department and a grand jury, a threat to, quote, “inflict bodily harm on the president.” I can understand the ways in which this legal maneuver seems clownish, but I wonder, Kate, if there is anything substantive inherent in this indictment. Is there anything worthy in this, or is it the piece of garbage that I think we all believe it to be?

Kate Shaw: I think it’s pretty garbagey. So you described it accurately. So the indictment is for knowingly, willfully making threats to take the life or inflict bodily harm upon the president, both as a standalone charge and then crossing state lines. It also sort of sounded, so that’s what’s in the actual written indictment, it sort of sounded from Blanche when he talked about this in announcing the indictments as though it was an incitement charge. So not. That it was really a threat directly from Comey to actually harm the president, but designed to provoke others to do the same. And incitement is a crime. You can be charged and convicted for doing that. But because incitement by its terms involves speech, there’s a pretty protective First Amendment standard that’s also true about what are known as true threats, it’s really only if you’re both intending to. And actually have a very good likelihood of, you know, committing harm, physical, bodily harm against someone that you can ever be convicted for something that is fundamentally just speech or, I guess, like, seashell expression, but, like you know kind of expressive conduct or actual words. And I just can’t imagine a universe in which, however a prosecution was pursued, it could ever survive given the sort of big overhang of the First amendment, not even sort of considering the kind of vindictive prosecution dimension of this because clearly this is Trump and his Justice Department looking for something to go after Comey for, and this is the best they’ve got.

Alex Wagner: I mean, I don’t know, Kate. There could be a whole community of mermaids and mermen ready with pitchforks. Maybe they operate—

Kate Shaw: Ready to storm the Capitol? [both speaking] You know what, you make a great point.

Alex Wagner: We can’t know. Right? Maybe Todd Blanche is up playing chess and we’re just playing checkers, but for now, it seems exactly as you say, like selective and vindictive prosecution. Underscored by Todd Blanche going on to, you know, television and telling NBC’s Kristen Welker, there’s thousands of pieces of merch being sold on Amazon that says 86 47, and those people aren’t going to get prosecuted because no, no, of course they aren’t. First of all, that seems textbook. Selective prosecution.

Kate Shaw: Absolutely.

Alex Wagner: Like textbook. There are literally other people doing the same thing, but they’re not gonna get prosecuted because their names aren’t Jim Comey. Blanche then goes on to say that they have like amassed a trove of evidence suggesting that he has real intent to do harm or incite people to do arm against the president. But correct me if I’m wrong, Kate, isn’t that stuff usually in the indictment? Like if you have more proof, like wouldn’t you say it instead of leaving it there with seashells and Instagram?

Kate Shaw: As opposed to being sort of your secret plan. Yeah, I mean, I think that usually there’s going to be more there there in an indictment if there is more there, there. I mean I have to say that in some ways though there’s the kind of selectivity, there’s the sort of obvious attempt. So first we try perjury and then this is what they first, you know, went after Comey for. And then we get tripped up by having unlawfully tried to install Lindsey Halligan as a U.S. Attorney and so that gets tossed and so then we’re casting about for something else. I’m sorry forgive the beach metaphor—[laughs]

Alex Wagner: No, no, it’s intended. It’s intended, puns intended.

Kate Shaw: Right. And so, you know, this is kind of what we come up with. But it’s also like, the thing I find so, or one of the many things I find, so disturbing is just that a grand jury returned this indictment at all.

Alex Wagner: Yes. Can we talk about that? I mean, this is the ham sandwich, I guess, right? A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. Well, it’s a pile of seashells not a ham sandwich, but like, what did, how did, I thought the same thing, you know, we rarely turn on our fellow Americans who actually go and serve on these juries, because like, who really wants to do that? But it is not good sign of the times that a grand jury did indict on this. Can you offer any insight into how and why you think that happened?

Kate Shaw: I don’t have a great theory. I mean, and I’ll just say, yes, there’s sort of the adage that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, but we’ve also seen a lot of really important counter kind of examples in this timeline, right? Just in Trump 2.0, we’ve had grand juries refuse to return indictments against, like literally, speaking of sandwiches, the guy who threw a sandwich at a CBP officer in DC also refused to return an indictment against member Mark Kelly and the other Democratic lawmakers. For the video reminding service members of their obligation to refuse illegal orders, Tish James. So we’ve actually had a really unusual number of failed efforts to get indictments from grand juries launched by this Justice Department, and yet somehow this one, at least at the outset, played out differently. So I guess we don’t know exactly what they said to the grand jury, you know?

