But Her Deposition

Barb (00:10)
Welcome back to Hashtag Sisters-in-Law with Jill Winebanks, Joyce Vance, Kimberly Atkins-Stor, and me, Barb McQuaid. We’re really excited about our upcoming trip to Colorado. Looking for the blue skies and the white mountains. Can’t wait to be there. We’ll be doing a live show in Denver at the Cervantes Masterpiece on April 23rd. Tickets are available now at politicon.com slash tour. And we can’t wait to see you there.

We’ll have more live shows to announce very soon as we figure out what cities we’re going to travel to. Let us know if you’d like us to come to your town. Today we’ll be discussing the latest fallout with the Epstein files, the Trump administration’s efforts to rig the upcoming election, and what’s going on with the Defense Department and artificial intelligence. But first, I wanted to ask my sisters if they had any interesting takeaways from this week’s State of the Union address. Did you all watch it or did you read some of the highlights from it? Any takeaways, Jill, how about you?

Jill (01:15)
Well, I watched a large part of it and also followed the commentary on it. And I guess there’s two takeaways. One is the relief I felt when it was over.

The longest, but the most lies ever, ever. And then I do have to say that my ears perked up when he said he had lifted 2.4 million people off food stamps and he didn’t lift them anywhere. He threw them off. He terminated the program and shame on the fact checkers who said instead of that that was a blatant lie, that it needed context. It didn’t need context. It was totally untrue. So those were my two most vivid reactions.

Joyce (02:01)
You know, Jill has had a varied career, but there’s one job she hasn’t had, and I think she just made herself the leading candidate for it. I want Jill as the new New York Times fact checker. Yes.

Barb (02:12)
How about you, Joyce? Did you have any takeaways from the State of the Union?

Jill (02:12)
I would take that job.

Joyce (02:19)
You know, I watched the whole thing. was in Montgomery, Alabama, actually, at the Southern Poverty Law Center giving a talk that night. And I went back home and watched it. And my takeaway was this, for those who were using bingo cards and taking a drink every time Trump hit on a familiar theme, if you had been taking a drink every time Trump told the truth, you would have stayed sober.

Barb (02:43)
All right, that’s fair. How about you Kim, any takeaways?

Kim (02:47)
The look on Chief Justice John Roberts’ face throughout the entirety of the event, whenever a camera hit him, looked like sheer pain. Like it looks like… mean, he was memefied. You he looked like he was about to sit for a root canal. Like he seemed so very unhappy. Of course, the president was not very happy with him either. And did…deride the court a little bit. I honestly expected him to do more, but that was, he spoke about that in like the first part of the State of the Union where he seemed to still sort of be staying on script before he totally like took a left turn and then just went all full Trump. But yeah, that was chilly, especially compared to last year, remember, where he grabbed Robert’s hand and said, thank you. Thank you so much. I won’t forget. ⁓

Joyce (03:40)
He forgot.

Barb (03:41)
⁓ that’s great. Yeah, in fact, I saw somebody describe Kim that exact picture of Chief Justice Roberts looking very concerned and it said something like, Dr. Frankenstein listening to Frankenstein’s monster, realizing what he has wrought. ⁓ Justice Kagan also looked quite incredulous. Like I cannot believe what is coming out of this guy’s mouth. I don’t know if you saw any of her facial.

Joyce (04:00)
Perfect. That is so perfect.

Wouldn’t you love to know what their conversation was? He goes into her chambers and he’s like, Elena, you’ve got to come with me. You can’t make me do alone. she’s like, no, no, I’m not going to do it. And he’s like, I’ll get you a better window view or something. I mean, what did he promise her to get her to go?

Barb (04:26)
⁓ man. You know, ⁓ I don’t know that I have any takeaways any different from what you have. I some really mixed feelings about the USA men’s hockey team. I kind of feel like they allowed themselves to be exploited. There was such a feel good story. know, the men and the women both won these gold medals over Canada. ⁓ Should have been just, you know, a wonderful triumph of ⁓ sportsmanship and athletic achievement and national pride. And instead,

you know, we see politicians sort of trotting them out like they’re mascots or something. And I really hate the way sports has become sort of politicized. All of us should be able to enjoy this championship. All of us should be able to share in it with these great champions. And I don’t fault any of them who showed up. I think the only person I fault in all, you know, the women declined an invitation to the White House. I say kudos to them.

I don’t know, the only person I fault in all of this politicization of sports, I think is Cash Patel, who shows up in the men’s locker room. He says he’s in Italy, the FBI director, for work because he’s there for security purposes for the Olympics. Okay, whatever, maybe he’s there for work. And then he decides to go to the game to show his support. Okay, that’s fine. And then he decides to stop into the winning locker room because he was invited, I’m putting that in air quotes, to congratulate them. Okay, that’s fine too then how does he find himself chugging a beer with the winning team? If he’s working and he’s on duty, why is he chugging a beer? And he’s just conflating these roles of being sort of celebrity and government official. Pick one cash, you don’t get to be both because I really was offended at the way he was portraying the FBI as this beer drinking frat brother.

Joyce (06:02)
you

Barb (06:20)
bro of the USA hockey team.

