Hi there everyone. It's four o'clock in New York. As voters head to the polls in Michigan today, Donald Trump appears to be treating today's primary elections as a dress rehearsal for his efforts to take control of our elections in November.
Earlier today, the Trump Justice Department announced that the department was monitoring poll sites in Detroit, Ham Hamac, Lancing, and East Lancing, all Democratic strongholds. As the voting rights website, Democracy Docket puts it, quote, "It is not unusual for the US Department of Justice to send election monitors to observe voting in federal elections. But targeting Democratic cities in a key battleground state raises serious concerns that Donald Trump will directly interfere in this fall's midterms.
" And local election chiefs say the Trump administration is already trying to undermine trust in the election by targeting the Great Lakes State with debunked claims of voter fraud. Quote, "While historically election monitors have been an important part of protecting voters and ensuring the freedom to vote for communities whose access to the ballot box has been limited, the broader context of the Trump administration's political agenda of election denial cannot be ignored. " That's according to one voting rights advocate.
They add this quote, "This latest threat of sending election monitors to three cities with large populations of black voters and other communities of color is just the latest attempt in a long line of desperate actions to interfere in Michigan's elections. Michigan in particular has been a frequent target for Trump's bizarre and completely false election fraud claims which seem to amount to there was fraud when I was president in 2020 but not when Barack Obama or Joe Biden were president in 2016 or 2024. But while Michigan is one of the one of Trump's first targets, it's becoming abundantly clear that he doesn't plan to stop there as he continues his push to federalize our elections.
Just last week, Trump once again attempted to pressure Senate Republicans into pushing through the Save Act. He's appealed to the Supreme Court to limit mail-in balloting. Mail-in voting.
Voters going to the polls in Michigan today under the shadow of Donald Trump's growing attempts to undermine our free and fair elections is where we start today with some of our favorite experts and friends. Voting rights attorney and democracy docket founder Mark Elias is here. Also joining us, Democratic pollster and political analyst Cornell Belchure is here.
And with me for the hour, former assistant special agent in charge at the FBI, national security and intelligence analyst Michael Fineberg is here. Mark Elias, I start with you. Um, just frame this up today, not in terms of the polls or the candidates, but threats to our elections.
Yeah. So, it's a good news, bad news story. Let me start with the good news which uh is sort of flying a little under the radar screen.
It is not just that the Department of Justice is now over 20 over 20 in lawsuits trying to get access to sensitive voter data from states. Uh they have sued 20 states. Actually they sued 30 states.
20 courts have decided those cases and the Department of Justice has not won a single case. My law firm we are undefeated in those uh in those efforts. Uh that includes, by the way, 12 uh losses before uh federal judges appointed by Republicans, eight appointed by Donald Trump.
So that's one of the pieces of good news. The other piece of good news is that tomorrow will be the 90th day before the election, which is the beginning of the quiet day, the quiet period, which means that um after that, states cannot do systematic removal of voters. And so the Trump administration is going to be in a really hard spot to try to get states to remove people.
So that's the good news. The bad news is that the Department of Justice is ever searching for new ways to undermine free and fair elections on behalf of Donald Trump. We see the deployment of these folks in Michigan.
They are trying to desensitize us to this. You know, we've now had a series of primary elections where they've sent people and they are trying to get us used to the idea that they will send people into predominantly uh blue cities uh in both blue states and red states. so that when they do that in the general election, they're able to say, "Look, this happened in the primary.
No big deal. " So, that is something that is a bit of a warning sign. It's something I think we need to be spending time on.
I'm glad you raised it. Uh because come November, we know that Donald Trump is not going to try to win the election on the merits. He's not going to try to win the election on inflation or on jobs or on the economy.
He's going to try to win it by subverting the will of the elector, trying to suppress the vote. Mark Elias, just take me inside what level of cooperation he may find. In the years since 2020, a lot of election deniers have made their way through um state government and local um government.
Tell me what he has on the ground in terms of election denying allies. Yeah, I'm so glad you raised this because there's probably nothing that I stand outside of the consensus on more than this issue, which is that there has been this narrative that was largely built on 2020 and deservedly so in 2020 that the election officials stand as a bull work against Donald Trump. And while that is true in some places, it is unfortunately not true in every place.
