Jack Smith Makes Trump-Backed Republicans Look Like Clowns in Ridiculous Hearing

All right, former special counsel Jack Smith is back on the hill. The Supreme Court is back in session doing that Supreme Court shit they always do. And the great Leah Litman is back on Runaway Country. Leah, thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me. What a day. We got some breaking news all day, actually. But right as we started this, we're going to get to the Supreme Court's monstrous decision to allow the Trump administration to continue to deport migrants to unknown mysterious third party countries that they've never been to before in a second. But first, I want to draw everyone's attention to special counsel, former special counsel Jack Smith, going up on the hill for the umpteenth time for reasons that will remain mysterious to those of us who live in a fact-based reality. And getting, I mean, I think what is like, what is the term own goal? Like Eric Schmidt, self-owning, just legend status, some legend, like a clip that should be replayed over and over again, along with some other notable moments showcasing the absurdity of being a Republican in the Senate. Let's take a listen, Leah. Do you believe in the tooth fairy? I do not. Every name on it is a Republican. Is it your views that are crime to be a Republican? Absolutely not, sir. What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a warrior hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair? I don't think you know that we have this stuff. So I'll give you a second to process it so you don't, you know, purge yourself. You just took it down really quick if I could look at that again. We couldn't see what it said and I'm a former prosecutor too and I have never seen anyone just say what do you think of this and put it down? Could it then be that University of I was the Hawkeyes? Could that be it and maybe before we show this kind of thing? It could have obviously been related to the prosecution that was coordinated with his office in Atlanta. I'm going to begin my questions now but I think that people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirt bag and not get the team strong. I see them by that statement. Do you think Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes? I do not. You really believe that Lindsey was going to destroy evidence that was not even in his possession? No, I believe your brother was a patriotic public servant. Your brother investigated the claims. The Donald Trump was making. He found them to be false. He said so on another question. How about the Easter Bunny? I no longer believe in the Easter Bunny. Oh my god. Okay, let's just start with Eric Schmidt. Is Eric Schmidt the dumbest person in the world? Either that or he is auditioning to be JD Vance's vice presidential running mate because to say something that stupid and outlandish and stick with it even when you are proven wrong. There has to be some ulterior motive. I also fucking love how the entire Republican party is basically trying to say James Tallerigo can't be a senator because he's not enough of a man and he's not enough of a man because he can't name some obscure wide receiver and then Eric Schmidt can't even get the fucking Iowa Hawkeyes team through his adult mind. Isn't this prosecutorial 101? Check your fucking facts first, dude. Like before you have your staff printed out on like a four by six poster board and embarrassed yourself on national television in a clip that will be seen round the world. Make sure you got the basketball team right. You know, I do wonder if this is going to lead to a wide spread reopening of any single case Eric Schmidt was ever involved in because if this is the guys take an approach on evidence and prosecuting a case, I have real questions. Before I felt bad for Jack Smith and like I still feel bad that he had to be asked by John Kennedy whether he believed in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy for reasons that remain a mystery to everybody but John Kennedy. But I actually felt bad. I didn't feel bad for Eric Schmidt. Let's just be clear. I delighted in Jack Smith's countenance, his demeanor, his professionalism, his above it allness in that moment. As this fool was asserting he was in Atlanta doing some nefarious shit with Bonnie Willis and her ex-lover in the days and in around that scandal exploding onto the national stage. It was truly epic proportions, but clowning yourself could not do a better job ridiculing him than he just did to himself. Own goal. Yeah. Look it up in the dictionary in your faces right there, Eric Schmidt. Okay. Why would the fuck though would anybody ever want to be a lawyer at the Department of Justice ever again, Leah? I mean, this is all so you see they're asking about his wife. They're asking about, you know, did they ask about St. Patrick's Day, Leopardcons? I don't know, but maybe like this is the third hearing he's had to be a part of. I genuinely worry about like the implications for this, you know, they've so treated him so badly. This is a career prosecutor that is a fucking public servant. Why would anybody try and investigate anything ever again that the Department of Justice knowing that this could be their future? Right. Knowing that this could be their future or if they are a line