Alex Wagner: Do you think it’s sus enough that they could demand grand jury transcripts? I mean, just because Halligan so grossly mismanaged the last grand jury indictment, and it turns out that they were, you know, that her, I don’t want to get too much into the legal weeds, but like the grand jury was getting one story and then there was story on the outside.

Kate Shaw: Yes, absolutely.

Alex Wagner: To put it in layman’s terms. Like, do you think that there’s a case to be made for that?

Kate Shaw: I am sure that Comey’s lawyers will try, and I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be that if, depending on what went on inside the grand jury room, if they’re told something very different from, you know, like the public sort of story, or even what we see in the written indictment, I guess I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Justice Department just walk away from this indictment. Like if it comes to, because they could just do that. They could just decide to drop it, if they are going to be too potentially shamed by, and I guess they’re sort of incapable of shame, but if it would be too problematic [both speaking] then maybe they just walk away from it. But I am sure if you’re Comey’s attorneys, I think you in parallel sort of pursue those, like what was actually said in the grand jury room, given again these shifting public explanations about what actually the conduct sort of being targeted even is, what the legal theory is, and then also the kind of highly selective and vindictive prosecution, which is also an argument that he made the first time the Justice Department came after him.

Alex Wagner: It remains selective and vindictive.

Kate Shaw: It does.

Alex Wagner: Um, you know, if it is not, if the Justice Department doesn’t, I don’t know, have a wave of shame that washes over it, which at this point I would not expect, and the case actually goes to court, the reality is that the charges against Comey in the indictment rest on a legal standard that was overturned by the Roberts court in 2015. Isn’t that right?

Kate Shaw: So both incitement and the kind of true threats doctrine, so these are slightly different kind of, again, word crimes, kind of. Right. And no, I mean, there’s a relatively a more recent case even on true threats than 2015. And so I would say that the legal standard is somewhat indeterminate in that the last case involving sort of true threats actually was a stalking case in which you had both conduct, like actual, you know, stalking. And you know threats conveyed via words um and so that’s obviously deeply different I mean I guess we don’t know exactly what kind of evidence Blanche thinks he has I highly doubt it’s stalking evidence um but I would say that on along both of these tracks the first amendment protections are robust and the kind of like lane that prosecutors have is narrow and I can’t imagine them successfully navigating it kind of either way.

Alex Wagner: It’s all so clownish that it makes you wonder why they’re doing it. And I have a theory that is not going to blow anybody’s minds because it’s literally the most obvious thing in the world, which is that Todd Blanche really, really, really wants Pam Bondi’s old job. He is protesting otherwise.

[clip of reporter]: Critics of you and this administration, Mr. Blanche, have suggested this is an audition to become the nominee to be attorney general, is it?

[clip of Todd Blanche]: I don’t even know what that means. We work hard every single day. The Department of Justice returns over a hundred indictments across this country every single day, making this country safe. And so this narrative, this idea out there that somehow I’m auditioning, I’ve worked for with President Trump for many, many years. I don’t audition for this job. I’ve been the deputy attorney general for over a year. OK, this is not an audition.

Alex Wagner: It certainly seems like it’s an audition for Pam Bondi’s old job. I mean, what’s your over under on him being the next AG Kate?

Kate Shaw: I mean, I think that he’s working real hard. I mean just in a couple of weeks that he has been acting, I think we have seen a significant ratcheting up of the insanity coming from the Department of Justice. So not just in the second round of sort of efforts to get Comey, but the kind of filing, which I hope we’ll talk about in the ballroom lawsuit that seeks to capitalize on the shooter right at the White House Correspondence Dinner. That is one of the most arranged, not no, the most arrange filing I’ve ever seen of the Federal Justice Department.

Alex Wagner: Wow, really? That’s it?

Kate Shaw I think so. Yeah.

Alex Wagner: Okay.

