 American issues take one. I'm Jay Fidel. This is think tech. We're going to talk about Trump's machinations around documents and we have for this Cynthia Sinclair long time contributor and Jeffrey Portnoy, our esteemed special guest. Hi gentlemen ladies. What does machinations mean. Strange maneuvers. Can I say that. I went to public school. It's time for you to go back. What what grade would you like to never mind. I play Scrabble I only play Scrabble if people don't use more than two syllables. But don't play for money. So, you know, it strikes me that the real question here is this a Trump is at war with the FBI the DOJ and maybe the larger law enforcement government community. In general, and every day brings us new revelations about it. And he's really occupying the space, so to speak, and somehow putting the basic investigation, you know, in the background. And in terms of the news, we're not following that so much as we're following his machinations. So my question to you. Let me start with you Cynthia. We are at war or rather he is at war with the FBI with the DOG with the Biden government in general. Why, why is he doing this now. And I know there is a lot of possible reasons but can you identify some of them. All right first machination means a plot or a scheme. I just thought I'd throw that out there. Thank you. Thank you. And Jeff, thanks. Like the word the plots better and schemes even better. I can spell both of those. So schemes sort of tends to imply that they're not exactly legal or up and up above board right schemes kind of sounds like something that somebody does behind, you know, in the dark when it's not really right. Okay, so that leaves me right to that. New York Times had a great article that I, I really recommend everyone to read all of, but the title is Trump without the presidency's projections and protections struggles for a strategy. No, he's gone through first, it didn't happen. Right, he only took what was his, then it happened but it was all declassified before it was sent out. No, then it was all declassified upon standing order. Then it was let's see they had no right to come all he had to do was, all we had to do is ask and he would have been happy to give it back. Let's see what there must be at least 10 different plots that he has tried to put forward as his reason, right for for taking all these things home. I have yet to hear anything as to why he retained those other boxes, when all he gave was the 15. He does not say anything about that. But we do know that his lawyer has now, or two lawyers of his have now filed something in another federal house, what 80 miles away from the one that's handling this one. And they didn't, they said they want a special master to go over all of the things that were that were recovered after the search. It's funny that he didn't even mention that. And usually that's done immediately so that it stops any other investigation without being done, you know, without that special master being present. Well, that's usually done immediately. This is what two weeks later. And I believe the reason he's doing it is because he heard it on MSNBC. No, I remember was doing a show and he was interviewing one of the lawyers that Trump had asked to come work for him, but the lawyer refused he said no no I don't think it's for me. So, as, as I as is, I interviewing him, he says, Well, what I would have done first thing I would have done is appoint a special master. And then what the next day, they're filing paperwork to ask for a special master. I think the media needs just stop giving these guys so many ideas on where to go next. Well, you know, you have to look at this on multiple levels. On one level politically, Trump is a master. He is so far ahead of the Democrats, the media. He has learned how to manipulate his supporters. And what he's doing is brilliant from a political level. It's brilliant. He has galvanized his folks who were losing emphasis on, you know, the stealing the election, it's kind of getting worn. Now, he's the first president to ever have his home invaded by the, you know, enemy. They came in, they ransacked his house. He files a 29 page affidavit filled with brilliant political rhetoric, and he's galvanized his 35% base, which was becoming ungalvanized on a single issue. Whatever anybody wants to say, it's a politically great move by Trump. And every time he files a lawsuit, whether he wins or loses, his base says, go get him and reads what he puts in. And as long as he can find lawyers who will work without pay because that's his history, he will continue to do these kinds of things. And really what he may or may not have done in taking documents that were classified. That's a whole other issue. But, you know, by by forcing the Justice Department to come in on a raid using his word, and Fox's word. It's brilliant. And the Justice Department was, you know, left with a Hobson's choice. Do they give him this political opportunity and allow him to keep whatever he may have taken, or do they go and seize that stuff and deal with the fallout. And right now, he's winning. And I believe he's winning in