Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s California Election Scheme (ft. Former AG Eric Holder)

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Whether you're new to Primarily Pure, refreshing your routine, the Clean Start Bundle makes switching to cleaner care simple. And gives you an even better value when you start with the bundle. This is a breaking news alert. The United States Supreme Court just delivered a massive blow to Donald Trump's attempt to interfere with Tuesday's election specifically as it relates to the Trump regime. The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump regime's bid to force California to set aside votes from up to 20,000 purported registered voters, that the regime claims are likely non-citizens. There was no noted dissent in the Supreme Court's ruling. Let's pull up the Supreme Court's ruling from moments ago. The Supreme Court has rejected the Supreme Court's ruling from moments ago. Not one Supreme Court justice, not even the Trump right-wing justices, noted a dissent at all. This is unprecedented. The Department of Justice is now being treated by the Supreme Court like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. The president's lawyers told the Supreme Court in their briefing that there's a huge emergency and that the court just shrugged it off. And the court was like, oh, you think there's a big emergency? Nah, no there isn't. Go away. And the Supreme Court didn't even need to hear briefing from Mark Elias' legal team. Mark Elias got the W without even having to submit any opposition or paperwork to the Supreme Court. People was like, go away. This is how far the Department of Justice has fallen under Todd Blanch in the eyes of all of our courts, including the Supreme Court. Now, also earlier today, as it relates to those so-called 20,000 registered voters, as Ryan, Goodman writes, what you call game over, the DOJ admitted in court that their list of alleged 20,000 non-citizens registered to vote in California has a high error rate. The case involves a temporary restraining order barring the Department of Justice threats to prosecute state officials. The DOJ admission will have reverberating effects in other cases. And as we reported, not just in this case in California, but also the case out of Washington. D.C., the Trump regime basically was exposed that this list of 20,000 was like a fabricated list. It was like made up names, too. That's what was exposed in Judge Boasberg's case in D.C. Here's what Chris Geidner reported. Breaking in response to a question from Judge Trina Thompson, Northern District of California. This was before the Supreme Court made that ruling. The Department of Justice attorney just said it is fair to say that their list has a high error rate. Just admitting, yeah, it's all errors, all errors, high error rate. Also, it should be noted that earlier today, this was new and breaking, another no true bill in Washington, meaning a grand jury rejected another case brought to it by the federal prosecutors out of Washington, D.C. from the Trump regime. This one was a purported voter fraud criminal case against someone who the Trump regime claimed voted twice in 2024. And the grand jury in Washington, D.C. said, nope, we're not going to indict that person and rejected the Trump regime from even getting an indictment there. Now, there was other news this morning as well. A federal judge dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden. A federal judge on Monday earlier today dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden, citing what he said was weaponization of President Donald. Trump's Justice Department just before the midterm elections in a scathing hour long ruling read from the bench. U.S. magistrate Judge Zia Faruqi said the investigation that produced the charges against Nikki Flores and Bradley Benavides was rushed, conducted at the behest of Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel and dogged by critical mistakes that require the dismissal of the case. I am deeply troubled by what has happened here in this case, Faruqi said. What has transpired here cannot be dismissed. It is described as anything other than weaponization by the Trump DOJ. I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar, Faruqi said, alluding to the proximity of the charges to the elections, which will determine control of Congress. And there the Trump regime didn't even get an indictment. They just filed a criminal complaint because they know they're unable to get indictments. And by the way, when they went after James Comey, they filed a criminal complaint. They haven't yet. Yet got an indictment in that case either. I want to bring in right now a very special guest. Let's bring on the former Attorney General Eric Holder to talk to us about the elections tomorrow. The Trump DOJ losing all of these cases is the former attorney general. Let's bring in the interview I just did with former Attorney General Eric Holder. Now, I want to bring on former Attorney General Eric Holder, Attorney General Holder. Great to see you as always. I want to start off by talking about the Trump regime and the Trump regime DOJ's attacks on election integrity, all of these lawsuits and efforts that they've engaged in to try to intimidate and harm people's ability to vote. They've lost these cases in resounding fashions. And I think a lot of these federal courts, based on the experience they've had with this DOJ and no longer a presumption of regularity, expect. as the former AG. What you saw here, I mean, they're clearly not done. They're going to keep this going on until after the election. But where do you see things right now? Well, I think that, you know, in a quote unquote normal time, we would be worried about foreign adversaries. What's Iran doing to our election system? What's China doing? What's Russia doing? And I think the main threat to a good, clean election here is not any of those entities, although there's still problems, and I'm sure, I hope they're being monitored. The main problem now is the federal government, and more specifically, the executive branch of the