Kate Shaw Yeah, I think I’m crowning it, although, you know, it’s we’re early in the second Trump term, so I suspect that it won’t like stay, that that record won’t stand for too long, but I think right now that it’s actually, so so I just think that it feels like he is showing Trump that he is willing to do anything, and that is just so dangerous. Because, you know, the Comey indictment, again, the ballroom filing, these are, these are again, we talked about shame, like these are embarrassing. And there’s the legal profession has long operated with this kind of set of sort of reputational and sort of social professional expectations. Like people thinking that you are a joke really actually matters to most practicing lawyers. And it seems no longer to matter to Todd Blanche. And I think that is really dangerous because that’s not gonna constrain him. Because the only thing he seems to be interested in is kind of getting the favor of the guy on top and then getting the job at the top of the justice department in a permanent way. And I mean, prosecutors have a dangerous amount of power and if it’s wielded irresponsibly, by kind of picking, right, there’s a very famous Robert Jackson speech about the role of prosecutor, it just says the most dangerous power of the prosecutors that he’ll pick the people he thinks he should get rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. And like, this is just… Textbook example of that with Comey and I think with Blanche’s conduct so far.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, the garbage-ification of the Department of Justice has roots, you know? Like that can extend well past the Trump administration.

Kate Shaw: Absolutely.

Alex Wagner: And breaking that seal between people having sort of a tacit understanding that there’s a certain amount of integrity that you bring to the job. And then throwing that integrity out the window in the reckless pursuit of power is a very bad development. I mean, are you surprised? Just as someone who knows, I mean, Todd Lynch worked at the SDNY. Like, this was not an unserious person. He’s not coming from like, he doesn’t have the same legal background as Lindsey Halligan, and yet what he’s doing is so profoundly dangerous and thoughtless. It seems thoughtless, but it clearly must not be. Like, do you have a theory about how he got turned?

Kate Shaw: I don’t, and I think you’re right. Like, I have never met Todd Blanche. I don’t know him, but certainly people who knew him said he was a pretty serious, pretty normal conservative prosecutor. Like, there’s a lot of people like that. And I don’t think they understand. And, you know, I guess they knew him personally. I certainly don’t understand, except to say that, you know that sort of the rot starts at the top. And I think, you spend enough time in this administration and it’s… Self-interested, destructive amorality, and that just is kind of catching. And I think that just may be the kind of Occam’s razor here. Like if the Trump administration is what turned him.

Alex Wagner: I will only say turnt. [laughter] The instances of targeting political enemies and weaponizing the Department of Justice for retribution, there are a number of examples we can point to in this administration. Lisa Cook, who is on the Fed Board of Governors, is another example of this. Her case is at the Supreme Court. Now, the Supreme Court, because it is populated by evil cronies [laughs] sorry, totally conservative ideologues, has made a special carve out for political retribution aimed at the Fed, it sounds like. They’re like—

Kate Shaw: They didn’t announce that exactly in those terms, but they’re like—

Alex Wagner: It’s not cool at the Fed like you can do it elsewhere, but you can’t really do it at the Fed It seems to be their, their sort of like stance on this like first of all what do you think is going to happen in that case because she is I mean she is indicative of like I I guess more but most broadly how the Supreme Court sees these cases but also do you have a theory on why they’re more intent on policing the fed than other bodies?

Kate Shaw: I think there are a few possible explanations. And so just to kind of take a step back for a minute, right? So Cook’s case is still pending before the Supreme Court. And so there are these two closely related cases about the president’s power to just summarily fire high-ranking officials on what have traditionally been known as independent agencies so one involves a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, and then the other involves Lisa Cook, a governor on the Fed Board of Governors. And in both cases, he tried to fire those people and in one case, the Slaughter FTC case, the Supreme Court said, go ahead and fire her and then we can hear and consider whether you have the power to fire her, but they have already basically told us that the president has the power to fire because they said he could fire her in the meantime. With Lisa Cook, the court didn’t, on the shadow docket, allow the president to fire her. So they said, we’ll take the case, we’ll consider the arguments about whether the president has this power, but in the mean time, she stays on the Fed. And that doesn’t definitively tell us how they’re gonna rule in the case, but it’s a pretty strong signal. And there is a legal difference between the two cases in that in the FTC case, the president is arguing he has the power summarily by fiat to fire people, just for any reason, no reason, a bad reason. With the Fed, and this, of course, connects to kind of the Jim Comey point, he’s not saying, the President is not saying I have the power to just like wake up one day and fire anybody on the Fed. There’s a statute that says there has to be some cause and I’m not challenging the constitutionality of that statute, but I’m saying there is cause here and the cause is that there’s some allegations of mortgage fraud that Lisa Cook engaged in, pretty thin allegations, but he says that’s basically enough—

Alex Wagner: He loves mortgage fraud, because he himself loves to commit it anyway.