The fact is Tina Peters was a local election official. The fact is that the Republican election officials in states like uh Florida and in uh Texas and in North Carolina like they they are cooperating with Donald Trump and giving him big wins in what he wants. And that's not to say that they have yet taken steps to subvert the outcome of the 2026 election.
Obviously, we're not there. But we do have to worry that the robust network of local and state election officials, whether they were people like, you know, she moss at the very local level or frankly Republican secretaries of state, um, uh, you know, and governors that stood tall. Those have largely been replaced by MAGA loyalists and by people who will do Donald Trump's bidding.
So, I'm very worried about this in the runup to 2026. Um, let me show all of you what Jack Smith said just in terms of what we can expect from Trump. These are crimes that he was charged with committing.
The the actual crimes I think were obstructing people's right to vote. Um, here's what he said about his worries for the midterms and the next uh presidential. I'm very concerned of what's going to happen in the next election.
Absolutely. Do you see again in in in things that are covered in things that are public facing conduct ahead of the midterms that you investigated on January in the January 6 case? Well, I I've been thinking about it more in terms of what needs to be done based on what we saw happen last time.
I think a thing that all of us can do is support election workers and election officials. um the last time around um we saw that those people stood firm and they were in many cases the difference. Um it's clear to me anyways that what I've seen publicly that those people are going to be put under great pressure.
So, Michael Fineberg, I I'm lifting this up and and I've had Marali set this up because um where Brad Raffensburgger became famous, I guess, in half of the country, infamous in the other half, um for refusing to see to it to find Donald Trump 11,780 votes. Um to Mark Elias's point, there are fewer Brad Graphensburgers. There are fewer of these people that Jack Smith is is holding up in the crimes he investigated.
um that took place in 2020. And so I wonder if you can just speak to what it means to have DOJ under someone like Todd Blanch putting their finger on the scales of our elections. I'm quite concerned because I want to sort of echo Mark's point but add a little bit more alarm to it in that since 2020 the Republican party particularly those most allied with Trump in potential swing states has put a lot of resources and effort and been largely successful in running new candidates for election official positions.
So we are not looking at the same apolitical non ideological ranks that did serve as that dam during the 2020 era. We're dealing with a dam that has been under substantial pressure since then. And you know there are two salient facts that we cannot forget on in all this.
First of all, Trump tried to do this before. There was the violence on January 6th, but there was also a long running conspiracy to try and stop the House and Senate from certifying the results of the election. Um, this this is not just a hypothetical or even if it is a hypothetical, it's a hypothetical with very high probability based on past history.
The second thing we need to be aware of is Trump doesn't need to steal the election, whatever that means, in some sort of caper involving Oceans 11 like escapades. He just needs to cast it in doubt. He just needs to make it seem as though one or two swing states with metropolitan blue strongholds did something untoward.
He needs an excuse to call out law enforcement or the military or reject election certificates and just seize on that kernel of doubt that his diehard followers have in order to unlaunch chaos on the country and that I think is a very real probability. Cornell I share all of these fears. Um I especially um believe that we're in such a mature phase of his election denialism and rigging of the midterms that people have become desensitized to it.
It's election day. I don't know how many newscasts started with Trump's plan to steal them. Um but to me it feels like the flashing red.
The one mitigating factor to me is that he's at 32 to 42 32 to 34% in the polls and plunging. And I wonder where you see the degree of enthusiasm for doing something um that could be criminal. Yeah.
Well, let's get into the some of the data and I think sort of the predicate for it and so I know you have me on for the data because data is fun and pollsters are sexy. So the the so the data piece of this is so the predicate of why this is happening to your point in poll after poll and and and Nicole I I'm seeing enthusiasm gaps and and in and our polling and I know others are uh as as large as I've seen in in a long long time where Democrats are by double digits. However you measure it, either enthusiasm or or certainty to vote or motivated to vote.
Democrats are are running way ahead in in all in all those segments. And not only see it in the polls, but you see it in the real world. If you look at the the primaries that have been happening in the in the country, right, non-democratic primaries, you certainly had a boost of Democrats participate in those primaries and in the off elections, you see more sporadic v Democrats voting.