the court of public opinion and not just with his base, because the Justice Department is put in a position of fighting to keep this secret which they need to do to continue their criminal investigation. While the election is two months off. So, sorry to say, but as bad a man as he is, he certainly knows how to go with the political wins. So Jeff, what's what's the proper response. What can be done by the DOJ, you know done by the Democratic Party. Yeah, I don't think the word is proper, you know, proper response. There are two responses, political response and legal response. I think they got their hands tied politically, because they can't divulge legally what's in the application for the subpoena nor what they see, they're stuck. They are stuck now they're in court fighting back and forth on whether the magistrate is going to unseal bits and pieces he went from saying yeah I might to now know I don't think I can unseal because whatever I would unseal would make the rest of this worthless. So you know I don't know what you do I think you just have to continue to count the days till the September till the January 6 committee issues this report coming in the next two weeks. And then hopefully something can move forward on the legal front so that people can see exactly what was taken and not have to rely on Trump's affidavit in support of his motion and the special master I've been a special master. It's a convenient tool that a judge uses so that the judge himself or herself doesn't have to spend hours and hours going through documents so they appoints usually some attorney and say hey can you look at this stuff and be my eyes and ears. And, you know, I think, asking for a special master was brilliant, whether it was later or not as a whole other issue, and I suspect one will be appointed. But so what the special master can't release the information anyway, you know, I just think they did what they had to do to continue their investigation, but it opened up an opportunity for Trump to re galvanize his base. And that's on the political level but on the legal level you know you talk about a special master, you know, there have been dozens of people Trump's acolytes who do not have security clearances I saw one piece that he doesn't have a security clearance. And these documents have moved from one to the other they've been, you know, tossed around traveled. God knows what reorganized and maybe taken, you know, I'm not convinced that we have more back yet. So, you know, to put a special master in you do have a question of security clearance, even for the judge to go through them document by document why does he have to do that. There was a there was an affidavit there was a warrant there was a seizure as they thought they do that's it. Now you let the, you know, the investigator continuous work. So what Trump would like to do is get as many people involved in this as he possibly can, and put the whole notion of security clearance and security information and nuclear secrets aside. And he's done that, and that is also brilliant, you know, creating the chaos. But, you know, since you you had your hand up what are you going to add to that. Well, I don't know as we can give him all the credit for being brilliant. He has had a lot of smart people that are giving him advice. And so I don't know as I credit him would be smart enough. But the overarching thing is that he wants to be center of stage. He wants to create chaos. Every day is a new crazy day for him, and he is succeeding in that. And he is sucking the oxygen out of out of the FBI's investigation and he gets his accolades in the Congress to come out day after day that when we take over on November 2. We're going to investigate the FBI. We're going to have hearing after hearing on on Garland and the Justice Department. We're going to get to the bottom of this raid on a president's private residents when he's no longer president day after day after day. And frankly, November 2 is six weeks away. So they have a tremendous advantage, because it's unlikely any of us are going to have a clue what was seized by that. So, you know, the irony, they want to defund the FBI what happened with defunding the police. You know, it's whatever whatever terms you wanted a given moment. The flavor of the day. The FBI director was appointed by Trump but they don't rarely they rarely bring that up, if ever. Well they tried from day one to corrupt the FBI you know that the book and the movie about James Comey. What are you going to say, Cynthia. Oh, I was saying and he signed off on the warrant that went to Mar-a-Lago to get this search and seizure. Yeah, I mean the whole idea, when you think about it, it's almost. It's almost like a grim fairy tale. It's impossible to conceive. If we had had this conversation, five years ago, hypothetically, Jay, you wanted to have a program on. Can there ever be a time in our democracy when there's going to be a search warrant issued to a former president. He left for a half hour and said, What are you, what are you on drugs. This is what our country has become. It is a terrible black mark on the country, and