Kate Shaw: Right. Yes. No, he clearly, like, takes one to no one or something. But yes, this is a thing that he has used for a number of kind of political adversaries to, you know, different degrees of success. So, yeah, Cook, there hasn’t been a criminal charge, but that is the basis on which he ostensibly is firing her, but really it’s because he wants more control over the Fed and interest rate setting function of the Fed in particular. So I think that based on the tenor of the oral arguments, actually, Trump is likely to lose in the Cook case. And I think a lot of people read the arguments that way. And in terms of, and so that’s, you know, the carve-out is both, you know, what we’re, I think, assuming is going to happen in the arguments and a little bit what we read into the shadow docket orders, so president gets to fire everybody but the Fed. And they offered a little bit of reasoning in these shadow dockets orders, but not, it wasn’t very convincing. The Fed, they said, is just like historically and structurally different from other agencies, which is like kind of true, but also like kind of convenient because the real answer is they don’t want to be, I don’t think, responsible for upending like the U.S. and kind of global economy by ending Fed independence, which has been this sort of central pillar of kind of economic stability. The Fed can make these, you know, kind of rational, kind of reasoned decisions about interest rates that are not just responsive to the political whims of the president at any given time. They have to think in sort of broader economic and more kind of long term sort of terms. So ending Fed independence would throw all that into question. Everybody thinks it’d be wildly destabilizing. And I think the court doesn’t want to be responsible for that. So in some ways, it’s a little bit like. The tariffs case, which Trump also lost, which is, you know, they both, like, they watch the stock market. They go to cocktail parties with people who have significant holdings. And they understand that kind of economic stability is important. And I think we’re seeing that their kind of presidential power maximalism is an important preference, but that it sometimes is subordinated to a kind of pocketbook and like economic stability preference, which like we one aside with the Chamber of Commerce, which was on the anti-tariff side of the tariff lawsuit, and just like a lot of kind of establishment Republican interests that are basically telling the court that in the Fed case and the tariffs case, Trump might have gone too far, or just like the kind of conduct was, you know, like unsavory for them. They just didn’t like it. So I think that’s a long answer, but I think basically what is going on in the Cook case.

Alex Wagner: Right. Leave it to the president to create economic calamity across the globe.

Kate Shaw: Correct.

Alex Wagner: We’ll try and be a mediating influence. And likewise, if it concerns women and their bodies, who fucking cares? But if it’s going to wreck someone’s investment portfolio, then let’s just put a stop to that. I mean, you almost wish it wasn’t that transparent because it would make them less nefarious, but it is. And so that’s the value set on the 6-3 Supreme Court. More of my conversation with Kate right after this quick break.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: I have to say, though, regardless of whether the Comey case ever sees the light of day in terms of a federal court, there is the reality that life could be difficult and perilous for Jim Comey and any of these other people that Trump has decided to use his DOJ against. And there’s the precedent it sets that we weaponize our Justice Department against perceived political enemies. That’s not a good one for the country. I wonder if at all you think people are getting wise to standing up to Trump and seeing it as a more principled fight than perhaps just a personal one. And I’m thinking, I guess we keep talking about the Fed, but I’m think about like Jerome Powell, for example, right? Like to me, he represents a turning point and saying like, no, no you don’t. You don’t get to do this to me. And people actually have stood by him. He is going to not be the chair of the Fed board, but he’s going to stay on the of governors, which is a huge middle finger to Trump. And I think he represents an, I don’t know if I’m overstating the case, I probably am, it’s my specialty. But you know, I think he represents a kind of a line in the sand from the sort of conservative institutionalists who never would have seen themselves as like ideologues or resistance fighters, but who see the fucking, the be-clowning of this administration and this Department of Justice and are like, you know what? Mm-mm, not this time. I just wonder if we might, I’m trying to find a silver lining here. Are we seeing the people who are in the crosshairs of all of this? Do you think that we’re turning a page and seeing more fight, more gumption from these targets?

