David Graham of The Atlantic warns that our election system, which withstood those assaults, might not survive the next ones. In his cover story for The Atlantic, Graham explores how the next election, the midterms, might succumb to a sustained political attack. To understand the threat of democracy and how it might be stopped, I spoke with experts on election administration, constitutional law, and law enforcement.
00:00:00.000David Graham of The Atlantic warns our election system, which withstood those assaults, might not survive the next ones.
00:00:08.800In his cover story for the December issue of The Atlantic, Graham explores how the next election, the midterms, might succumb to a sustained political attack, writing, quote,
00:00:19.440To understand the threat of democracy and how it might be stopped, I spoke with experts on election administration, constitutional law, and law enforcement.
00:00:29.340Many of them are people I've known to be cautious, sober, and not prone to hyperbole.
00:00:34.600Yet they use words like nightmare and warn that Americans need to be ready for, quote, really wild stuff.
00:00:41.700If you're not frightened, Hannah Fry, the executive editor, executive director of the Voter Access Group, All Voting is Local, told him, you are not paying attention.
00:00:51.840That's right. I mean, I think it's important to remember that five years ago, nobody expected something like Trump's sustained effort to overturn the 2020 election.
00:01:02.100Famously, a top administration official told The Washington Post, you know, what's the harm in humoring him?
00:01:07.420It's not like he's going to try to stay there.
00:01:08.880Nobody imagined a mob trying to overrun the Capitol.
00:01:13.100So a lot of things that I think we just can't imagine are on the table.
00:01:17.240One of the things that worried me most, in addition to how concerned these generally sober people are, was just the number of ways that somebody who wanted to subvert the election system could do it.
00:01:27.820There are ways to mess with the rules ahead of the fact.
00:01:30.100There are ways to suppress votes in the moment.
00:01:31.640There are ways to try to get votes thrown out or to get elections overturned or simply not to seat the winners, as in that 1985 example, potentially.
00:01:43.240And people who want to defend the system have to be looking at any number of options and be ready for things that would have been unimaginable in the past.
00:01:50.240You do talk about things that happened the last time around and how they might happen again and how Donald Trump might be in a better position to have the folks around him act on his impulses.
00:02:01.640One of them, you know, he wanted to deploy the troops.
00:02:29.280So part of the question is guessing at what they might want to do.
00:02:32.500And Cleta Mitchell, who is an influential lawyer who is close to the White House and very involved in election issues, has said recently, she said, you know, that Trump might need to call in a national emergency to protect sovereignty and seize control of the voting system.
00:02:47.320And it's a little bit difficult to know what that means.
00:02:50.080And she didn't answer my questions about what specifically that would be.
00:02:53.160The law prevents calling out troops or armed men in general, according to the language, to the polls, federal troops or federal law enforcement.
00:03:01.140But if you put those people in the streets already, whether that's the sort of operations we're seeing in major cities or the ones that we're seeing threatened in other major cities, you're going to have troops already there by the time the election rolls around.
00:03:12.200And people are going to be, if not used to it, it's going to be something they don't react to as a sort of frantic escalation.
00:03:17.960And that might be something that intimidates some voters from staying home from the polls.
00:03:22.580But it might also be the kind of thing that simply creates hassles.
00:03:25.480It makes it very hard to get around because they're roadblocks and there's heavy equipment and there's all these things.
00:03:29.440And suddenly getting to the polls and casting your vote is going to just take too long and you're not going to vote.
00:03:34.380So even these things that aren't major intimidation can start to suppress the vote.
00:03:38.420And in the kind of close elections we might get and in a very close election for House overall, those little things on the margins can make a difference.
00:03:44.660I can say with confidence our elections and our systems have held strong.
00:03:50.220And as Secretary of State, I've increased their resilience.
00:03:54.700It is now a felony to access on an unauthorized basis voting equipment.
00:04:00.160And we've caught someone, Tina Peters, who is now serving nine years of imprisonment because she tried to mess around with voting equipment in the state of Colorado.
00:04:09.640This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:04:17.520Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people.
00:05:35.080Dr. Bradley Thayer, we're going to cover everything because it's been a kind of a historic day.
00:05:39.600Mike Davis, I want you to address this first because you've got Mark Elias, all the usual suspects.
00:05:45.300They're freaking out, and they just – the Atlantic is going to have this massive, I think, a whole – not just the cover story, but I think the whole magazine's turn to how Trump is going to steal the 2026 election.
00:05:57.460Sir, I want to do that before I tee up the blockbuster news today.
00:06:01.000Both the Oversight Committee on the Audubon scandal crisis, right, I think one of the deepest scandals in American history.