to think that a third of the country believes that this was a political move to defame a former president is a very commentary on where we are. A troubling thing about that. If I might, I think you're forgetting that you guys probably would have laughed pretty hard too if anybody had said that a former president was going to take National Archives top secret National Archives and keep them in an unlocked basement. Probably would have laughed into you. Probably. This reflect that that one third and maybe others in the middle, you know, they kind of, they kind of believe Trump, and he's cast so much doubt on the government and, you know, legitimate law enforcement that, you know, they can't really see the clarity. You know, there's there's the point here is that he improperly illegally took these things. And yet that seems to be buried. Why is it buried. Why do people, you know, set that aside. He's very influential people believe him. Why, why J. Yeah, there's one quote from Trump that all of us should never forget. You know what it is. It's mine. No. You got it. I can walk down Park Avenue or Broadway in New York and shoot somebody and no one will think less of me. Don't ever that's a paraphrase. That's Donald Trump. That's been his life as a person as a realtor, as a slumlord, as a president. The man is Teflon. He's the greatest thing in the world. And you can be Teflon when you're a slumlord. But when you become Teflon as the president of the United States, we've got real problems. Well, I mean, he's, he's, you know, he's gone far beyond the mob. The mob would pay off a few policemen, you know, maybe a prosecutor here or there. You know, maybe you said born a witness or a juror, but Trump goes right to the top. It's probably worse than the mob ever did. So what, you know, you're predicting some bad things, but I don't know if we've gotten to all of it yet because, you know, if, if they indeed persist in the attack on the law enforcement community, what it means is when they get back in they will not only undermine the law enforcement community, they will use the law enforcement community to deprive us of civil rights, to take cases against the media, to take cases against anyone who criticizes them. So it turns the whole thing on its head. We are, we're in, you know, you say brilliant planner, you're right. And this is the chaos phase. But after the chaos phase, you have the assimilation of the consolidation of new power and the new power is, it's not let's kill all the lawyers because he has so many possibilities there that wouldn't work. Let's kill all the media. Let's kill anyone who opposes us. And, you know, he doesn't have to be president to achieve that. We are seeing that now, aren't we? It's time to re, time to reread Lord of the Flies. It is. Because that's what we're living in. Fiction has become nonfiction. Fortunately, we still have some constraints and restraints that have not permitted the total takeover, like in Lord of the Flies, but we are very close. We are very close. Just imagine if in 2024, this Republican Party, as sick and deranged as it is, takes over the Senate and the presidency. Get ready. Lots of us will be leaving for greener pastures because this country will be a country that no one has ever seen or even heard of since the Puritans. Yeah, or since Germany. Well, yeah. You know, I do worry about that. And I feel that people don't realize how close we are to that. They don't realize that. You know, right now, you lead your life in an ordinary fashion. It doesn't affect you unless you tune into programs like this. You don't think about it. And yet, as you say, it's just weeks away where we're going to have this really violent change in our politics and our political system. And then it's going to be a real cold shocker. And, you know, I mean, I like to find some good news. And you know, you see the media is always trying to find some good news to post it up to say there's some good news. The recent polls and even the Senate majority leader have basically conceded that unless something dramatic happens in the next six weeks, the Democrats will hold on to the Senate and they even pick up a voter to now. Who knows who would have said that two months ago, I suddenly wouldn't have it's pretty likely they're going to get creamed in the house. The question is by how many but if they can hold on to the Senate, they can stop anything horrible from happening other than the House holding hearing after hearing, but they won't be able to pass any legislation. Now if something happens in the next six weeks and some of these, even the Republican leadership admits are awful candidates. That was pretty amazing what McConnell said the other day. You can say what you want about McConnell. He's pretty duplicitous. Big word for me, by the way, can't spell it. But when he comes out and says he can help you when he comes out and says we're not going to take the Senate because we don't have very good candidates. He's not talking about, you know anything other than their morons, their morons in Georgia, and in Ohio, and in Pennsylvania, and wherever Oz is running. Oh