Kate Shaw: I hope so. I agree that Powell has been this unlikely hero in this timeline basically since the beginning. He has been uncowed by Trump. Remember when initially Trump was going to was trying to manufacture some case against Powell that had to do with the renovations to the Fed building and cost overruns. And he’s still that’s still a little bit like I think percolating the background. But they did this hard hat tour of the Fed building. And then stood the two of them Powell and Trump together in front of cameras as Trump is like. Pulls out, somebody hands him a document and he’s going through it, he’s like, ah, a billion, another billion, and he makes some claim about what’s on the paper. And he hands it to Powell, and Powell’s like no, that’s a different building, like, and he is just so uninterested in, you know, genuflecting or even like really performing much respect for Trump in front of the cameras, and it was just like an amazing moment because Trump is surrounded by sycophants all the time, and to have somebody be so unimpressed by him, and again, be caught on camera, that unimpressed I thought was pretty powerful, actually. I mean, it shouldn’t be, but that is, again, the timeline that we’re in. And so I think that Powell, and then, you know, when they first announced that there was an actual, Pirro announces that the DCU attorney’s office is actually investigating both this renovation cost issue and Powell’s testimony before Congress about that renovation, he cut a video that was just basically like, I am not afraid of you. And that too was, I thought, really impressive. And so, you mentioned that he has now announced his term is ending. I think this month, I think it’s in May, but he has got more years on his regular governor term and Trump would clearly very much like him to go and he’s not going to. And I think he thinks that that’s good for kind of stability in the Fed. And also he’s going to just, you know, accede to Trump’s demand or at least like desire that he go. Okay, so is that like emblematic of some shift that’s happening? So I love the optimism of it. I mean, because I think that the scarcity of that kind of, you know, just sort of courage and self-respect on the part of these people that try that, you, know, seeing law firms cowering and universities. Um, I mean, it’s just been wildly disheartening and counterproductive. Um, and there have been these sort of glimmers of hope, I think, throughout, but maybe we are seeing some, you know shift happening. Like, maybe there’s a reflection point.

Alex Wagner: ABC? ABC? Disney? I think, maybe, we’ll see, I mean, jury’s out, but I do think the tide, I mean there’s a number of mitigating factors. Number one, first of all, Democrats may take power, they may take both houses of Congress, there’s oversight, subpoena power that comes along with that, there’s the business reality that Donald Trump’s not gonna be president after 2028, and if you’re a corporation making your bed with only Republicans and like currying favor in a corrupt way with this administration might not be the best for your business interests, so there’s, but also he’s a—

Kate Shaw: There’s, like, not so noble explanations, but also, we use these approvals.

Alex Wagner: Yes, but he’s also falling asleep and look at what, this brings me, and look what he is asking his stooges to do. It means a lot to me, as a lay person Kate, that you think the worst filing from this DOJ is the ballroom filing. That is a high bar to clear.

Kate Shaw: Yeah, yeah.

Alex Wagner: Well, for people who are not familiar with it, it is a Truth Social post that was printed on DOJ letterhead, I believe, and filed with the court unsolicited. Here’s an excerpt from it. If any other president had the ability, foresight, or talents necessary to build this ballroom, which will be one of the greatest, safest, and most secure structures of its kind anywhere in the title case world, there would never have been a lawsuit. But because it is Donald J. Trump, all caps, a highly successful real estate developer who has. Abilities that others don’t, especially those who assume the office of president. This frivolous and meritless lawsuit was filed, again, it’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome, all caps. On top of everything else, this project is a gift to our country, title case, from President Trump and other donors, capital D. It is free of charge to the American taxpayer, capital A, capital T. Who could ever object to that? Who indeed Kate?

Kate Shaw: So that was one, can I just read one more excerpt from it? So actually, I think it’s the first sentence of the filing. It reads, quote, “the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a beautiful name, but even their name is all caps fake because when they add the words in the United States to the National trust for historic preservation, it makes it sound like a government agency, which it is not. They are very bad for our country, it goes on. This is a legal filing, right? This is filed by the Department of Justice in a United States federal court. Basically making the argument that this, you know, lawsuit brought against the construction of this 90,000 square foot ballroom and the destruction that preceded it violates, like, many different laws because it’s pretty clear that it does. And they’re basically saying you need to toss this, Judge, or it’s a case that’s pending on appeal anyway, so it’s very atypical motion to be filed while a case is up above usually you’re not filing in the trial court. But they basically say this is an emergency and we’re asking you to dissolve the injunction that you initially issued, because again, of all the aforementioned unlawfulness of the project. And then they essentially say, we need a safe and secure ballroom because of what happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which, you know, again, they immediately and cynically began using as a justification for this ballroom, which was initially presented as about a better party space. And then at some point decided there was a national security rationale. Um that they then sort of kind of retrofit the whole—