prosecutor that they will just be fired, right? Like the prosecutors who participated in the January 6th prosecutions were or allegedly prosecutors who enforce the free access to clinic entrances or face act, right? They were also let go. Investigators at the FBI who participated in investigations in January 6th. I mean, I do think they are engaged in a full-scale multi-front assault on all of our institutions. Like they are weaponizing them and filling them with these hacks. But at the same time, they are making it impossible for anyone with principles to stay and potentially anyone with principles to be willing to return. If they realize, well, this job wouldn't be stable because I'm going to be let go, right? For merely enforcing the law, the next time a Republican is president, or I'm going to be persecuted, you know, and hauled before these Senate committees and harass me, the target of, you know, harassment, if not threats, and worse. So yeah, no, it's really scary. The upshot, I guess, is that you do have a viral moment of one of your inquisitors be clowning himself in spectacular fashion. That doesn't make it worth it, as bad as that Eric Schmidt line of questioning was. All right, enough about the prosecutors. Let's talk about the judges. Today, we have breaking news moments ago that the Supreme Court is going to, in an unsigned one-page order, allow the Trump administration to continue deporting immigrants to countries other than their own. I mean, these stories are horrifying. They are meant to both destroy the lives of the deportees, but also destroy the lives of their families and any other migrants who may be in the United States without their papers. It's, I guess, an encouragement to self-deport because the future that awaits you is so dire and so dark and unfathomably awful that you just want to leave the country before ice gets its claws into you. What is your thought on this? The liberal justices, I believe, have noted a dissent to this. We don't know what the ruling was, but I assume, or the decision-making process was, but I assume it's a 6-3, John Roberts' confection. Yeah, so this isn't an actual opinion. It's just an order that indicates that the Supreme Court is going to decide some set of questions more or on that in a second, maybe, related to the lawfulness of these third country removals or whether federal courts can stop them, but that until it does so, the administration will be allowed to continue carrying them out. And I think part of what is so appalling about this order is the Supreme Court had previously intervened in this case when the district court had at an earlier stage of the litigation ordered temporary restraining orders, which are super preliminary and then preliminary injunctions, which again are at an early stage of the case. This is now at the permanent injunction. You know, the federal court conducted full-sum proceedings, the Court of Appeals, appalled in substantial part, the lower court blocking these third country removals. And in that time, we have also had all of this incredible reporting that has told us what these third country removals are like. People are hauled on planes. They have no idea where they are being taken. They don't even know where they end up when they are taken off these planes, put in cages, and sent to some prison. In a country where they don't speak the language, they have no idea if they are ever getting out, they are potentially held in Communicato for some uncertain period of time. You know, the administration took some people to South Sudan or Sudan, right, a country on the brink of a civil war. They were considering taking others and maybe there might be an agreement to allow the administration to send others to Liberia where, you know, when you are incarcerated or imprisoned, you might be at risk of being sold and trafficked into slavery. And so they are sending people to these God-awful places and people are being treated horrifically. You know, beaten starve, you know, it's just absolutely appalling when When you read these stories and the Supreme Court, I'm sure these stories crossed their desk. And still, they viewed it as an emergency that the federal government was being told, don't do this, right? We have now repeatedly concluded it is illegal because you are sending people to countries without telling them where they are going, which means they have zero opportunity to argue. I face a significant risk of torture, persecution or slavery, if I am sent there. And that is the opportunity they are being denied. And the Supreme Court just seems like it doesn't give two shits. And this order where it's like, oh, yeah, we'll ultimately decide some issues related to this case. But in the meantime, government keep doing what you're doing. This order is so fucking chaotic, it asks the government to brief, quote, such other questions that the government determines are appropriate for the proper disposition of the case. Like go wild government, just tell us anything about why you can do this. This is not how regular Supreme Court process works. They grant on particular questions that they asked the parties to brief that they will then decide and here they're just inviting the government, like go wild guys and like we'll consider it. Since obviously we know we're going to let you keep doing this anyways, it's just horrifying. Pots of America breaking news is brought to you by Zippercruder with everyday directions becoming increasingly impersonal. Someone going just one extra step can be huge, like when my doctor takes the time to calm me with test results instead of sending them electronically. They came back positive for gay, it makes me feel like a human being again. For your hiring, great candidates can also go the extra step and tell you why they're interested in your job on Zippercruder as a way to stand out from others in the pool. And Zippercruder has a new feature showing you the most interested qualified candidates first, so you can meet the right people faster. 