Pennsylvania I forgot. I mean, this is a joke. This is a joke and now the Republicans even admit well we should have found people with an IQ over 90, and they probably would have won. You know one of Herschel Walker's platform points. Go ahead. There's so many of trees trees. They're a quote there are too many damn trees and quote. We've got to get rid of the trees. We're laughing. The guy is the Republican nominee to be the US Senator from Georgia. We can laugh all we want. We can laugh about Pennsylvania. Thank God they're idiots, but they got nominated. Yeah, well, it's taking us back to the first place but but maybe with it with a Democratic Senate we at least stop some of the real. Well, yeah, no, that's the only hope because you said is there any hope. Well, what about the base you know I mean there's been so many reports about the base, you know, leaving him or shrinking in some way. Where's the proof. I can't give you proof I can only give you, you know, these, you know, these these newspaper articles that talk about, you know, some some kind of poll. But we, you know, we certainly we can't accept that as evidence. And I don't know where where does it go it's not it's not entirely poppycock there must be some members of the base saying wait a minute. Yeah, look what happened to her. I wouldn't consider her part of the base job. Yeah, what do you think about that is that is that going to change is this Cheney actually going to you know take her new political organization forward and and grab some members of the base, grab some of the more conservative classical Well, I think I think Liz Cheney has got a very steel-eyed focus on doing anything and everything she can to undermine Trump and his reputation and the truth of who he really is. And so I think that is a good thing. One of the things that's a very big danger for Democrats is this new $1.8 billion of dark money that is suddenly going to get to just infuse the Republican, you know, the whole GOP. That's a lot of money to, you know, to spread around. And in the article that I was reading about this dark money that had come down. It said that already, that $100 million is this even possible. $100 million had already been spent on legal fees for Trump in New York and in Georgia. I don't believe that at all. I thought that was like, wait a minute, how much credit and credibility do we give to this dark money thing too, because it was all in the same article that I read. Well, even $100 million, you know, $1.6 billion makes you feel pretty good about what taking crazy options, machinations, if you will. And I think that's funding his exuberance on this. What's the definition of dark money? Well, you don't know where it came from. In this case, we do know in this case, the article I think you're talking about said that it came from a tech mogul by the name of Harry H. A. R. R. E. Yeah, well, L. L. E. I, you know, as long as the Supreme Court keeps Citizens United get get used to it. I mean, you know, I think sometimes the liberals fight the wrong battles. You know, they fight this battle about so called dark money coming from billionaires. They're getting plenty of money from billionaires for their own quote dark money. I just think they, they don't focus on winning issues. You know, we talked in a couple of shows ago against abortion, and maybe that showed itself yesterday in the primary in New York, you know, where the Democrat beat the Republican. Yeah, that's a decent sign. I didn't think abortion be candid was going to carry the day, but gas prices are going down inflation is steady. I don't think it's going to pass the huge spending bill for climate control, whatever. I don't think the Democrats are going to win the house, but a student laws today, student laws. Yeah, well, that's a smart political move, even though it's really, we could talk about that. You borrow money and then somebody saves you and says you don't have to pay it back. Is that not political pandering or what? But it helps. I'm sorry, but I think you've got it backwards. I think that the Republicans are going to be able to use that one. See, there goes the Democrats spending more money. They're going to use that as a Democrat. Absolutely. But you know, the Democrats figured there's a lot more voters between 18 and 34. That'll go to the polls and remember that they just save what 10 grand at least I didn't read all story. I think everybody gets 10 grand off. The same number of people that are saying that are the same number of people that we're thinking are going to be part of his base and stick with him. But yet, so they're not that important or they, so it's like a who knows what I know that a lot of the polls like Jay was saying, a lot of the polls coming out over this last week. Including like you pointed out that, you know, the majority leader, I mean, the minority leader in the Senate. Oh, you know, Mitch McConnell comes out and says that he doesn't think they're going to be able to keep the house because of the quality of candidates. Because every one of those candidates that he's talking about are the ones that are claiming, oh, the big