Alex Wagner: Let no crisis go wasted. Every crisis is an opportunity. But does this kind of bullshit, pardon my French, but don’t pardon it, does it actually undermine the case in the eyes of the judge? I mean, it’s just so, it such, it so unserious. I just wonder, is there any legal repercussion for filing garbage like this?

Kate Shaw: I mean, so in the federal courts, rule 11 is the sort of the rule that provides for sanctions for frivolous filing. So is this sanctionable? I don’t know, maybe. I don’t think it’s frivolous to suggest that it’s sanctionable. I think it is at least arguably sanctionable, but it’s mostly just embarrassing, like to the kind of shame point. Like this is, John Sauer, this Solicitor General made some pretty embarrassing filings in the tariff case. We were a failing country and then the tariffs were imposed and now we are the hottest country around, like a line that was almost that verbatim was also in a legal filing. So that I think was the previous record holder, at least in my kind of like ranking system. And I think this is now displaced.

Alex Wagner: This is pretty bad.

Kate Shaw: It’s so bad. And it is, like you said, it’s a Truth Social post. And it actually was Trump did then post it verbatim on Truth Social after filing it. But it got filed in federal court.

Alex Wagner: Chicken or the egg, Kate? Chicken or egg?

Kate Shaw: Hard to know. Why not both?

Alex Wagner: Like, it has to be said that, like, his corrupting of the Justice Department extends literally to actual financial corruption because this is so under discussed and it incenses me and I feel like we’ve sort of like, we’re just whistling past his graveyard collectively. Trump is suing the IRS for $10 billion over his tax returns being leaked. The presiding judge in April seemed skeptical. But I mean, Kate, is there a chance the American taxpayer has to pay Donald Trump $10 billion?

Kate Shaw: God, there is not no chance. So 10 billion, I mean, I think that he likes that figure. He likes he has sued multiple media outlets for 10, but 10 billion in particular. I think, that’s what both the Wall Street Journal and maybe the Times, anyway, he has sued multiple media defendants for $10 billion. But this is the first actual filing against his own administration. And yes, he is seeking $10 billion as you said for the disclosure of his tax returns during the first administration. So the judge in Florida, which is where the case was filed in April, I thought I actually had a really, really interesting order. And the order basically said, okay, so Trump, you filed this lawsuit and so you’re on one side of the V and it’s ostensibly in your personal capacity. So it’s not DOJ lawyers representing you, it’s your private lawyers. On the other side is the- Department of Justice representing the IRS because they represent, the DOJ represents federal agencies when they’re sued. But in order for a lawsuit in federal court to proceed, there needs to be what’s called adversity between the parties, right? Like they need to disagree about something. So there is a controversy for the judge to resolve. And she basically said, I’m not sure that that basic prerequisite to be in federal court is satisfied here because you are the president and you’re at the top of the administration. And by the way, you issued all these executive orders that said that your legal views, you, Donald Trump’s legal views are conclusive inside the executive branch. Nobody can disagree with your view of the law. And so I just, even though you say you’re bringing this case in your personal capacity, you are this sitting president and the people on the are subject to your direction. And so you all need to kind of huddle, and then you need to come back and file arguments with me, explaining why I can decide this case at all. So I am very curious what those filings are gonna look like. Because of course, this is the sort of, the unitary executive on steroids is, I think, the way to understand this administration. The president has complete power within the executive branch, and maybe within all of government, in his view. And if that’s the case you just can’t be on opposite sides of a case even if you’re saying you’re doing the you know you’re the plaintiff as a private entity. So anyway, we’ll see what they say the thing that’s I think so alarming about this though is that the lawsuit is absurd, but it’s also filed in, you know federal court and so we know about it. The thing that I think worries me even more is it’s not impossible that he arrives at some kind of agreement or settlement with his own justice department and they quietly pay him maybe not 10 billion dollars.

Alex Wagner: Well, they’ve quietly arrived at settlements with Mike Flynn and Carter Page and like, you know, I think the family of Ashli Babbitt as well.