Joyce (06:23)
You know, you’re kind, Barb, but I’m not willing to let the rest of the folks involved off that easily. I was ashamed for the men’s hockey team. I loved their win. I enjoy their eagerness to play the sport. I even understand how something like that could have happened and gotten out of their control. But I felt like they abandoned their sisters on the women’s hockey team in many ways. And I loved the response of the women’s hockey team, which I thought was more in line with people who believe in preserving the spirit of the Olympics, which is not about provoking hate or diminishing women, either as athletes or in modern life. So maybe my reaction was overboard, but my jaw dropped when I saw the men’s hockey team filter in.

Jill (07:07)
Yeah, you know, I just have to add in terms of sports, I was really offended when the president said he was giving a medal of freedom to the goalie and that the goalie was giving him and did give him his Olympic gold medal. Donald Trump does not deserve a gold medal and it was-

Joyce (07:26)
He can ⁓

Jill (07:29)
Of course, of course, he’s going to keep and the FIFA award and what I mean.

Barb (07:34)
We should give him our Webby.

Joyce (07:37)
that’s such a good idea. ⁓ will take one for the team and we can give him one of the hashtag sisters in law webbies. Good call.

Kim (07:39)
You got it.

Barb (07:39)
Send them one of our web-

Kim (07:47)
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Kim (09:59)
you

Well, there was a lot more news related to the Epstein files this week. Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, sat for closed door depositions in Chappquah, New York. And that came after GOP members of the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed them and even threatened them with contempt. ⁓ talk about

bombshell revelations that we have learned from these sit downs, just for anybody reading the caption that was filled with sarcasm. And what we’ve heard from the Clintons ⁓ reaction afterwards, as we’re taping this, I should say, I believe Bill Clinton is still ⁓ testifying in his hearing on a Friday afternoon. And that was even a leaked photo, Jill. Tell us what was going on.

Jill (11:02)
So if you can’t hear the sarcasm in Kim’s voice, maybe you can hear it in mine. The bombshells were that she was asked about Pizzagate and UFOs. Okay, that has a lot to do with Epstein and what the Oversight Committee is doing. No, there were actually no bombshells. She had previously given a sworn statement that said,

I don’t know anything. I never was at his island. never met him that I know of. And there was nothing for her to talk about. Why was she called is a really big question. And yet, despite the fact they ran out of questions and had to revert to UFOs and Pizzagate, they kept her for, what, 11 hours? That’s ridiculous. I mean, it just was offensive.

Kim (11:53)
beat her Benghazi testimony is probably close to point.

Joyce (11:58)
and Ben Gossie was 11.

Jill (11:59)
But

I think you’re right, good with numbers. this may have been nine. It was a ridiculously long deposition that ran out of questions. She said, I never met Epstein. I did know Ghislaine slightly. She was a guest of someone we invited to Chelsea’s wedding. She wasn’t invited, she just was the plus one. I mean, there was no reason for her to testify. And what was she supposed to say? Well, my husband told me,

mean, that’s not anything that’s relevant testimony, hearsay, and it shouldn’t have been asked. The leaked photo is totally a mystery. Why was it leaked? What did they expect? It did cause some chaos. It stopped the deposition for a while because it was a clear violation of the rules. Remember,

Kim (12:47)
And the photo was the photo taken by Congresswoman Boebert or someone in our staff.

Jill (12:52)
Well,

was circulated by Boebert, so presumably it was taken by her, but she gave it to a right-wing talk show. And it was then published and people became aware of it. And it was upsetting because the rules were that it was going to be private. And it was against the will of the Clintons, both of whom wanted a public testimony. But the committee insisted that it be done behind closed doors.

But we will get to see it ourselves. It will be released, presumably within a few days. But why would you send out that picture? I cannot even think of a reason. The Democrats have said it was very gracious of her to continue even after this violation of the rules. And I think one of the best things of this was she started her deposition with a statement that

I think maybe we can put it on our show notes because the statement is really great. But let me just read one sentence. Actually, I think it’s two sentences, one paragraph. As I stated in my sworn declaration on January 13th, I had no idea about their criminal activities, referring to Galane and Epstein. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes, or offices. I have nothing to add to that.

So how did they manage to keep her for nine hours after that? She knew nothing. It was a total insult to the committee and to us as American citizens that they wasted their time on that.

Kim (14:30)
Yeah, I would agree with that. mean, while I think that there are, there were questions that I think Hillary Clinton should have answered. One of them was like, why was Ghislaine Maxwell invited to a wedding? ⁓ She wasn’t invited. Was that her? Well, that’s, let me finish. ⁓ There were questions beforehand. We knew that she had gone to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and we didn’t know the connection as to why she may have secured an invite to that. And she explained.

that she wasn’t, she was brought as plus one to wedding. Anybody who’s ever thrown a wedding knows that plus ones happen and you don’t have control over them. But that’s something that could have been an email. That could have been, that did not require her to show up and be ⁓ deposed in a closed door deposition. mean, that just wasn’t necessary. This was overkill. But one thing I will say that I think is interesting about the depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton is that Republicans may come to regret that.

Because if now a precedent has been set that presidents, former presidents and former first ladies can be brought in and deposed about Epstein, guess what depositions are predicting the future if there is a change of leadership in the House. I’m just saying, I’m just saying.