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Zippercruder, meet your match on Zippercruder. >> Do you think that this is, I mean, I feel like we live in the fucking pendulum swing of the, like the court making daddy mad and then trying to like get back at daddy's good graces and daddy in this scenario being Donald Trump and like I don't even want to give the court credit for going against daddy's wishes because ultimately as you guys note, so articulately in strict scrutiny, this is a goblin court that has been completely corrupted and occasionally they dame to read the constitution, which I guess is the way of like sticking it to daddy, but whatever, occasionally they do something that Trump doesn't like and he then sends out a nasty truth social and then we're in for like three more decisions that are very much in favor of whatever Trump wants. Is that what's happening here? Like, is this making up for the fact that they're not letting Missouri Republicans use the gerrymandered maps that they want to use? >> That's actually not the way I think of it. I think of it in some ways as the reverse where those rulings against Trump like they like and he likes to because it gives them some superficial appearance of credibility, right? Their critics can't say, well, they always rule for Donald Trump. They always give him whatever they want and the reality is that captured courts, courts and autocracies, they don't always rule for the autocrat, they can't while maintaining again some veneer that they are in fact courts, right? Courts in a variety of autocracies, Russia, Hungary, Poland, otherwise, like they will sometimes rule against the administration and sometimes it's to save the administration from itself. I think honestly that is the best way of understanding how the justice is ruled against the Trump administration on the terrorists and the president's attempt to fire a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. They were trying to save the president from himself and they were really marching in lock stuff with the Republican Party when Trump was out of sync with it. So I don't even think they are like sticking it to daddy and trying to make up for it. I think they are all on the same page and part of being on the same page is basically having this institution work in such a way that it can really advance the administration and Republican Party's agenda without being 100% unmasked and exposed even though I think they already have, right, they have shown their true colors but they can't do it 100% of the time or otherwise it's just like a little too obvious. It's the Susan Collins playbook, right? Exactly. And to give them permission, I will make sure that I take completely maritalist votes that signal my independence but ultimately I will be the chief enabler of your agenda in its worst iterations. Exactly. Is that what is to explain Justice Alito's decision this week to recuse himself from a major case involving Exxon mobile and SunCore, which he owns lots and lots of stock in and is going to decide whether or not oil and gas industries can basically be held accountable for the climate change and pollution that they are behind are like why is Alito were accusing himself all of a sudden? It's a real mystery given that he knew he owned Exxon stock right nine months ago when he participated in the deliberations to hear this case and people were screaming at him to recuse. So I mean, first I just know that obviously he had to recuse but he couldn't even be bothered to comply with the Supreme Court's own ethics guidelines which say, Justice should explain why they're recusing. He didn't explain. He's just like, oh yeah, I guess I'm recusing FII guys. So my own read is that he's probably doing this at this point because he thinks even without me there are already five votes for Exxon or and I think maybe more possibly there are five votes for the conclusion that the Supreme Court doesn't yet have jurisdiction to determine the issues in this case because it arises in this like somewhat complex posture where it's technically a decision not of the like highest court in Colorado, but an intermediary court and it's not clear that court reached like the final resolution in a case. So it's quite possible that the Supreme Court doesn't ultimately decide whether these oil and gas companies can face tort liability, but instead says we actually can't decide those questions in this particular case in this particular posture right now. So that's kind of what I'm thinking. I do think they have a, there's a special place in this Supreme Court