Kate Shaw: Totally. Yeah.

Alex Wagner: This is the, quite literally, the fox guarding the hen house.

Kate Shaw: Yeah, I think it’s gonna be hard for them to do $10 billion without that word getting out, but like some subset of it. And at the same time, they’re taking the position that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. So hey, maybe they don’t need to preserve any records of this at all. Now, DOJ is governed by a different federal statute about records, but it’s still like it is the lawsuit is preposterous and like really alarming. But in some ways, like the possibility of it being resolved internally is even more concerning to me. So that’s where we are.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Well, that brings me to the sort of penultimate question here, which is about what happens when this goat rodeo finally comes to a conclusion at the end of 2028. And we already know that Trump is, I mean, Trump has said out loud, I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the oval. That’s literally a statement from the president of the United States. Can you fucking imagine? Sorry. Again, you worked in President Obama’s White House Counsel’s Office, President Obama and President Biden had far fewer pardons at the end of their second terms than Donald Trump does now. Donald Trump has made over 1,700 pardons. I would love it if someone could, I mean, I don’t know who has the time to do this, but just track the pardons and do a concentric circle. What is it, a Venn  diagram? With how much business each pardon represented, either for the Trump family or for associates of the Trump administration because to me this really smacks of pay-to-play or like a profound level of corruption. That is, I mean, we don’t talk about the pardons and we don’t talked about the fact that Trump has every intention on making sure that nobody pays a price for the profound level, I believe, of criminality inside this administration. First of all, just put into context with me what it meant back in the before times to issue a pardon and what it means now.

Kate Shaw: In some ways pardons are just like public, you know, service in government as like a public trust, like as a thing that you sort of spend. This sounds like maybe kind of ridiculously naïve or saccharine, like in the middle of the beginning of the second Trump administration, but like it really was about doing the work of the American people and not and sort of engaging in kind of self-interested or self-serving behavior with your government power was literally unthinkable. These are not perfect administrations, but I am telling in the administration of Barack Obama, and I think this is also true. About the Biden administration, like people made mistakes, like these were not perfect places, but like self-interest and self-dealing were not what anyone was there to engage in. And that feels like the thing that people in this administration are the most interested in engaging in. And so pardons, I mean, I think that probably Obama and Biden did too, you know, engaged in too few pardons, but that’s, but, but regardless, like the pardons that were given in, obviously the Hunter Biden pardon and some of the late Biden pardos were controversial too. But if we’re just talking about the Obama administration, you know, these were sort of policy-based and sometimes individual circumstances-based, but the idea of a pardon is just the dispensation of mercy based on individualized circumstances that the formal law doesn’t always account for. And this is, there is a very, very long and storied tradition of executives, whether we’re talking about governors and states or presidents, having this power of the dispensation of mercy and whether it’s, again, handed out an individual or sort of class circumstances, individuals convicted of what are later understood to be unjust, like marijuana laws. That’s the purpose of the pardon. And as far as I can tell, the mass pardoning of the J-6ers and then people who have managed to hire these like powerful intermediaries who can get in touch with somebody senior in the Trump administration or the Trump family, those are the people who’ve been the recipients of these pardons, not individuals whose circumstances like warrant the exercise of mercy. And it’s like, I agree, we don’t talk about it enough. It’s both, on its own terms, deeply disheartening. A perversion of justice, and also just emblematic of the kind of guiding ethos of this administration, which could not be more different from, you know, the administration’s past.

Alex Wagner: I’m going to ask a stupid question, but I just want to turn the screw a little bit. You mentioned that Biden’s pardons at the end of his presidency were controversial, including pardoning his son, preemptive pardon, pardoning Anthony Fauci, pardon Liz Cheney. I think a lot of Democrats, some Democrats thought, well, yeah, you better do that because we know what awaits them when Trump is sworn into office. Other people said you’re opening the gates to way more. You’ve broken the seal effectively. Where do you stand on that? And I mean, I would assume, if we seem to ping pong between extremes here in terms of presidents, do Democrats need to be more aggressive in pardoning preemptively people who may be targets of a future Republican presidency?