Barb (15:47)
do know one First Lady who has been pictured standing with Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn.

Kim (15:52)
Do you?

Joyce (15:53)
Like not to make light, because this is serious business, but if they get subpoenaed, y’all, we’re getting together with popcorn.

Kim (16:02)
So, Barb, there actually was a development that is ⁓ actually worth the committee’s attention. What is this I hear about the DOJ possibly wrongly withholding FBI files that contained allegations against President Trump from the documents that have been released? Who is investigating this and what the heck is a 302?

Barb (16:31)
this is a great question. I’d be very happy to talk about this. But first, I do want to say with regard to Hillary Clinton’s testimony, I remember so vividly her Benghazi testimony. Remember this? Somehow Republicans were trying to blame her for this awful attack that happened on Benghazi that led to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was over there. And they grilled her for just hours and hours on end.

What I remember about that, I just went back and looked at it. It happened in October 2015. I don’t remember where I was flying, but what I do remember is I was watching some of it at an airport of her testimony, because it was televised. And then I got on some really long flight and flew somewhere really long, far away, and I got off the airplane. I remember being stunned that she was still testifying.

Kim (17:20)
I was like, I just landed in your booty. Yeah, like what?

Barb (17:23)
She still is. Because she testified for like nine hours and she’s just there like, okay, whatever. know, just what do you got? I’m here to answer your questions and she held.

Joyce (17:33)
She didn’t even take bathroom breaks. No. No. she like for hours?

Barb (17:36)
We

were like nine hours without a break.

Jill (17:39)
She remained composed throughout it. Yes, she had.

Joyce (17:42)
She’s

such a class act, I hate that we could have had her.

Kim (17:45)
I get it. I don’t know why they thought they were going to her in this little close-up, but anyway.

Barb (17:49)
You know, remember back when she accused, I think it was during Lewinsky and all that stuff, she said there was a vast right-wing conspiracy and everyone kind of laughed at her, that was so ridiculous. Turns out she was right.

Anyway, back to your question, Kim, let me start with the last question. You say, the heck is a 302? That’s such a great question. 302 is an FBI form. It’s a government form that FBI agents use to record events of investigative activity. So it may be that they review documents, they’ll write up a little 302 report, maybe they executed a search warrant, they’ll write a 302 report about what happened. But most often, it is a summary of an interview.

with a subject. ⁓ shows up at the FBI office and asks to report some information, or they go out and knock on a door or they set up an interview and they ask questions. They will write this summary of interview. They’ll take some notes and then they’ll go back and they will summarize that in one of these reports. And those reports are shared with prosecutors. It’s what prosecutors use to try to figure out the facts of a case and build an investigation. So a file might be filled with dozens or even hundreds of these 302 reports.

And what ⁓ became reported this week is that among the Epstein files that should have been disclosed, some reporters have said that there were at least four FBI 302 reports of a single witness who provided information about Donald Trump. Now, one of the things about a 302 is it may or may not be credible. If anybody walks in off the street and says, I want to report a crime,

the FBI will take that report down. And so what happens over time is that these reports are vetted, that more investigation occurs. Sometimes nothing comes of them, right? Somebody comes in and says, you know, I’ve been hearing voices through my tin hat. Maybe nothing happens to that. But sometimes investigations begin this way and a case is built and that’s how they begin. And so these are raw summaries of investigation. They may or may not be true.

But somehow a reporter learned, whether it was leaked from a member of Congress, that four of these reports with some very ⁓ serious incriminating allegations about President Trump, allegations that a woman who was at the time a teenager was demanded to perform a sex act on President Trump and that she declined and that President Trump said some disparaging things about her. Now again, these things may or may not be true, but

What is disturbing is that these things were removed from the files. This is the reason, dear listeners, that the DOJ policy is typically not to disclose investigative files to the public. Only if somebody gets charged with a crime and evidence goes into the public record do those things become public. And ordinarily all these things are kept back. However, because of the congressionally enacted Epstein Files Transparency Act, they were ordered to produce all of these things and told, you may not withhold

any documents on the basis that it might cause embarrassment to any political figure or anybody. And so there’s no basis to withhold these reports. The only basis for withholding reports was for ongoing investigations to protect the privacy of victims and survivors and for national security reasons. ⁓ It appears that none of those reasons are met here. So this creates a question as to why these 302s have not been produced in the Epstein files.

Jill (21:23)
What’s interesting to me on that, is that the reason that we know they are missing is that the FBI is incompetent, or DOJ. When they did this, they created a index that showed four interviews of the same person. And then people looked at it and went, but there’s only one 302 here. Where are the other three? So that was a very careless thing that they did. And that’s why we know about this.

And they thought it was credible enough to go back to the witness three times after her initial. That causes concern to me that they did not investigate further or that they withdrew them from disclosure. And the one they disclosed was more about Epstein. The other three are clearly about Trump. So why did they take those out?

Barb (21:58)
Good point.

Kim (22:15)
So Joyce, it sounds like it was the Fox investigating the hen house here with the DOJ being in charge of what is released. But now the DOJ is investigating this. The DOJ has tried to explain itself not once, but twice. What did they say and what’s your reaction to it?