conservative majority's heart for guns and corporations like it is really and they're going to be hearing both this case in a case on AR 15s reminder that we are entering a new phase of this court's second amendment era where the question isn't whether you can own a gun, but how many restrictions the right to own a gun allows like in their 2022 decision, New York State, Rifle and Pistol Association V Bruin, they rule that modern gun restrictions need to reflect early American history to be constitutional. I mean, like I'm so glad that the Supreme Court owns a teleporting machine. Maybe it's a hot tub time machine. I don't know. Does Harlan Crowe have a hot tub? But they can apparently go back in time to tell you what the early Americans and their colonial societies deemed appropriate or constitutional vis-a-vis weaponry. So like you said, the question is no longer, you know, can you own a gun? I guess I now think the question is, can you own a nuclear weapon, right? Because the question they're going to decide this term is like, well, can you own a semi-automatic rifle? And of course, there weren't fucking semi-automatic rifles in the 1700s and 1800s, there were muskets. And so trying to ask, right, well, do they regulate muskets in the same way that the federal government is regulating, I don't know, semi-automatic rifles or nuclear weapons, you know, is a fool's errand. And it is just a license for them to totally dismantle sensible gun control regulation. And like, last you think the nuclear weapon issue/question is just like a law professor hypothetical? No, no, no, no, no, no. That was an actual question that an actual court of appeals judge asked one of these gun rights lawyers, like, okay, well, under your logic, can a state ban someone from possessing a nuclear weapon? And I think I recalled the advocate like not being totally sure, like maybe he had to think about that right? For a second. For a second. Because we're not totally sure there's an analog. And you know, on this gun rights question, just for like a second, you know, in your book, you know, The Steel, you talk about like Paul Weirich in particular, you know, moral majority, the invigoration and this total made up story that we have about the second amendment was partially fueled by Weirich, right? And Heritage Foundation and all of these organizations, which like funded these mailings that tried to convince Americans about the story of an individual right to own firearms, they connected it, you know, basically with this effort to cultivate, right, white conservative voters and part of like the shared heritage. So right, like this is them seeing the yield of that, you know, as - Strategy. - Like steel, raid, everything, just awfulness that we are living with the consequences of. - Go by the book. It's a New York Times best seller. Thank you for that. - Congratulations. - Congratulations. - But yes, this is part of the decades old strategy, blueprint that was launched in the shadows of the Reagan administration that was really a hangover after the civil rights era. Like this is part of the 20th century project to unwind civil rights progress and equal rights that we are now seeing bear fruit in the 2020s under the watchful eye of John Roberts. Before we go, Leah, we have a new Supreme Court term upon us. - I know from this being an avid strict scrutiny listener that you ladies are not optimistic about this moment, this time, are you optimistic? I know you've been calling for it, but are you optimistic about Supreme Court reform in the coming year? - I really think Jury is still out. Like we just don't know. I think the needle has moved significantly and I am thrilled by that. When Jim Clyburn goes on national TV and says, "Yeah, let's expand the Supreme Court." I mean, wow, that was never happening four years ago. So I think it is a possibility, right? It is not outside of our grasp, but in order to make it possible, like we can't lose sight of this. You can't lose the gas. You can't lose the focus. You can't allow people to kind of avert their eyes. You can't allow them to come up with excuses and apology for how the court isn't that bad. And so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I'm not ruling it out. I think it is way more possible today than it ever has been in my lifetime. And for that, I'm thankful and willing to keep pushing. - Keep pushing. First you dream it, then you make it real. That's what I learned from writing that goddamn book. - Leah Litman, my friend, thank you for being up on the news with me today for this rapid response video for Runaway Country. If you are not subscribed to this channel, my friends, come on now. Just hit, click subscribe, just do it. And also while you're at it, subscribe to Strix scrutiny, which is indispensable in these unlawful times. Leah, you are a great advisor and a wise woman of these tumultuous days. I thank you for your time, bud. - Thank you. - Runaway Country is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alonement Kovsky, Emma Alek Frank, Haley Jones, and Anisha Banerjee with help from Eric Shude, Kenny Moffat, and Charlotte Landis. Production support from Ben Heffko, Katie Long, Adrian Hill, and Matt DeGroat. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writer's Guild of America East. (upbeat music)