federal government, the Trump administration. It's a whole of government approach. I mean, yeah, they're using the Justice Department, but they're also using DHS. They're coming up with all kinds of ways in which they can try to, you know, cast doubt on the fairness of the system in the hope that people won't participate. I think in some ways, that's a goal, and it also lays a predicate for challenges that they might want to file once the election is done and the ballots are in the process of being counted, and looking at, you know, what they can do at the state level with regard to certification, and ultimately with regard to certification when it comes down to the federal level. You know, I think our founders were very smart in a lot of regards. I think the election clause actually provided a lot of protection, making time, place, and manner really a states' rights issue, unless Congress says otherwise. The one thing that I think there's a bit of a big hole that we have to figure out is, well, we expect the executive branch to take care that laws are faithfully executed. That's the whole, the whole system is somewhat based on good faith. So what happens when the DOJ is not prosecuting the bad guys, but when the DOJ is prosecuting the bad guys, they're not prosecuting the bad guys. So what happens when the DOJ is not prosecuting the bad guys, but when the DOJ is prosecuting the bad guys, when they are the bad guys, when they're engaged in the bad conduct, and then anybody who challenges them, they go, no standing, no standing, because it was believed that the DOJ and the various divisions would be taking care that laws are executed and going after the bad guy. That to me is a hard part to grapple with as they make all these arguments, no standing, no standing. And all of these cases feel a bit collusive in the way it's Trump and Trump DOJ and Trump AGs working together. Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, you want to have a Justice Department that is independent of the White House. And Todd Blanche has indicated that he works for Donald Trump. I mean, you know, he just says it. I work for Donald Trump. I don't work for the American people. So there is that. I mean, we got that problem with the Justice Department. But, you know, we also have the ability to file private suits. Yet sometimes standing is a problem. But we've gotten through private lawsuits. We put a lot of breaks on that which the Trump administration otherwise tried to implement, you know, cases in Alaska, California, you know, a whole different, different places. And I suspect that's going to continue to be, you know, the barrier. And the courts have done a pretty good job, I think, in responding. Today, we just say, I guess, a lawsuit that or an attempt to indict a couple of FBI, agents, not related to the election, specifically, but this whole Hunter Biden laptop thing. And there you had a judge throw the case out and with very, very harsh language, you know, question the motivation behind that, which, you know, the Justice Department was doing. Now, that's a criminal case, supposedly a criminal case that got thrown out. But there have been other instances where, you know, lawsuits have been brought by private parties that have been brought by private parties that have been brought by private parties that have been, I think, pretty effective in stopping, stopping the Justice Department. And I expect that they're going to see that continue. I mean, I've been involved in a whole variety of tabletop exercises, working with people on the hill, working with folks from various interest groups, trying to anticipate all the kinds of things that we might have to face, both in the lead up to the election, the election itself, and then post election, so that we're in a, in a position to, to respond. Thank you. Look, Trump's going to throw everything, but we have top level people who are thinking through each of these steps. Yeah, I mean, I'll just go through one. One I did up on the hill, and we had various members of Congress playing different people. I mean, you know, somebody played Mike Johnson, somebody played the DHS secretary. And we went through a whole range of scenarios. I was up there, we had other people, I'll just say Mark Elias was there in addition to other people. lawyers to try to figure out how are we going to respond if the Republicans tried to do, you know, name, fill in the blank. What was the response going to be? Really focused on how could we do things in response effectively and quickly. That is one of the drivers of all of the activity. How do we get into court and do things as quickly as we can, resolve things as quickly as we can, so as not to allow them to inflict the damage and then try to have to undo it. I mean, how do we stop them before the damage is actually done? And I left that tabletop exercise. I did another one. It's been publicly reported with Hillary Clinton at my law firm with a whole range of interest groups. And we had, you know, big TV monitors up on the walls. And as we were in the process of doing, talking about a variety of things, then the TV monitor would come up and say, "This report's just coming in from, I don't know, pick the state, California, and the following has occurred." And then we have to say, "Okay, what are we going to do in this instance?" And again, the same thing. What's the response? Who are the people who should be responding? How do we quickly make sure that we are doing things as effectively as we can? And there are, you know, there's a ton of legal talent that is spread out around this country, you know, ready to go, ready to go. But I think in some ways, you know, the ultimate, the ultimate power is the American people. If people come out and vote in really substantial numbers, and the margins are very large, that crushes almost everything that the Trump administration might try to throw at us. But we got to be prepared for, you know, some close elections in some places and them being as, as I say, creatively evil as they, you know, as they are. I spoke with Governor Wes Moore earlier in the day, and he was telling me about the