BOMBSHELL: Trump scandal with Pam Bondi EXPOSED in surprise exposé

This is Democracy Watch. Mark, we have a bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal, yet again, exposing some news that Donald Trump did not want to come out. So I'm going to put this excerpt right here on the screen from the Journal. On September 20th, Trump meant to send a private message to Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging her to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and his other favorite targets, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Quote, we can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility, Trump wrote.

Trump believed he had sent Bondi the message directly, addressing it to Pam, and was surprised to learn it was public, the official said. Bondi grew upset and called the White House aides and Trump, who then agreed to send a second post praising Bondi as doing a quote, great job. The misfire provided a window into how through command and chaos Trump has executed a wholesale transformation of the Justice Department.

So Mark, now that we know that Donald Trump was not issuing a public message addressed to Pam, but rather it was intending to send a private, a DM to Pam Bondi, his attorney general basically offering her up some edict on what to do. Can we talk about the legality of this move of the president kind of destroying this, this separation between church and state and just demanding what prosecutions his attorney general engage in?

I mean, the legal issues here make my head hurt because even before you get to that, Brian, this is the president of the United States who is supposed to be using secure communications, right? Like, after all, there are foreign actors who is supposed to be using secure communications, right? Like, after all, there are foreign actors who are trying to hack into the White House, trying to learn things.

And here it appears that he confused a truth social post with, I don't know what, a DM using truth social?

Well, that's the thing. Like, even if it wasn't a public post on truth social, it's a Truth Social DM, which is about as secure as like, you know,

basically shouting it from the street corner. Correct. Also, the White House is subject to the Presidential Records Act, which means that all communications from the president, like even if the president doodles, like it's all supposed to be captured for history and that's a federal law. And something tells me that Donald Trump's dear Pam DMs on True Social, much like the signal messages in All Seriousness that we saw war planning going on among the vice president and secretary of state and defense secretary. So I don't want to miss the point here that

the misuse of communication channels, you know, the willy-nilly nature of how they communicate is a legal issue unto itself before you even get to the rest of it. Now, then you ask your question about, well, what about the fact that the president of the United States seems to be dictating to the attorney general who gets prosecuted. And by the way, you know, if you go back and read what you just read, like, we need to prosecute him because we look bad.

Like, I'm sorry, what? We need to prosecute someone because our reputation is suffering? So, look, this is not just a norms problem. You know, legacy media, you know, they portray this as like the breaking of norms

or something like that. Like, even the way in which the Wall Street Journal, which kudos to them, by the way, for breaking this story and for publishing this. But like, the way they end it is they make it sound like, you know, he is transforming the way that DOJ operates.

That's like saying that, like, you know, Jack the Ripper transformed how the bar scene went in London. I mean, the fact is what Donald Trump is doing is running a lawless administration that is breaking the law, that is systematically undermining what federal law enforcement do,

what it means to indict a case and bring cases forward. He's undermining all of that. I mean, the fact is James Comey has already indicated through his lawyers that they're going to file a vindictive prosecution case. What you just read from The Wall Street Journal

makes out a really good case for a vindictive prosecution. I mean, vindictive prosecution, President of the United States trying to privately tell the attorney general, we need to go after this guy because it all makes us look bad and therefore go do it. And so it's not just norms. It's not reordering the Department of Justice.

It's not transforming the Department of Justice. It is fundamentally lawbreaking. And that's why this case is never going to see a jury, right? The fact is, this case is going to get tossed for improper behavior, improper behavior by the president,

improper behavior by the attorney general, improper behavior by Lindsey Halligan, who had her own crazy irregularities in this. And so we need to be very clear in the language we use. And I know you are and I am, but the legacy media needs to like,

just stop with the throat clearing, stop with the euphemisms, and just call it what it is. It's breaking the law.

Perfectly put. And by the way, I should note that while legacy media continues to engage in those games, you and your outlet Democracy Docket do not. And this is what journalism should be. This is fearless, independent journalism. For anybody watching right now, if you want to get this amazing resource

that I use on a daily basis, and by the way, to support the invaluable work that Mark and his team are doing, not just in the media, but on the front lines, in the courts, where it matters most, a small step that we can all take to support his work

is to sign up for. Mark, on this idea that, you know, this James Comey case, for example, now that we know based on what the Wall Street Journal said, that Donald Trump is just ordering his attorney general to engage in selective prosecution to hurt his political opponent, now that we know that he fired his own appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia because they wouldn't engage in these selective prosecutions against Trump's enemies only for Trump to eventually find somebody who would.

Do you think that there's going to come a moment where these judges stop offering deference to the White House? You know, this presumption of regularity that I think the administration has coasted off of for so long and starts to recognize that these people are not acting in good faith. They are bad faith negotiators here and any effort that they can take to subvert the law, subvert the constitution, they will.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, the Wall Street Journal in that article reported that they expect, um, that Maryland federal prosecutors are going to indict John Bolton. They say that there is a expectation or a likelihood that they will indict or try to indict Tish James.