live, that's what they're saying they're all about the big live. And so I think that's something to look at. You know, the problem is, is nobody standing up and saying, you know, really a special master for this. It's an investigation. You don't, you don't need to, you know, redact the affidavit. It is the affidavit and it stands secret. It's got to be secret. It involves secret information, nuclear information. We can't let that out. What are you guys doing? No, but it's it's a political ploy. That's exactly what they want. But, but yes, but somebody, somebody has to stand up and say that they don't want a special master. They want some court to say no. That's what their base wants. They don't want a special master. It's brilliant. It's brilliant politics. I guarantee you if you got them in a room and put them under a lie detector, they would say, no, we don't want to spend. We want somebody to say we can't have one so we can then go out and say, look how unfair this is. It was a neutral person. It's brilliant. And Jeff, that would explain why their, their motions were written so badly that the judge had to send it back to them and say, wait a minute, you need to. Well, they didn't write a legal document. They wrote a political screen. Right. I think you had to make a suggestion like so are you asking for us to put a hold on this so that nobody can do anything until the decision is made. And it's like, the lawyer should have been asking that and the judge should not have been recommending it or, you know, that's what gets me is the judge wait a minute shouldn't the judge just stay. The judge I've ever been in front of or dealt with. They can't tell you what to say, or what to ask for. They can only do rule on what you asked for. That's a judge's job right. We don't have we don't have clarity. We don't have any. Peter from the Democratic Party standing up and saying steely, steely like what did you call her Liz Cheney steel steel clad, you know, clear thinking and saying, you know, this is all chaos. He's created the chaos, but I want to go back to one thing you said, which is really worth dwelling on. So he took these documents when he left the White House. And he took me took him here. He took him there. And some went to the archives, but most of them didn't. It's clearly an offense. It's clearly wrong. All the lawyers around him must have known that and yet it happened. And your point early early early in this conversation, Jeff, is that this is part of a larger plan. The time bomb he created in leaving, just like that woman Murphy who refused to accept, you know, that Biden was the president, the administrator of the GSA refused to accept that Biden was the president. This was another time bomb intended to hobble Biden's administration but also and this is the revelation now also part of a long term plan where he would get through these ridiculous negotiations with the archives, archives people and save them and give them a whole bunch of, you know, delayed tactics and never actually give them anything. All I'm just testing this on you all in the plan that ultimately he was going to force, as you said, the FBI to do an investigation if it dared and to do the search warrant. And it comes what 10 months later, whatever it is, nine months later. And he planned this early. This was all a sequence of events, a bunch of step transactions, where the ultimate plan was to get into a contention and use it politically with his base. Would you agree with me that he had not in detail but the general idea going from the beginning. I don't know about that. But as I said earlier, I think stop the steel is running out of momentum. And I think they thought we need something else to galvanize our base. What do we need. Well, we could use some inner city riots but unless some police officers go ahead and shoot some more black people. We may not have that. What else can we do. I'm not sure they were smart enough to figure out. Well, we're just going to take a bunch of papers and force them to come into my home and students and sees them. But the way it's worked out Jay, that was my point. It's given them something to galvanize about six weeks before the election. And yeah, they're still stopped to steal people but it doesn't have the same momentum. This has given them true momentum for his base to go to the polls, or do worse, unfortunately, right. That's the really sick and scary thing. The threats on FBI agents, the threats on judges, the threats on election officials. This has given them something to rally around. And that's what they're doing. Look at Fox day after day they don't stop to steal anymore. They talk about how can you enter the home of a former president and sees boxes. I mean, that was my point. I don't know fantastic lie. It's a war. It's creating a kind of more legalistic insurrection, if you will, with the same people involved. And what is missing in the scene and we're going to get to closing points in a minute. What's missing in the scene is somebody standing up Jeff and saying exactly what you're saying. And what Cynthia is saying. Hey, let's look at this, you