00:06:12.360They picked up the baton from Senator Grassley.
00:06:15.400So it's a huge day for these lawbreakers and these radical Democrats.
00:06:20.800But start first with your response to David Graham and the people of the Atlantic that are absolutely freaking out already about the midterm elections, sir.
00:06:30.620Well, they're freaking out because – because why?
00:06:33.280Because the illegal aliens can no longer vote in these elections for Democrats.
00:06:39.700They can't mass mail ballots out to old voter lists and then get rid of signature verification.
00:06:46.240The Trump Justice Department, led by Pam Bondi and Harmeet Dillon, are actually monitoring these elections.
00:06:53.160You have Republican states actually using power like Democrats have done for decades and redistricting, redrawing these House seats.
00:07:04.120Or maybe just maybe the American people are finally waking up to the fact that today's Democrat Party is a clown car of Marxist losers and their so-called victims.
00:07:20.400And so maybe just maybe the American people have had enough with these leftist policies and this left – these Democrat politics.
00:07:28.240Look, as you know, Steve, in a president's first off-year election after a president wins, generally the president's party gets wiped out in that off-year election.
00:07:40.320So if we were going through the normal course, Democrats should win the House in 2026 and pick up Senate seats.
00:07:49.280But they may not do that because of all these headwinds against the Democrats right now.
00:07:56.120And you can tell already they're trying to make an excuse to the American people rejecting their policies every day.
00:08:05.260And they're particularly going to reject their policies come next Tuesday night after Matt Donnie wins in New York City.
00:08:11.700Let me go – I want to play a short clip for you because I want to get to this jaw-dropping James Comer, the chairman over at Oversight.
00:08:18.820A 100-page report. Moe and Grace have it for you. We're going to push it out everywhere.
00:08:24.600Let's be a force multiplier on this. But let's go ahead and play a clip, and I'll jump in and bring Mike back in.
00:08:30.800So-called chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, continues to behave like a malignant clown.
00:08:37.840We can't point to a single thing that he's actually done to make life better for the American people.
00:08:42.880House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, just within the last hour, slamming a new report out from Republicans on the House Oversight Committee
00:08:51.880that calls for a Justice Department investigation into pardons that were issued by President Biden.
00:08:57.620The report openly questions the legitimacy of any actions that were taken and signed by Autopen instead of by Joe Biden's hand.
00:09:08.560And this afternoon, there's new reporting on just how real this DOJ investigation is.
00:09:13.960In an email obtained from a source, President Trump's top pardon attorney at DOJ, Ed Martin,
00:09:19.980told House Republicans that his probe into this issue revealed, quote, abuses.
00:09:25.120He went on to say that his office, quote, cannot support the validity of Autopen pardons for individuals like Anthony Fauci, Adam Schiff, Mark Milley.
00:09:34.580Here was the House Speaker earlier today on this question.
00:11:11.720Presidents generally use Autopen to sign correspondence with, you know, six year old kids who write letters to the president.
00:11:18.580You don't use the Autopen to sign major pieces of legislation.
00:11:23.260And you certainly don't use the Autopen to sign pardons.
00:11:27.960And so it's very suspect that they use the Autopen to sign pardons.
00:11:32.820And so then the question becomes, did President Biden actually authorize these pardons?
00:11:39.640And they were simply carrying out President Biden's will because he's too weak or frail or whatever to sign these pardons.
00:11:47.420Or is there something more sinister going on here where they have White House staff signing pardons behind the president's back?
00:11:59.060And if it's the latter, this truly is one of the biggest scandals ever.
00:12:03.340By the way, this makes sure that Nancy Pelosi, all the J6 committee that threw everybody in prison for misdemeanors, they entortured the J6 folks, right?
00:12:15.800And sent criminal referrals, had people thrown in prison forever.
00:12:19.700Their pardons, the ones they crawled on their belly over to the White House, are inoperative?
00:12:27.160Well, I mean, if the president did not authorize a pardon and someone used the president's Autopen to sign a pardon he didn't authorize, then those pardons would not be valid, right?
00:12:39.000And so how it would come up, though, is you would bring criminal – how pardons work is you bring a – if you bring a criminal charge, federal criminal charge against someone, that person would present the pardon documents in courts and say that I have pardoned for this crime.
00:12:56.800It's a defense to the crime, and so I guess how you would challenge this is if Pam Bondi and the Biden Justice Department wants to indict Tony Fauci, for example, for one of his crimes, then you would challenge the pardon then.
00:13:39.500Ben Burkrum is going to talk to you about in Chicago.
00:13:41.760The judge, the radical judge there is going to make the head of the individual trying to do deportation show up in court every day at 430 and report into the court of what their activities for the day have been.