So the enthusiasm is there and then they don't have the issue and issue after issue was breaking against Donald Trump and in a recent poll that I saw I think it was Clint poll out a couple days ago where Democrats even shockingly have an advantage on dealing with the economy which you and I have talked about for years has always been a stronghold of Republicans regardless of the of the actual economic facts. They Americans have always trusted Republicans more with the economy. They do not now.
So, I I I don't think it's only probable that he's going to try to interfere in the election and somehow I think it's certain. I I I think it's there's a certainty to it because they have no because he has no other choice because he's going to be held accountable. Now, for me, this is the interesting piece for me.
So, we also see in the data the idea of a democracy being under threat and the need to protect democracy is also not a middle of the tier voting issue. cons uh issue concern for voters anymore. I'm seeing it in in sometimes fourth or third even second place behind the economy.
So I think there is a sense among Americans that something is happening or something might happen and we should in fact be paying more attention to it. And I would like to see more of all of us messaging in this space to middle America and say to them listen if they if if he interferes with this election what he's saying is for this high gas prices and these high health care prices he can't be held accountable. So you have skin in the game as well.
Yeah. I I mean, Marias, how much of the sort of loss of Trump's narrative dominance, it's a term I learned from Angelo Keroson, and I I love it. I'm going to borrow it for the purposes of this conversation.
How much of that impedes their ability to do damage? And how much hypercharge is it? Like, how much do they reach for these levers because they're not winning among the American people?
Or is it an inverse relationship? Yeah. So look, this is how I think about it.
Donald Trump prefers to deal with most problems just by lying, right? So like he starts every everything with a lie and then escalates those lies. When those fail to do the damage that he wants to do and that fails to accomplish what he wants, then he usually finds a way to provoke a legal fight.
You know, this is a guy very comfortable with the courts in a way that I think people don't appreciate. you know, most politicians, if I go to them and I'm like, "We could try to solve this voting thing in court," they're they're like, "Well, we should message. We should, you know, organize.
We should turn out whatever. " And and those are all legitimate reactions, by the way. But Donald Trump's very comfortable with the courts.
Like, he was he saw the courts as a battlefield when he was a businessman. He's he's used them to try to intimidate his political opponents. Very comfortable in the courts.
So, he escalates the courts. When that fails though, what he does is he then tries to escalate his supporters. Whether it's January 6th with violence in the nation's capital, whether it is what he did with ICE officials shooting people in the streets in Minneapolis, right?
Like it usually escalates to something that is pretty ugly and and violent. And so what I'm worried about is right now we're in that we're in that that that phase of we're in courts, we're fighting. And yeah, I am proud of the work we're doing.
We're defeating them in these 20 cases. We had a big win about voter registration at at um at national naturalization ceremonies. But Donald Trump doesn't end there, right?
This he's going to take this to the next level. And it's all of our responsibility to pay attention to what that likely will be, to call it out, to litigate over it, to challenge it, to organize, to mobilize. But I don't think we're at the end of it.
And this is what happens when he does lose the messaging piece of it. You know, you listen to Michael Fineberg talking about his commitment to the $ 1. 8 billion slush fund um where monies could go to insurrectionists who violently beat cops to within inches of consciousness and and in a couple instances of their lives.
um when you hear him talking about financial awards for his supporters who were investigated and held accountable and you lay that over all of the action to seow distrust in our elections. Um what do you think extremists are hearing from him that they could get paid for violence? I'm I'm not mincing words here because I don't think people realize what that slush fund um which despite Todd Blanch's statement to committee today is still something that can very much be used in some circumstances um that's fundamentally incentivizing political violence.
He is he wants to give cash rewards to people who attacked law enforcement officers and try to stop the peaceful transition of power. This is a signal to them that there will not be consequences to their actions if they act violently again in the future. I honestly don't understand how it could be interpreted any other way.