Joyce (22:32)
Yeah, so first there is Justice Department excuse number one, which they made in a released statement on Tuesday. And they claimed that they’d withheld anything that falls within one of the following categories. This is what Barb was talking about. Duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation. And my reaction to that is that the interviews about the allegations about Trump, they’re not duplicates of other things that have been released.

And there’s no legal privilege that would allow DOJ to disclose the parts of FBI interviews with a victim about Epstein, but conceal parts about Trump, which is the allegation in some cases here. So basically, statement one gets the big ⁓ from me. I mean, this one just doesn’t pass.

Barb (23:20)
Hahaha.

Joyce (23:22)
I can’t believe I did that. That’s like family dinner table talk. ⁓ Anyhow, that takes us to statement two, which happens Wednesday afternoon. And you know, here’s a pro tip here. ⁓ When the Justice Department makes a statement and it’s so ridiculous that they have to try to make a second statement the second day, that’s sort of a completely different one, maybe that’s a good moment for all of us to entertain some skepticism about the Justice Department.

In any event, it’s not the Justice Department that three of us worked at. But excuse number two on Wednesday afternoon was this. DOJ directly addressed the missing interviews this time, and they referred to them as, quote, documents produced to Jelaine Maxwell in discovery of her criminal case. And they said that the documents were withheld pursuant to a protective order in that case. You know, my.

That one just doesn’t fly either. It’s a total non-starter because the Justice Department in a court filing has already acknowledged that these documents aren’t subject to a protective order. And the Maxwell case is all but over. The Supreme Court has declined to pursue it. We’ve already talked with y’all about that. DOJ has released other documents. You know, if they were truly concerned about this protective order, which just doesn’t apply at this time,

They could have provided the documents to Congress and said, please don’t publicly release them because of the protective order. They didn’t do that. This was just a bunch of people sitting around going, ⁓ shoot, we need another excuse. What are we going to say? And somebody said, the protective order. Let’s say it’s covered by the protective order. So ⁓ not everything that a witness says in an interview turns out to be true. think Barb makes a great point there. But good investigators don’t ignore stuff. They vet it.

especially when it involves serious allegations. And these are serious, whether they turn out to be true or not. And it’s clear that none of this is the exoneration that Trump has claimed. The fact that DOJ is lying about this stuff, you know, I mean, that’s of just like, why not wave the red flag and say, we have sensitivity about these documents, something here ain’t right.

Kim (25:37)
So how do we get to the bottom? I mean, can hear our listeners questions now. There’s been a law passed mandating that the DOJ release this stuff and they’re still not doing it, at least not completely. What will it take? Lawsuits, another act of Congress, what will it take to actually get to the bottom of the Epstein file so that we can see them?

Joyce (25:56)
You know, I think it’s sustained public pressure. I noticed last night that there was a story about Republican senators telling the Justice Department it needed to turn over what it was trying to hide. And that’s not happening because, you know, Senator Kennedy in Louisiana wants to see this stuff get disclosed. That’s happening because they’re hearing from their constituents in a systematic

persistent manner and that’s something that we can all do. Either thank your democratic leaders for what they’re doing or demand that your Republican ones do better. I know I’m doing that.

Jill (26:32)
know, Barb has answered a question from a listener about why, you know, what can we do? And don’t tell me to just write to my members of Congress. And Joyce is right, and Barb was right in answering that question, that it does make a difference. They do respond, and it is worth pressuring everyone to make sure that this happens. It has changed the outcome of many other cases, and it could here, so.

Yeah, it should be something that we continue to press. And the other thing that will help is a new Congress.

Joyce (27:07)
yeah.

Jill (27:17)
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Joyce (34:33)
you

Well, look, there has been a lot of election news in the past week. And my personal sense is that Trump is acting with the desperation of a man who fears his party is going to get trounced in an election. And he’s pulling out all the stops, legal and otherwise, to try and prevent that from happening, or at least to sow damage public confidence in the outcome of elections that people won’t know what they believe. So my advice for everyone is don’t believe that.

Your state officials, your local officials, they know how to run elections and they can do it. But I want to check in with my sisters and see what they’re thinking. So Kim, why don’t we start with the current status of the SAVE Act? Republicans in the Senate attempted a talking filibuster. What is that and did it come off?

Kim (35:23)
⁓ So the second part of the answer is no. That was something that we knew was not going to come off. So just to remind folks, the SAVE Act is a really awful piece of legislation that, among other things, ⁓ seeks to impose proof of citizenship requirements to register to vote the way those citizenship requirements are. ⁓

delineated can disenfranchise any number of people. It’s gained a lot of attention for what it might do to say people like me whose name no longer matches their birth certificate ⁓ and many other married women and others. So ⁓ it’s a mess of a statute and they’re having a mess of time trying to pass it. When you reach the point where you have to rely on something called a talking filibuster, you know it’s bad. This is a maneuver.

in which the party in control of the chamber must keep a majority of the Senate, 51 senators in the Senate chamber at all times during consideration of the bill because the minute somebody leaves someone from the opposing party, and it only takes one person, it could be just 52 people in the room, one Democrat and 51 Republicans, one Republican leaves, goes to the bathroom, and the Democrat can move to adjourn.