00:13:54.700And I think President Trump is going to say, screw you.
00:14:08.940This is jaw-dropping lawlessness from a reckless – it all goes back to the stolen 2020 election – but the recklessness and lawlessness of this crowd.
00:14:20.080This is why they're coming after President Trump so hard.
00:18:29.180And if there is evidence that people forged the signature of the president of the United States to issue executive orders or parties and he did not agree to those, that's as serious as you get.
00:18:47.220I mean, you're forging the president's powers against his will or without his knowledge.
00:18:55.520Now, I will say this, that this will be a difficult case because of the issue of presidential immunity.
00:19:03.900What President Trump won at the Supreme Court where the president is immune from criminal prosecution, he's also immune from criminal testimony.
00:19:11.860So it would be, I don't know if they'll be able to call in President Biden against his will to testify.
00:19:18.800So I think, I don't know this for sure, but I think he would have to volunteer to testify in this criminal probe.
00:19:26.660And so that's what will make it very difficult to prove this case is you have to show that this was not authorized by Biden or it was against his will.
00:19:39.020Mike Davis, where do people go to Article 3 in your social media to keep up with this?
00:19:43.380I realize you're juggling a lot of balls now, but you can see the lawlessness of this, of the previous administration, what I call the Biden regime is now coming to the forefront.
00:19:54.300And that's why people are looking to the viceroy for guidance.
00:19:57.680It's the biggest scandal ever that they put up and elected a president of the United States who was clearly not mentally fit to do the job.
00:20:05.940I mean, it's disgusting what Democrats did, all because they care about power so much and they hated Trump so much that they were willing to do whatever it took to get Trump out of office.
00:21:01.080But the individual that told us on the afternoon of 20 January 2021, where the Biden regime would follow the Constitution, he would have no problem and work with him.
00:21:10.920But where they went outside the grounds of the Constitution and really to the detriment of the folks in Texas, he was going to be in court.
00:21:20.380And he went to court more than any other attorney general.
00:21:23.000Sir, you see this 100-page report out from Comer today.
00:21:27.160Jim Jordan is going to join us in a second.
00:21:29.220He's got a massive report, I think, from the FBI, a lot of it redacted for us.
00:21:34.860But talk about Arctic Frost, about them going after people.
00:21:54.420I mean, we've got to address this at the very top lever of DOJ, the FBI.
00:21:58.360I know that you and I both have experienced different levels of lawfare, as has President Trump.
00:22:06.600And we've got to address it when we've got the power to address it.
00:22:09.940And we've got to discover as much as we can while we're there and get rid of people that are corrupt and that are using the legal system in a corrupt way to take out political enemies.
00:22:19.560There's nothing more detrimental to a democracy and a constitutional republic than that kind of behavior from law enforcement that we then cannot trust to do justice.
00:22:30.220General Paxson, now that we're having the official reports from oversight and now from judiciary and Grassley's working through it, Chairman Jordan's working through it, as these referrals go over, should the Justice Department just drop the hammer and maybe even special prosecutor on this for these criminal referrals to make sure that we have plenty of time to bring these people to justice?
00:22:54.580Because if we don't set an example and hold people accountable, this will continue on.
00:23:01.120And these things are so over the top and so outrageous that I know MAG is sitting there going, hey, we've got to get on top of this.
00:23:07.360Would you recommend that Pam Bondi make this her top priority and going after the deep state and the weaponization to actually run to ground all the potential criminal charges here?
00:23:32.700If we I do not think there's anything more important that the Justice Department can do than to go into these cases, analyze them and take care of them, because we have to set that example.
00:23:43.080And we have to find the wrongdoers because we do not do this during the Trump administration.
00:23:47.560We are going to be in a position where these people are stronger and they'll continue after Trump is gone to go after political people they disagree with.
00:23:57.720And nothing is more harmful to a constitutional republic than having the DOJ and the FBI weaponized against political opponents.
00:24:05.160Now, the independent newspaper in the United Kingdom today is reporting that that you are going at President Johnson put on true social.
00:24:15.180You're actually going to court on this on Tylenol on the makers of Tylenol for was it false marketing to pregnant women about the risk of autism?
00:24:25.440Yeah, so we believe that Johnson & Johnson knew that this acetaminophen, it's a good product used in the right ways, but they didn't warn or tell doctors appropriately that this should not be used on pregnant women that we believe studies show that it creates a higher level of autism and ADHD.
00:24:44.460So they did this knowingly, profitably, and they have now moved that particular product to a separate company trying to avoid liability.
00:24:54.020And they actually spoke about this in 2017, warning people, and then they just dropped it.