Kate Shaw: It so much depends on just kind of how much of an outlier Trump and the way he has conducted this presidency is. In some ways, I don’t think we’re going to have future Republican presidents who are self-serving and vindictive, at least in this extreme way that Trump is and has been. But I don’t know for sure. I mean, I kind of think that the way that Biden did the pardons at the end was sort of the worst of all. If he was going to do these blanket pardons, he should have done them for sort of more individuals. It was a, you know, not a random list, but an under-inclusive list in certain respects in terms of who might be targeted. So if you had the sense that he was going to be vindictive enough to go after political adversaries, maybe you should have cast a wider net in terms of the kinds of preemptive pardons that you were going to hand out. So I hate it. But is that fact, like that, I hate that it’s necessary, I didn’t hate that it was done, I hated that it was necessary and that again, it didn’t go far enough. But is that fact like causally responsible for the fact that Trump is gonna issue these enormous sweeping pardons of everybody who’s been in or near the Oval? Absolutely not. And I think it’s just completely tendentious for anyone to suggest that because Barack Obama once said, like, I have a pen and a phone, we have Donald Trump deciding to upend government as we know it. And similarly, I don’t think that because Biden did these couple dozen pardons at the end of his term, that somehow created a permission structure for Trump to do the same.

Alex Wagner: Trump’s a madman and would have been a madman, regardless of what Joe Biden did in the closing days of his presidency. All right, last question for you, Kate. I know I said it was penultimate, but I meant that liberally. Trump isn’t gonna be, regardless of whatever happens with Todd Blanche, regardless of happens with Donald Trump, they will not be in office in 2029. And I just wonder how significant you think the damage they have done to the justice system is. I mean… It may not be populated by stooges and podcasters in the U.S. Attorney’s office, they may not be firing federal prosecutors with long and stellar records of prosecution, faithful servants of our democracy, but once you pervert a system that is already opaque to a lot of Americans and already has felt rigged on any number of levels for decades, if not lifetimes. How do you restore that trust? Can you? I mean, how bad is it? How bad do you think he’s broken an already a system that had a lot of work to do?

Kate Shaw: I think it’s just really, really bad. I think that the Justice Department is gonna need sort of a fundamental rebuild after the end of this administration. And I think a lot of that is gonna require legislation because I think the norms of apolitical decision making and insulation of prosecutors from political influence in the White House, those were norms, they were not hard law. And it turns out they were really malleable in the hands of a bad actor or a set of bad actors. And so they need to be. Codified some of those limitations. Independent sources of authority and oversight need to be created, and all that needs to be done by Congress through legislation. And a lot of that, I think, will run into the buzzsaw of this six conservative justice majority on the Supreme Court, because of the kind of vision of presidential control that they hold, I think will mean that the kinds of reforms that are gonna be crucial to the Justice Department might not survive scrutiny in this Supreme Court. So. Any reform agenda, and this is a drum that we beat on my podcast, Strict Scrutiny, all the time, but any reform agenda must include Supreme Court reform because no matter sort of how ambitious your vision and maybe effective your vision for kind of reimagining the Justice Department and maybe the federal government writ large, it might not go anywhere if you have this Supreme Court in place. And so you need to fundamentally maybe disempower the Supreme Court, maybe impose term limits, maybe actually add a bunch of seats. Maybe all of the above, but Supreme Court reform has to be at the center of these conversations.

Alex Wagner: Because we know when Alito and Thomas retire, Trump is going to nominate some fertilized embryos to fill their seats.

Kate Shaw: Indeed.

Alex Wagner: Kate Shaw, my friend and brilliant thinker, host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, which if you’re not listening to it, what are you doing? It’s so good. You should be subscribing, as hopefully you are, to this podcast as well. Thank you for taking through all the perversions of our American justice system just on this light podcast. Oh, we started with seashells and we ended with end times. I am so grateful for all that you do and all that think on behalf of all of us who get to share in your wisdom. Thank you for joining me today, bud.

Kate Shaw: Well, thank you so much Alex great to talk to you and we’d love to have you on Strict Scrutiny one of these days.

Alex Wagner: Oh my god, please. I won’t have much to say, but I’ll just come and, you know, foam at the mouth.

Kate Shaw: Sounds great, we love you.

Alex Wagner: Awesome. [music plays] That’s our show for this week. Please don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. And if you are not sick of me yet, please take a look at my Substack, How the Hell with Alex Wagner. Last but not least, if you’ve been impacted directly by the Trump administration or its policies, send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.