To carry it off would be almost impossible. Republicans also don’t know, they have this, also know that they don’t have the votes for the 60 vote procedural hurdle that they would otherwise have to pass. This bill is dead. Like they can’t admit that this bill is dead and they were floating all these weird ways that they can maybe try to, you know, put it through like a Hail Mary and even.

You know, Senator John Thune was like, y’all, you need to stop. this is not how we’re going to do this. So ⁓ it’s good news for America, but it kind of shows what a mess ⁓ Senate leadership is right now.

Joyce (37:23)
Well, that’s the SAVE Act. But then there’s what’s going on in Fulton County. Jill, there was supposed to be a hearing, I think like right now while we’re taping on Friday, where county election officials are seeking return of the records that the FBI seized from them. But that hearing didn’t happen. What did the judge do instead?

Jill (37:42)
So the judge canceled the hearing and ordered the parties into mediation because he thought that that was a better way to handle the dispute ⁓ under the federal rules of criminal procedure, rule 41G. ⁓ But I think for the audience to understand, we need to have some background about, you know, there was a search warrant seizure on January 28th and a few days later on February 5th.

the county officials filed a motion under Rule 41G to get the documents returned and to keep the FBI from reviewing the documents until that motion was ruled on. And then another motion was filed, amending that on February 17th. And then another party was added as a plaintiff. And then there was supposed to be the hearing today, which is Friday, November, I’m sorry, was Friday.

But two days ago, he canceled it and made them go into arbitration, mediation. So we will have to wait and see. They have until March 18th to resolve this or else he’s going to have to do something. So we won’t know for almost another several weeks what is going to happen as a result of this. In the meantime, I’m sad to say I and probably all of us are worried.

The FBI has control of those documents. Can they be trusted not to look at them, not to share them, not to give voter information to Republican secretaries of state, to tamper with the evidence, to order another recount? I I’m sad to say I have to worry about the government misusing and mishandling, but I would be unrealistic not to worry about

Joyce (39:29)
You know, I think this was a fascinating order by the judge though. I mean, I’m slightly encouraged, by the fact that he didn’t just dismiss the Rule 41 motion to return documents out of hand, right? Which is what usually happens. Usually judges say, sorry, your remedy is to move to suppress if you ever get indicted. And that didn’t happen here. And the other thing is I think the judge has sort of put the Trump administration on the horns of a dilemma.

Because if they don’t agree to mediate and work it out, then all of this sort of dirty dealing here is going to come out in the wash. You know, the dismissal of the FBI special agent in charge, the fact that they used a U.S. attorney from St. Louis instead of the one in Atlanta. And I feel like the government has a lot of incentive here to resolve it because otherwise their underhanded tricks could be exposed. So it’s a very strategic move by the judge. We’ll see how it plays out.

But Barb, more than two fronts, right? There’s now a third front that’s been opened because on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Trump would try to do by executive order what he couldn’t get the Congress to do for him. And I note that while we’ve been taping the podcast, Mark Elias has actually gotten his hands on a copy of this proposed 17 page executive order that the White House is floating.

with us about that and tell us about the plan to create a new executive order on voting, which we’ll add to the end of the podcast now that it’s available so people can take a look if they’re so inclined.

Barb (41:03)
Yeah, you you have to give the Trump administration credit. They are relentless in their efforts to take over the world. You know, it’s like you’d watch the old, you know, Batman show, you know, the one, the campy one from the 60s. These supervillains were just relentless. Like, don’t they ever rest? The Trump administration is relentless in its efforts to destroy democracy. ⁓ failing, you know, this search warrant, failing the SAVE Act, they’re now working on this executive order.

that would try to create some sort of emergency to unlock presidential power to take over the midterm elections. And so one of the things that President Trump has been floating and he’s been saying like, I’ve been looking at all the important legal arguments and very soon I will be sharing with you all my executive order. But it’s this idea that there is this national emergency that China and other foreign governments are trying to interfere with our elections.

That may actually even be true, but his remedy is that because ⁓ mail-in ballots and voting machines could potentially be used as a vector of foreign interference, he will have to ban them. And that his executive order will say, no mail-in voting, no voting machines to protect us from foreign election interference. Now, I think there’s a problem with that for a couple of reasons. One is,

⁓ there’s no authority for the president to be involved in elections. It’s sort of a big problem. Well, yeah, it hasn’t stopped him before. But he does have a lot of emergency authorities when it comes to insurrections and bringing in the military, or when it comes into ⁓ invasions, when it comes to pandemics. The president has a lot of emergency authorities. But elections, as we have already noted, is the province of the states

And the Constitution does say that Congress may regulate that by passing legislation. But there is no role for the executive, and perhaps for good reason, because he may be on the ballot. So there’s no role for the president to administer elections which are handled by the state. So the idea that he could ban voting by mail in some state that has passed this, or that he could ban voting machines that have been approved by a state, I don’t think that authority is going to do the same. So I think that if he is to

deliver one of these executive orders, it would very quickly be met with a legal challenge and I think it is unlikely to ⁓ be successful. But one of the things he’s piggybacking on is the fact that of course, during the Obama administration and again in the Biden administration, they did find that there were efforts by Russia to interfere with our election and they even ⁓ took action. But the action wasn’t against voting and the states, the action was against the interferers, right? They imposed sanctions.

on other governments who are attempting to interfere with our elections. But I think that’s just enough cover to say, well, Obama and Biden did it, so I’m doing it too. Of course, it is a very different thing. I also think this brings back to us, remember the plot twist that Tulsi Gabbard was somehow present during this search at the Fulton County election office? What on earth was she doing there? I think it is to give cover to this pretext that there is somehow foreign interference that is occurring in this.

effort to interfere with our elections, and that’s why we need this emergency executive order to save us and save American democracy from this foreign threat.