00:24:58.840So they had a responsibility to protect people from the harm.
00:25:02.140And now there are many, many kids, probably millions, that have been harmed by this product.
00:25:08.240Where can people go and find out more about this right now?
00:25:12.000Your website, social media, because this is the opening salvo in really going after big pharma and holding them accountable.
00:27:25.840We had our friend Terry Newsom up there covering this.
00:27:28.700And they were brought, he was brought in and basically now scolded and told he has to come back to court every single day and report on his activities for the day.
00:27:37.560I mean, it's just absolute, it's so outrageous.
00:27:41.500And I, you know, we were talking about this.
00:48:30.120I just want to – we now know because the documents released today that this wasn't state AGs going.
00:48:36.520That's what they wanted to be able to use.
00:48:38.300This was coordinated by the White House, the highest levels of the Justice Department, Lisa Monaco, and Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray at the FBI.
00:48:47.400What's in the documents that leads you to that conclusion, ma'am?
00:48:54.980Now, let's also give a shout-out to Cash Patel because all of these documents were classified.
00:49:00.040And what Cash did was he declassified them and turned them over to the House Judiciary Committee.
00:49:05.880And there are almost 200 pages of documents now.
00:49:08.420Some of them, they're largely redacted, lots of gobbledygook.
00:49:11.340But what we know from this is that in 2022, early 2022, that the FBI asked for a budget of $16,000 to travel to several states.
00:49:24.360And the people they said they were going to interview, you look at the list, it's all the Trump electors.
00:49:29.740And they – so that's where it started.
00:49:31.380And they conducted all the interviews.
00:49:34.020And there were interviews of electors not just in the states where they ultimately charged the electors, fake criminal charges, but also New Mexico, Pennsylvania, people who are state legislators, people who are party officials.
00:49:47.980It's beyond description to look at the target list.
00:49:53.720But the most important point is that these state AGs, these four Democrat state AGs, Dana Nessel in Michigan, Josh Collin in Michigan, Aaron Ford in Nevada, Chris Mays in Arizona, and Fannie Willis in Atlanta, Georgia, they were all acting as proxies for the Biden DOJ.
00:50:15.940And there are going to be more documents, I'm told, that come out and will name the actual attorneys at the DOJ who were orchestrating all of it.
00:50:25.740We know that Norm Eisen and his 501c3 actually wrote the indictments and did the legal briefs for the prosecutions in conjunction with the DOJ.
00:50:38.140But those are the ones that were brought in Arizona because there was a filing that inadvertently showed that it was – that the brief was actually prepared by States United for Democracy, which is Norm Eisen C3.
00:50:52.940So to argue that somehow these people cannot be pardoned by President Trump because these are state proceedings, no.
00:51:03.200These are puppet prosecutors who filed the charges at the behest of the Biden DOJ.
00:51:11.040And we see it all started with the investigations.
00:51:14.620It was all part – it was a whole tentacle of Arctic frost.
00:51:21.520Cleed up, and they took your name in vain today, so I'm sure you're all over this Atlantic piece about – they're all – they're in panic mode about the midterm elections already.
00:52:23.120And so, you know, it's really important that we not let these document releases get swept out with the tide of the news cycle.
00:52:33.620We, as the posse, we, as patriots, we have to tell our friends and neighbors, we have to push this out.
00:52:41.460We need millions of people to know for sure what the Biden administration did, what the Biden FBI did, what the Biden DOJ did.
00:52:52.920And I'm sure that if we would ever get the documents from the Biden White House, from the archives, we would see – we're going to see that there were Biden White House counsels involved in this every step of the way.
00:53:05.500This was not some low-level auto-pin deal.
00:53:10.420They wanted to crush the MAGA movement.
00:53:13.060Yes, and the reason that the federal pushed it down to the states so President Trump, if he ever came back, could not pardon these individuals.
00:53:23.260It's absolutely disgusting and revolting.
00:53:25.640We're going to make sure everybody reads it.
00:53:40.080And if you wanted to learn about election integrity, go to our website, electionintegritynetwork.org, electionintegritynetwork.org, because we're also pushing out a lot of things.
00:53:50.840There's a lot going on in that area, and I'd be happy to come back and talk about that.
00:53:54.540But I just think it's really important.
00:53:56.200We can't have election integrity if, by questioning the process of an election, gets you landed in the sites, in the crosshairs of the FBI and the Department of Justice, because you're part of a political movement that's separate from or different from the people in power.
00:54:17.000I'm so sick of these Democrats and these whining left-wing media talking about authoritarian and Trump becoming authoritarian and doing all those things.
00:54:26.080He couldn't even dream of doing the things that we now know they did.