redistricting question three that's on the ballot. And obviously, the Trump regime tried to, starting with Texas, gerrymander it, not on a referendum, just push it through and force that, you know, force its way onto it, which seems to have backfired there. It seems to have been a dummy-mander, as you see now, anything that's in that kind of plus 12, plus 18 margin from 2024, where people voted for Trump. Now Democrats could potentially be taking those seats, but it also backfired because I guess they didn't expect Democrats, I just say pro-democracy people who still care about the rule of law, to fight back and say, all right, well, if you're doing that, we're going to do it. We're going to open it up to a vote for the public. We're not just going to force it through. We're going to make it a thing where citizens get to decide for themselves what they want this to look like. So talk to us about your experience with the redistricting question. Yeah, that's a very important point. I mean, their attempt to, you know, when Trump walked to the helicopter and said, I'm going to, you know, get five seats, extra congressional seats, house seats out of Texas because I'm entitled to them, that effort failed. And it didn't fall on its own. It was dismantled by people like the organization that I lead, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, our partners, by filing lawsuits, by me talking to Governor Newsom and other folks, President Obama, and deciding, all right, do we want to, one of our responses should be, all right, maybe California should be, you know, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. And so, you know, we're going to do this. Do it on a temporary basis. File lawsuits in places like Utah and Missouri won those lawsuits. Galvanized the people in a variety of states. Georgia and South Carolina immediately come to mind so that they went down to the state legislature and, you know, were loud, peacefully, you know, did it nonviolently, but in great numbers so that people in the state legislature who might have thought about going along and doing something along the Texas model knew that there was going to be a political consequence. And so, Georgia and South Carolina, at least for the time being, have backed off on doing that. And so, that's the way in which, you know, that effort failed. And they also didn't do whatever it is they were trying to do. They didn't do it particularly well. I mean, they based a lot of their assumptions on the 2024 election. And that's going to result in, I think, a dummymander, probably, in Texas. I think also in Florida. And a lot of seats that they thought were not going to be in fact, are going to be competitive. And depending on, you know, what the results of the election are, we're going to see a lot of unexpected pro-democracy results. I like that your approach has been fight fire with fire, but with deliberate methodical fire to their not just malicious, but reckless fire. I think if there's been a bit of a saving grace, and I think you talk about it there, we see it in the courts with this Trump DOJ. They're sloppy. They don't think through. It's impulsive. Donald Trump wakes up, do this, do that, do this, chop off the trees, you know, and then they aren't thinking the steps through per se. So the question becomes, though, when we get out of this hell, and I think we will, how does a future DOJ wield power? How do we think about this? You know, do we say, all right, I guess we got to be. back to old school now and do it the way it used to be, you know, or do you say, you know what? I saw what they did over there, and they did that for bad. But there's a lot of power that's been unlocked, apparently, based on what the Supreme Court has said is acceptable, which we've never really even thought of. So how do you think through those issues? Because I think through them, and it's an important debate that we need to have, you know, when we're out of this hell. No, I think that's a really good point. You know, I don't think people talk about rebuilding. And I think we need to go beyond that and think about reimagining. Take into account that which we've had to deal with over the course of this, like these last two years or so, and certainly the first Trump term as well, but especially these last two years, and try to reimagine that what should the Justice Department look like in the 21st century? How do we prevent that, which has happened now from happening again, codifying norms? Regulating things in ways where we just before relied on tradition. We have to do all of those kinds of things. But we also have to, you know, progressives and Democrats, I say this all the time, we are uncomfortable with the acquisition and the use of power. And we got to get past that. We got to get past that. You know, if we have, for instance, a trifecta, after the 2028 election, President, control of the Senate, control of the House of Representatives, we got to use that to we got to use that power, not in the way the Republicans do, you know, for their special interests and giving tax breaks to oligarchs and that kind of stuff, but to come up with ways in which we shore up our democracy. One of the things would be to look at, to be very frank here, the hires that have been done, for instance, in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department by Harmeet Dhillon. Those people, a lot of those people would not be qualified under the old standards of Republican or Democratic standards to come into the democracy. So, you know, we've got to look at, you know, the power of the Justice Department. They just weren't that qualified. And if they are, you know, Trump, Dhillon, zealots, you know, just move them out of the Justice Department. And again, because of what the Supreme Court said, kind of under the unitary executive theory, that power does reside in the next Attorney General, in the next President. And so I think that's the kind of power that we have to consider. And then people say, well, wait a minute, what's going to prevent Republicans from doing it, you know, once they get? I don't know. I don't know. But I do know that