Joyce (44:38)
Well, that’s the news this week on the election front. I’m sure we’ll be back with more next week, but it sounds like something we all need to pay attention to is the fact that Donald Trump is trying to gin up yet another fake emergency and use it to exert exceptional powers that don’t belong to him.

Jill (45:02)
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Jill (47:43)
We often talk about the Department of Justice, which is the first federal agency I worked for. But my second federal agency, the Department of Defense, is back in the news this week in a way that is both unique and particularly predictably Trumpian. It’s a power grab and an ignoring of the reason for the words of a statute. This time, the Defense Production Act is at issue.

The Department of Defense has an extremely interesting opponent in this fight. It is a company called Anthropic, founded and led by a group of now, after it’s now worth $380 billion, 40-somethings, all billionaires, with a mission to keep the world safe from AI, that is safe from the misuse of AI. They left OpenAI because they did not think the safeguards there were adequate. And their website says,

They are the AI research and products that put safety at the frontier. And that is their basic mission is to keep it safe. They are now embroiled in a fight with what they are using conciliatory language by saying the Department of War as opposed to the actual name Department of Defense, and they’re calling people war fighters. Barb, what is the fight between DOD and Anthropics?

Barb (49:07)
Yeah, so first it’s good, I think, to point out that Anthropic has really tried to claim a lane for itself as the humane, ethical use of AI. Anthropic comes from a word that means humanity. ⁓ And they named their big ⁓ AI tool Claude, after Claude Shannon, who was considered like the godfather of digital information to

put a human name and a human face on it. And they have certainly entered into contracts with the Defense Department. But when they do, they include in their contracts what they call the use cases. Here are the ways we believe our ⁓ software, our AI technology can be used safely that we have vetted. And two of these use cases are things that they have never included in their contracts. ⁓ One is

mass domestic surveillance. And so one of the concerns that Anthropic has is that this could be a violation of the civil liberties of American citizens because its tools would allow someone to, for example, collect all of Jill Winebank’s movements of travel, all of her web browsing, all of her associations, all of her public appearances, every place she’s been, every place she’s lived, and to amass all of that by gathering

everything they can off the internet and putting together a dossier about Jill Wine Banks to say here’s everything we know about her. We have taken this scattered innocuous data and put it together a comprehensive picture of her life. And we can do this at scale for everybody in America. ⁓ They said we’ve never intended for it to be used that way. What the government says is we want to use it for anything that can be legally used.

Well, because there’s no law prohibiting this, because nobody in Congress thought to pass it yet, it is legal, but that is not what ⁓ Anthropic thinks it can or should be used for. The second one, and perhaps, I don’t know which is more concerning, they’re both concerning, is the use of fully autonomous weapons. And so again, they said our use case is that AI weapon systems can be used. In fact, it can improve and reduce human error.

by collecting all kinds of the minute adjustments that need to be made when we’re directing weapons that can actually be better than human use, but they all require human oversight to make sure that critical judgment is being used in deciding whether to use these weapons and how to use them and making sure guardrails are employed so that we don’t just have the machines deciding whether to fire these missiles. ⁓ This question actually came to a head

when there was some sort of military exercise being done about the use of nuclear warfare. And Hegseth, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, wondered, can we just use these things? And they asked Anthropic and Claude, and they said, currently the answer is no. And so it’s over these two issues, mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, that Anthropic has said, you do not have permission to do this because we don’t think it’s safe. And we have never… ⁓

suggested that our products can or should be used in that way. The Defense Department says we demand that they be used in this way.

Jill (52:38)
It’s so interesting to me. And as you mentioned, this is a company that has carved out a lane of its own. They are actually a public benefit corporation. And Kim, that’s really interesting. what does that mean that they are a public benefit corporation? And will it make a difference in the fight that is at hand?

Kim (53:01)
Yeah, so a public benefit corporation is a company that is incorporated the same way as other companies, but it has a special designation because it is meant to generate a positive impact on society, workers, and the community, or some other ⁓ important cause like the environment, in addition to its regular duty to its shareholders of maximizing.

profit. So there are some key characteristics of it. But the fact that it is that ⁓ explains a lot about what’s going on in this battle, that this is not a company that’s just seeking a government contract that’s lucrative and all other considerations are off the table. It’s not just that Anthropic is trying to be good and realizing the potential dangers of the broad use of AI.

in really dangerous situations. have to. They have a duty to their shareholders to not just do well by the company, but also do good. So this is creating this riff. Well, on the one hand, you have people in the company who have been trying to court the Trump administration and ensure they get contracts like everybody else. They also have lines that they draw about what is right and wrong. And that’s why we’re in the middle of this battle.