know, with clarity. What is really going on here. And you know it's based on ignorance and misinformation and disinformation of the same sort of lying as stop the steal was. Same thing. And nobody nobody from the Democratic side is getting up there to do any leadership. And this, this is like one hand clapping. That's what we have. This is a war with one hand clapping. He holds the territory. And we can't the Democratic Party can stop it. Okay, well, that those are my thoughts, but let me hear your final thoughts about the subject and remember this is, you know, how are the machinations doing. Where are they going how they were how they are affecting our, our country. Let's do you first Cynthia. Okay, well, we know that that cash Patel guy and so Brett Solomon, I can't remember the Solomon's first name. Cash Patel talked about the magic, the magic declassification, the magic declassification. We go back a little bit like we're talking about all these trying to connect the dots all the way through. Cash Patel and the Solomon guy were actually appointed to work with the archives before they even left the office in the last weeks before Trump left. That's when he appointed those two guys to do all that stuff. Then immediately as this whole FBI search and that, you know, they're trying to get documents back from the archives, all of that stuff. Cash Patel has been talking and talking and, you know, just covering their butt coming up with this idea or that idea to this cover story or that cover story. Suddenly now, we don't really hear anything from him. Where did he go. We know that January 6 committee did interview him for about six hours. But then since then, we don't really hear much from him. I wonder why I wonder what happened. Maybe he's gone over to the other side, we can hope. Right. But we do know that there was just way more than just Trump involved. And in one of the articles that I read cash Patel is quoted as saying, Well, we were trying to get this that the other and his lawyers wouldn't let us get it and I thought, well, but they wouldn't, but they wouldn't let you get half of the stuff you got, if they'd known you were doing it. So we know that there was a lot of underhanded, like we talk about often that Trump sort of runs things like a mob boss. Look at these little under mob lings, you know, going about doing all his dirty work, planting all these crazy stories, firing up his base. I think that they are doing more to fire up his base about things, then, then this is going to fire them up against the I feel like we've got a we've got a stranglehold on our own throat. And we can't we can't function and ultimately going to be fatal. Jeff, what your thoughts to, you know, assimilate all these points. What are your conclusions and by the way you I'm going to leave you with a visual. And they have a split screen. One half of the screen shows a document with the word classified on it with a line through it. And the other half of the screen shows 20 FBI agents storming the president's house with vehicles and flashing lights. What do you think is more effective in influencing public opinion. I'll leave you with that. Okay, I'd only say that that somebody needs to clarify you're right I mean you know you're the suggestion you make is correct, but somebody needs to classify. The classification process. We cannot, you know, at one point Trump said, I'm doing this for the public. I want I want all these documents to be made public because I believe, really, I believe in transparency. How about making nuclear secrets transparent that's what we need to preserve our place in the in the geopolitical world. I hear you, and I agree with both of you that the media, the Democratic Party, the Republicans that have an IQ over 110 have not made a convincing argument to the American people about how serious it is for the president to have taken not just classified information, but nuclear secrets, because I don't think that point has been made at all to the majority of the American public. And I don't think they know a classified document from an unclassified document because it's so nebulous. Jeff, can you answer one question that Cynthia brought up and that is, is Trump got his hand on all of this is this the maestro orchestrating, or is it creating or is it the maestro just creating chaos, where the actors come in from backstage and and who knows who's going to appear next. I mean you got guys like Bannon and other people like that. I mean, yeah, I don't think Trump's doing this on his own I don't think he's smart enough. But I think he's smart enough to bring in people who are smart enough and know how to manipulate the political system. That's how we won the presidency. These are the same people. And how many did the Justice Department try to indict how many are in prison, and how many are still walking the streets. You know how many got clemency. These are the brains behind Trump. Oh, oh God, we have to go now. All right, Jeffrey Portnoy and Cynthia Sinclair, thank you so much for joining us today. Great discussion, really appreciate you coming. Always a pleasure. Take care. Mahalo.