I mean, you know, like this is not ending with just James Comey. I mean, this didn't even begin with James Comey. I mean, we also had the news of Donald Trump saying he wanted to jail the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker. And I had to remind someone earlier today, this is actually not the first governor

who he has said he wanted to jail. Remember Gavin Newsom? He also said he wanted to jail. So, like, we need to understand this is part and parcel of. And by the way, I should also add,

I mean, he's literally had other folks arrested. He's had a judge in Wisconsin arrested, had a mayor arrested, a member of Congress arrested. So this isn't even, he had a US Senator from California arrested, tackled on the floor. And so it's not even just the threats,

he's actually gone through with a lot of these instances of wielding the federal government as a cudgel against his political opponents. Correct. So when

you ask about like are judges going to get smarter about this, are they going to realize that that this Department of Justice cannot be treated at face value that these criminal prosecutions, particularly when they involve high profile opposition figures, really need to be scrutinized in the most serious way possible. You would hope so, because again, it's not just James Comey.

Like, he is doing this in real time. He is doing this in broad daylight. The fact is that the judges should be reading in the Wall Street Journal that he is sending messages like this, and for every message that he inadvertently sends publicly to Pam,

how many more messages do you think that he inadvertently sends publicly to Pam, how many more messages do you think that he sends to Pam or to Kash Patel or to Hexery or to whomever that we never see the light of day and which, by the way, the White House lies about? I mean, the White House didn't say when he sent this thing publicly, they didn't say, oops, that was meant to be private. Instead, they acted like, oh, well, this was totally normal and there was nothing unusual about this. I mean, you know, as bullshit that is. But, you know, we have to assume that what we are getting is just a small tip of a very, very corrupt

and dangerous iceberg.

Can you talk about why this is important that the president not issue edicts to his attorney general? And by the way, there was a time where Republicans themselves would be the ones to be the first to condemn it. When Bill Clinton wasn't even president anymore, he had a few minute meeting with Loretta Lynch, who was the attorney general, and that was fodder for right wing media for months and months and months, if not years.

And again, the guy wasn't even the president. You've got public proclamations on true social that were intended to be DMS and it's just, you know, it comes and goes like a fart in a hurricane as far as the rights concerned.

Look, here's the thing, uh, you know, we can have a spirited debate about the norm of not having the attorney general have communication or regular contact with people in the white house, including the president. Like there's a perfectly legitimate question about whether or not, for example, from my standpoint, Merrick Garland should have done more on voting rights when Joe Biden was saying publicly do more on voting rights.

Like, like, I think that that is a that is a debate that you can have kind of within the 40-yard line, you know, like 40 to 40, right? What we're talking about here is not that. This is not a question of Donald Trump wanting to set an overall tone or an overall approach to what the Department of Justice prioritizes. You know, if all Donald Trump was communicating was saying, look, I really want you to prioritize immigration cases, you know, I really want you to prioritize public corruption cases,

like, that would be, again, we could have a debate about how much of that is okay and how much of that is not OK. But what Donald Trump is doing here is literally picking out his political opponents and saying, I want you to indict this person. I want you to go after that person. I want to threaten that this person will be put in prison or in jail.

I want to say that this member of Congress who was exercising her rights as a member of Congress and doing her job should be indicted. And it is that that is not just unprecedented. It is that that is not only corrupt and not only in violation of the constitutional rights of the defendants, in violation of the rules

of criminal procedure and of criminal law. It is also corrosive to the system because here's the thing, and this is a point made to me originally by Congressman Dan Goldman of New York, who was himself a former federal prosecutor. Good prosecutors who are bringing good cases

need to have the confidence of juries and of judges that they are doing it on the up and up, even when defendants in those cases accuse them of wrongdoing. And the problem is, because Donald Trump is engaged in wrongdoing,

because Donald Trump is engaged in politically vindictive prosecutions, because Donald Trump's Department of Justice does act as an arm of the White House, then frankly, every defendant in every case will now say they are the victim of some political persecution. And they will also say that if

they had only paid the White House, you know, or paid tithing to someone, maybe they would've gotten a pardon. And the fact is, it'll be very hard to figure out which is right and which is not right. I mean, like, it'll be easy in some edge cases. It'll be easy if they go after Tish James. It'll be easy if they go after James Comey. It'll be easy if they go after you. Not that I hope that they do. I hope they don't. But there will be a whole bunch of other people who will say, well, maybe they're going after me because of that reason. And so the whole system of checks and balances in our judicial system falls apart. Our whole system of criminal law, which resides on presumption of innocence and juries doing

their job and prosecutors doing their job, all collapses. But that's what Donald Trump wants. Donald Trump wants a system that is only under his control. And he is fine with there being these uncertainties as to what is political and not political because it undermines the legitimacy of any institution that might stand up to him.

Well, that was that was perfectly put. And in terms of fighting for those institutions that actually work, that actually serve as the basis for a justice system that that make gives everybody trust that that we're doing the right thing and that that this whole system can stand up properly. You are fighting for that more than anybody else on the front lines again, as I mentioned before. So one small step that everybody's watching, that everybody watching can take to support

Mark and his work is to sign up for Democracy Docket. Again, I'm going to put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Again, this is a great way to support independent media, a great way to support Mark and his Again, this is a great way to support independent media, a great way to support Mark and his team. And so if you are not yet signed up, highly recommend that you sign up. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen. I'm Mark Elias. This is Democracy Watch.