Jill (54:21)
It is and it I think will have an impact on the outcome because the shareholders when you invest you know you’re investing in a company that is dedicated to this safety guardrails. And actually Anthropic has it is now on my watch 435 Eastern Time. So they have less than 30 minutes left to either exceed because they have until 5.01 p.m. Eastern Time today.

to agree to Hexs’s demands that they give the Pentagon Claude for quote, all lawful purposes. And if they don’t, he has threatened them with consequences, which include losing a $200 million contract and invocation of the Defense Production Act against them. So Joyce, it’s interesting because is this what the Defense Production Act was intended to be used for? Is it what the drafters contemplated? What is the act?

Joyce (55:18)
Yeah, so it’s very interesting. As you say, it’s by MyWatch 3.36 Central Time right now. They’ve got until 5.01, but Vera Bergengruen, the national security reporter at the Washington, or rather at the Wall Street Journal, is reporting this. She says,

Trump rails against, quote, left-wing nut jobs at Anthropic and says he is directing every US federal agency to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology. He’s given them a six-month phase out, and then he delivered this threat. Anthropic better get their act together or I will use the full power of the presidency to make them comply with major civil and criminal consequences to follow, which I think is the Defense Production Act.

question that you have asked, That act gives the federal government broad authority to direct private companies to meet the needs of national defense. And it was signed first by Harry Truman in 1950 amid supply concerns during the Korean War. I actually wrote about this in my book. But it has to be periodically re-upped. It would sundown if Congress didn’t reauthorize it. I think the last time that happened was late last year. But don’t

Don’t quote me on that. In any event, it has to happen periodically. So Truman signs off on it because he needs to respond to industrial and economic requirements during the Korean War. But since then, other administrations have used it for a wide variety of purposes, from expanding missile production to ⁓ during the COVID pandemic, Joe Biden used it to prioritize baby formula deliveries. ⁓

Barb (56:59)
And ventilators. General Motors and Ford were ordered to produce ventilators.

Joyce (57:03)
All sorts of things. So frequently it’s enforced as it was in those cases via voluntary agreements with the private sector. But one of the acts provisions does allow the president to require companies to prioritize government contracts and orders that are deemed essential to national defense. You know, it’s hard to say for sure whether what Trump is now doing is within the original intent of the folks who wrote this statute and have re-upped it.

simply because nobody ever contemplated, hey, did you see the movie War Games? It wasn’t scary enough, so let’s go set AI loose. ⁓ But you know, I don’t think that this is a legitimate use of that legal authority. I think now if the president is determined to do this, there will be lawsuits and it will be up to the courts to decide what the true extent of the Defense Production Act is.

Jill (57:59)
And yet the safeguards that Anthropic wants seem narrow to me. As Barb said, it’s preventing the use of their products for two things only, which is the use of Claude for mass surveillance and for completely autonomous weapons without human oversight. So I was surprised by the Pentagon’s response that got really dirty and personal using ad hominem attacks. ⁓ Kim, what did the Pentagon say in response to Dario’s statement?

that this is our mission and we have to insist that we keep to the security and safety that we are founded on.

Kim (58:36)
Well, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Research, ⁓ Emile Michael, ⁓ said, it’s a shame that Dario Amodi is a liar and has a God complex. mean, he’s basically accusing Anthropic of having a God complex by trying to personally control US military policy in a dangerous way. And it was pretty clear to me that it’s the opposite going on. They’re like, we did not sign up.

for not having humans in control of deadly ⁓ decision-making and for mass surveillance. That’s not what we did. We were trying to provide you a helpful tool. We just don’t want it used for evil. So, yeah.

Jill (59:18)
Yeah, and it seems to be a total misreading of what Dario said, which was not that the company is going to make these decisions, not the military. He absolutely said and recognized the military’s right to make these decisions, but is their right not to provide that? Joyce, is this the rare example we need more of where a corporation risks a huge contract and being labeled a supply chain risk for ethical reasons?

Joyce (59:48)
You you bet. This is like the law firms that stood up to Donald Trump. And when they went to court, they won, right? Standing up to the bully really does work. And what he relies on in these situations is that he will threaten the company’s economic survival. That’s what he tried to do with the law firms. He threatened their economic survival. A couple of them folded. The ones that went to court, though, they are strong. They have gained public credibility and clients, I would suspect, as well.

and they are moving forward, I hope Anthropic will set a strong ethical stance here.

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Barb (1:03:19)
Well, now comes the part of the show that we like the best, the part where we answer your questions. If you have a question for us, please email sistersinlaw at politicon.com or tag us on social media using hashtag Sisters In Law. If we don’t get to your question during the show, we’ll try to answer it during our new show, Sisters Sidebar, every Wednesday. Our first question comes to us from Richard in Boston. Richard asks,

My husband, my parents and I were at your live show in Boston, which was a wonderful night. thank you, Richard. We had a blast there too. It was so uplifting to spend.