we cannot leave, in the Justice Department, people who are not committed to its traditional mission. The reputation of the DOJ is sadly in shambles right now. When DOJ lawyers show up in front of federal judges, they're looked at as, all right, what lie are you going to tell me right now? There is no presumption of regularity anymore. And when DOJ lawyers used to show up to court, regardless of what administration, I mean, these were always top lawyers prepared. They don't miss deadlines. You know, things, get filed on time. They don't just lie to the judge, you know? And so the reputation is like, ugh. Like, as a law professor, I don't want to recommend to my students to work there, right? Which I wouldn't care before if it was Republican or Democrat. I'm just not sure I think it's a good place to work. So what do you think when this all ends? I mean, is top DOJ talent going to come back? I mean, like, do you still have confidence that it could be restored? Because that's something that I wonder, and I don't even know what to tell my law students and undergrad students about it. Yeah. I still think the desire is there in the legal profession for people to come to the Justice Department and other components of the executive branch to come and serve in ways that lawyers traditionally have. And so I don't think it'd be hard to repopulate the Justice Department with, you know, with good people. That may have to be some restructuring because of things that they've done with regard to some of the divisions within the Justice Department to get it back to, you know, what it was. Or to, you know, you know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. To the reimagined Justice Department that I think we ought to have. But I think we need to be thinking about things like, you know, maybe expedited background checks of people who are in the Justice Department and who were forced out, but who want to come back. Same thing with regard to the FBI, agents who were fired or forced out, but who nevertheless want to come back to the FBI. Again, you gotta go through background checks, but you can do these things. There's just one thing, you know, do that on an expedited basis so that you can get good people back into these organizations. As soon as possible. But the point you make about reputation, that in some ways is going to be the more difficult thing. I mean, I think I can repopulate the department, repopulate the FBI, repopulate the ATF. But when it comes to reestablishing the trust between the American people, the judiciary, and the Justice Department, that is something that's going to take, it's going to take some time. You know, that presumption, you know, as you said, of, you know, of regularity, a presumption that a lawyer from the Justice Department is telling the truth. That isn't necessarily something that is felt by the people or by judges. And it's going to take a longer period of time to reestablish that. It's election day. Frankly, not a foregone conclusion looking back that a democracy community would still be standing, actually stronger than ever. There's optimism in the air right now. And I think the people watching this should also know that they fought back and that this didn't just happen. And that if it was up to Trump and the whole regime there, things would have been very different, we'll just say. So, but here we are. What's your message? What's your message to people right now on election day, Attorney General Holder? Attorney General Holder: Well, first off, no excuses. I mean, no excuses. Everybody's got to vote. I mean, I know this is election day and this is coming maybe a little late. Hopefully people have voted or in the process of voting. People died, you know, committed, themselves sacrificed. But as I said, died, gave their lives so that we would have, you know, the right to vote, the right to decide the policy direction of this nation. We have to honor those people by casting ballots. And that also gives us control of the present by casting ballots. The American people are slow to rouse, but once they get focused on an issue, we are a mighty force. And it also means we control the future. You know, what's the future of this nation going to look like? I mean, I think Trump and his folks thought, with regard to the, you know, their gerrymandering attempts that, you know, the reaction from the pro-democracy side was going to be that, you know, we clutch our pearls, I'd write an op-ed, I'd come talk to you, you know, on your very popular show, and that would be the end of it. And what happened was we fought back. And we should learn from that experience that when you push back, when you fight back against these guys, you win. I mean, those law firms, those universities, those corporations who bent the knee, how do you feel about that? Attorney General Holder: How do you feel about that now? You know, how do you feel about that now? And how are you going to feel about that when we get to 2029 and people start looking back and ask, where were you in 2026? Where were you in 2027? So I think lessons can be learned from, you know, from prior experience. Those who bent the knee are going to be, have reputationally been damaged and, you know, that's a negative thing. And those who fought have shown that as pessimistic as we might have been, as, you know, as, as dire as the situation might have seemed back in 2025, if you fight, you know, we, we win. And so that's what I would tell the American people. The biggest weapon that we have as average citizens is the ability to cast a ballot. So we want to do that, but then stay involved, stay involved in our, in our civic institutions. You know, Dr. King said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. But here's the deal. It doesn't bend towards justice. It bends when people like us put our hands on that arc and pull it towards justice and away from that, which the Trump administration wants to do. Attorney General Eric Holder, appreciate your time and thanks for all you do. Thanks for having me. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. 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