And as of this afternoon, and I know we'll get into this later in the hour, um at his back, he has what is now the nation's largest and most powerful personal law firm, the Department of Justice, and its largest firm of private investigators and fixers, the FBI, under the control of his personal criminal attorney, who has been willing to violate policy and cross red lines. to help Donald Trump since day one and nearly at the cost of his own dream job being confirmed as attorney general. Um Cornell, I want to bring you into how Democrats respond to all of this.
I have to sneak in a break before we do that. Also ahead in today's show, more on today's primary contest and the shift away from Donald Trump from many of the voters who put him back in office just 16 months ago. We'll look at his plunging popularity on this last big day of primary contests ahead of the midterms.
Plus, the Senate Republicans who voted to advance Todd Blanch's nomination for AG will now have to own everything Todd Blanch does while serving as head of the Department of Justice. From unlawful indictments and political prosecutions to illegal kidnappings by ICE to the allout incompetence and cover up related to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. We'll get reaction also later in the show.
disgraced Republican Congressman Max Miller is facing more and growing calls to resign as the allegations against him are making it harder and harder for his party to look away. All those stories and much more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go.
We're back with Mark Cornell and Michael Fineberg. Cornell. Um to to Mark's point about how Trump is never done trying to break things.
Um in this case, our elections, um part of me wonders what would happen if he applied this to do good, right? To grow the economy or to eradicate measles, which was eradicated. Um but I um I digress.
um if he's not installing election deniers at local and statewide offices or trying to use his justice department to obtain voter data, he is perverting the United States Postal Service. And let me read you um how some blue states are responding. Um California and other blue states warn of extreme risk in backing Trump election order.
Quote, California and other Democratic le states told the Supreme Court that granting the federal government's pending request for emergency relief on President Donald Trump's mailing ballot EO would have extreme consequences ahead of the fall's midterms. They said that backing the administration would let the government rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter verification and ballot interception program that would, among other things, give the US Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities. Because of the high risk of errors and the limited window for correcting mistakes, many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting would likely be denied mail ballots and as a result would be disenfranchised.
Um, it is amazing the whole of government approach to disenfranchising voters and suppressing voters that they think won't vote for them, but I wonder if you can just speak to what you understand to be the sort of whole of government response from Democrats. You know, I I wish it weren't just from Democrats. Um the truth of the matter is we've got to have more Americans um who are who are who want democracy.
And look that that that the post office could be could be determining elections is just insane. And you know and Mark knows this better than most like so many states their primary way of voting is mail. economy.
Go to Oregon and places out west where where where male where you know mail and ballots is basically how they how they hold it hold their hold their elections and you got to think at some point and Nicole we've talked about this before but it's tough to do it on campaigns right because you know so much of the message you you know is pollsters say here's the top two messages just talk about these two messages and the message is always the economy so we don't have these conversations more broadly from a campaign standpoint But I I at some point think Americans aren't as dumb as we think they are. I think Americans can hold multiple ideas in their heads and we don't simply just have to talk to them 100% all the time about about about their pocketbook issues. I think they're smart enough to understand, okay, I have pocketbook concerns, but I also have concerns about holding my electeds and my government accountable.
And if I lose that, if I lose the ability to hold our government and our elected officials accountable, the price I pay is far more higher than sort of the pocketbook prices that that I'm paying and the next generation is paying. And I think that's a conversation that yes, I want Democrats to have, but my god, Nicole, I I want more Americans in the middle and on the left and the right to also want democracy. Yeah.
I mean, I I see John Oaf trying to make it a bigger conversation than a battle of of two parties policies coming to a head, you know, placing this election in a broader frame. Um, I think about Look how well he's doing, by the way. That should be positive to others that you can actually have this conversation and not lose.
Right. Right. Well, I think about the Republicans who tried to stand up for democracy and they all lost their jobs, people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
And I watch um Cornin um with a feeble attempt to stand up to um someone who is carrying out in public the most brazen perversion of the rule of law. Um and I think Cornin was a an attorney general or a prosecutor. I mean what do you make of voters growing fatigue Cornell with the fecklessness of Republicans who won't stand up to Trump on anything?