Joyce (1:03:52)
the night ⁓

Barb (1:03:56)
34 felonies, yeah. It was so uplifting to spend that great moment of real justice with an energized audience and the four of you. Here’s my question. Given its potential for misuse by an unscrupulous president, is it possible to eliminate the pardon power? What is the argument to keep it? Joyce, what are your thoughts?

Joyce (1:04:15)
Well, Richard, thanks for the great memory. Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer you want to hear to your question. Look, the pardon power is meant to be broad and expansive. It exists so a president can do mercy. And it is compelled by the Constitution. The only exceptions are set forth in the Constitution. The president cannot ⁓ issue a pardon for an impeachment, for instance. But other than that, that broad power will exist.

and lessen until there’s a constitutional amendment. And so I think that we’re stuck with the misuse by an unscrupulous president, not by the way, because the founding fathers screwed up when they created the power, but because the Supreme Court in the immunity case said a president could never commit a crime when he was engaging in official business. And that means that even

If Donald Trump were to take a bribe in exchange for issuing a pardon, and I know that y’all remember stuff at the beginning of this administration, so I won’t rehash it, even if he did that, he can’t be prosecuted. That I think is the flaw here, frankly, and it’s at the doorstep of the Supreme Court justices who are in the majority on that case.

Barb (1:05:27)
All right, very good. Our next question comes to us from Ann in Bend, Oregon. I love Bend, Oregon. Ann, I’m very envious of your hometown. ⁓ Ann asks, in regard to the Epstein case, has the statute of limitations run out on still living and possible perpetrators? Jill, what do you say about that?

Jill (1:05:46)
I’m glad to answer this question because I do have, I think, an answer that will please you, And that is that many states, at least 15 and a growing number, have eliminated the statute of limitations for sex crimes, especially those involving children. So my state, Illinois, and your state, Oregon, have done that. Anything that is a sex crime felony has no statute of limitations. But I do want

to point out that there is a reason for a statute of limitations. mean, evidence goes stale, and at some point, you really can’t prove a case adequately. so we have a statute of limitation. There are also tolling provisions in many states. So if the defendant is out of the state, the statute is told until he’s back, he or she is back in the state. And there have been added civil claims are now possible long after you would think they were otherwise.

prosecutable like E. Jean Carroll’s case. But yes, many people can still be prosecuted for the Epstein crimes.

Barb (1:06:54)
All right, very good. And our final question comes to us from David in Toronto, Canada. Asks, why do prosecutors need preemptive strikes in jury selection? Defendants are entitled to a jury of their peers, but prosecutors are not. Kim, what say you to David’s question?

Kim (1:07:09)
Yeah, this is a really good question. So ⁓ I think you’re talking about peremptory strikes. Peremptory strikes, I think, is a military term that is something entirely different. ⁓ What we are talking about is the ability in trials of the attorneys on each side to strike someone from a ⁓ selection for no reason at all. ⁓ This is something that both, as you correctly point out, David, that prosecutors and defense attorneys

are allowed to do in criminal cases and parties on both sides too in civil cases are able to do that. You are right that the right to a ⁓ jury of one’s peers belongs to the defendant. And ⁓ that is why we have rules in place not only to draw randomly from the community where the defendant is and ensure that the jury pool is not tainted in any way to ensure that they do have that. ⁓

Peremptory strikes also serve another important value, and that’s why they get them on both sides, which is ⁓ ensuring that justice is served by avoiding jury nullification. You really don’t want, if there is a defendant being tried for a heinous crime, and you have a juror that goes on and says, you know…

I don’t trust the police. They’re just out to get people in my community, and I’m not going to help them do their job to lock someone up. You don’t want someone like that on a jury because it can keep somebody who committed a terrible crime from being convicted. And that’s why it’s really important that both prosecutors and defense attorneys have the ability to do that. There are safeguards. There’s something called Bivens challenges that if either side does it for a non permissible reason, like race, gender, something that is impermissible.

that can be challenged and a judge decides whether there was ⁓ bias there, because that’s not allowed. But we do want, ⁓ in my opinion, to have a system where both sides get peremptory strikes.

Barb (1:09:10)
All right, well, there you have it. Thank you for listening to Hashtag Sisters in Law with Jill Winebanks, Joyce Vance, Kimberly Atkins-Stor, and me, Barb McQuaid. We hope to see you at our live show in Denver, Colorado at the Cervantes Masterpiece on April 23rd. Tickets are available at politicon.com slash tour. So make sure you get them before they sell out. And don’t forget to pick up your favorite Hashtag Sisters in Law merch and other goodies at politicon.com slash merch.

And make sure you check out our new companion podcast, Sisters Sidebar on Wednesdays. And please show some love to this week’s Delete Me, The Pets Table, Laundry Sauce, Hexclad, and Milk. The links are in the show notes. Please support them because they make this podcast possible. See you next week with another episode. Hashtag Sisters in Law.

Joyce (1:10:03)
You know?

Kim (1:10:04)
What? What?

Barb (1:10:08)
don’t even know what that means. I don’t even know what that means.

Joyce (1:10:12)
Just, just let it go, Barbara.

Barb (1:10:16)
I don’t even know what it means.

Kim (1:10:18)
She cracked her cell phone.