I think what I make of it is, and I think it was in the Fox poll a couple weeks ago, is that Democrats now have the largest generic ballot advantage in their polling as they've ever seen. And I know we've had a lot of gerrymandering conversations. So, we don't know how exactly the the rigging more rigging of going to work out, but we need a we need a broader mobilization not of the left, but also in the middle among voters.
I think and I think a lot of data points to that right now. Mark, just give me your viewers guide to what you're watching um from a protecting democracy standpoint tonight. So, look, I think the most important thing that we have not talked about that I think goes to the protection of democracy tonight and in the future, uh, and we've talked here about the failings of the Republican party.
We've talked about how Democrats could talk about this more, but I I want to pick up with something Michael said about the largest law firm being the Department of Justice. You know, I'm right now out there with my law firm. We're litigating 87 cases in 43 states.
We we are 60 lawyers. Um, there was an article this weekend in the New York Times by Michael Schmidt about one big law firm, Paul Weiss, a a law firm that, you know, if we were talking four years ago, we would be talking about the role of big law firms in standing up for democracy, not just in the big cases, but in a whole lot of little cases. And what this report showed is that this was a systematic decision by the leadership of Paul Weiss to turn away uh from its long history of doing work for democracy of standing up against uh Donald Trump and his uh his efforts to subvert it and instead to put money and greed and profit am above all of it.
And this wasn't accidental and it wasn't in one day and it wasn't one person. It was just an institutional decision by by this law firm to do this. And I think everyone in the legal industry needs to read that article.
I think everyone in law school needs to read that article. But honestly, I think everyone at every large institution needs to ask whether where they are whether they are, you know, fighting the fight or whether they are a large institution maximizing profits. Because you know when I think about what voters will face today, it's a microcosm of what they're going to face in the fall.
And if the large institutions of our government, the large corporations, the large media outlets, the large law firms, if they're not doing their part, like yeah, the voters are can hold these ideas and we will do everything we can, but it will be with a lot fewer resources fighting those election deniers than we used to have. Yeah. Um I'm familiar with that reporter and that and that story and and to me the the theme of that story is the theme of the collapse of the political party I was once a part of and now will never never support again because of its role in enabling authoritarianism in the United States of America.
And I guess my thought in reading that piece is for all of the people who make all those lawyers at that firm millionaires multiple times over and over and over and over again. I would ask all their corporate clients how many times in the history of of the human race has appeasement worked out for the appeaser. Like I'm just not sure it's a great bet for all their millions and billions of of um deals to bet on the appeasers because the history of of of the human story suggests that the appeasers usually do not prevail in the end.
Um Marias Cornell Belter, thank you for starting us off on this election day. Michael Fineberg sticks around when we come back. Donald Trump and his one-time personal attorney getting what they want at the Department of Justice.
Democrats still sounding the alarm though about the danger Todd Blanch poses to the rule of law in our country. That warning on the future of the DOJ is next. Today, Todd Blanch, the person who has bent the Department of Justice toward Donald Trump and his personal interests more than anyone who has ever worked at the Department before, is one step closer to being confirmed as AG and finally getting his coveted job promotion after two GOP holdouts, Senators Tom Tillis and John Cornin, cave to Blanch's hollow written commitments to them about Donald Trump's slush fund and sweeping tax immunity.
The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Blanch's nomination to be the next Attorney General of the United States to the full Senate. The vote to advance Blanch did not come before these damning indictments from Democrats of Blanch's leadership and Republicans on the committee folding. Today, I think is a uh sad and embarrassing day for this committee.
As it looks like on a partyline vote, we are going to advance out of this committee probably the most discreditable person ever to seek the office of attorney general of the United States. The reasons to vote against him number in the hundreds. I don't know where this committee goes after it stops being taken seriously.
The president reiterated just the other night that he hates me, which I could tell you wounds me deeply. He's entitled to his own views about me or anybody else. He is not entitled, however, to use the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents.
And the day we say that's okay and the day we confirm an attorney general who says that's okay is the day that the rule of law becomes merely an unenforcable idea. We are in dangerous waters. We are turning the ideals of justice and this committee into a mockery by letting the least qualified person, a person proven to do Donald Trump's will over the law.
He is about Trump and not truth. He is about corruption and not the Constitution. He is about being Donald Trump's lawyer and not the people's lawyer.
This is so deeply wrong. We will ru the day that we let this man have this much power under such a corrupt president. When pressed after the vote on his capitulation to Todd Blanch and Donald Trump, here's what Senator Cordin had to say for himself.
president was saying as recently as yesterday that he likes the idea of this fund, that he wants to find some way to pay these people. Does that concern you as someone who's tried to fight against getting this anti-weaponization fund in place? Well, there's nothing we could do to to uh to reign in the president when he said he likes the fund and he wishes still exists, but the fact of the matter it's dead and uh that's all we could do under these circumstances.
quote, "There's nothing we can do except for the little complicating fact that you are a co-equal branch of government, but that's a real important window into how they see themselves. " Quote, "Nothing we can do to reign in the president. " I want to bring in senior investigative reporter Carol Len.
Michael Fineberg is with us as well. Carol, your thoughts. It is sort of striking to see Senator Cornin and Senator Tillis, who both basically had President Trump up against a corner for a short period of time, say that there's nothing they could do under these circumstances.
I mean, nothing they could do would be to not vote the nominee out of committee. Um, that's one thing they could have done. Um perhaps they believed that Donald Trump's threat to basically install Blanch as an acting attorney general and revive the fund separate and apart from Tillis and Cornin's pressure was uh essentially a a big loser for them that they were going to have some sort of pie or or embarrassment in their faces because the president would get exactly what he wanted no matter what kind of pressure they applied.
But they could have stopped this vote and that isn't really up for debate. I've heard many people Nicole say, including on your program, that the senators believe that that Blanch is the best they could get under this president. Um, but the best they could get is a attorney general who has made clear since the moment he was put in the acting role that he'll do whatever Donald Trump asks him to do, including fasttracking uh a case he knew was a loser and the previous attorney general thought was a loser, the Sea Shell's case, um, the minute he had the chance to begin auditioning for this job.
I wonder too where they think their legacies go when he's someone who's participated in threats against judges, something you and I have talked about over the last week. Um, these are people who've couched or excused or created a permission structure for themselves at different points in the Trump story um by saying they cared about the people that he was appointing to the judiciary. Todd Lynch endangers uh the safety of judges.
So say the judges. So say the judges. And it's real.
It's it's really palpable, Nicole. On the federal bench, regardless of which president appointed you, from which party, judges are uh quite frightened and rightfully so for themselves and for their family members. Again, I think you and I have talked about this.
It's a tender topic. the more details you get into to explain this to the public how serious this is, the more you offer clues and maybe even more inspiration to people who want to threaten those judges. But I think the bigger picture here is that Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of that kind of threat, that rhetoric that he pushes so hard uh that that encourages some loose cannons, some incredibly unstable people, some hugely ardent followers to threaten these these pillars of our rule of law.
that kind of threat has been a huge political benefit for him. I mean, please see the the picture of January 6th. Um, his December 19, 2020 tweet, you know, come to Washington and and it'll be wild.
and then sending people who were his supporters to the capital to fight like hell for their country, including to threaten that they would um you know gather up the vice president by the neck and hang him, hang Mike Pence. This was the chant that the Secret Service agents of Mike Pence heard outside his office window at the capital when they decided we have got to get the hell out of here. So threats have always worked for Donald Trump.
Um, I am remembering and I'm sorry to go on a little bit, but I am remembering the first time this put a chill in my spine and it was watching a rally in 2016, if I'm remembering right, in Louisville, Kentucky, where a black female student who was exercising her first amendment rights to protest Donald Trump's presidency was pushed around like a pinata by older white male veterans that Donald Trump had whipped into a frenzy with the promise that he would pay their legal bills if they got in trouble for smacking somebody around. I remember um the same summer of 16 in Chicago when he made comments about how he liked it when cops rough people up. He said, "Don't be afraid of roughing them up.
" um people that were taken out of his rallies. Um I want to uh press both of you more on what um following up on what Senator Cy Booker says about ruing the day um that any of these senators voted to confirm Todd Blanch. I have to sneak in a quick break first.
We'll all be back on the other side.
