“Chilling”: Trump Press Sec Hints Darkly at More Lawlessness to Come

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Trump’s lawlessness is escalating. First he angrily tweeted that his predecessor’s pardons of January 6 committee members are invalid, while threatening to prosecute them. Meanwhile, the Trump administration appears to have violated a court order in deporting some Venezuelans. And his border czar flatly declared that the administration is set to ignore what judges say. At Monday’s briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt spun madly about all this, but her lack of clarity strongly hinted that Trump is on the precipice of a new level of lawbreaking. We talked to legal scholar Matthew Seligman, a skilled decoder of complicated legal messes. He explains why Trump’s latest moves are “chilling”—and why Leavitt’s ambiguity is only cause to anticipate more lawlessness, not less. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.5	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:31.4	In the last 72 hours, President Trump's lawlessness has substantially escalated.
0:38.6	In a rambling tweet, he insisted his predecessor's pardons of January 6th committee members are null and void,
0:42.8	and said those officials are now fully subject to criminal investigation.
0:49.1	Meanwhile, the Trump administration appears to have violated a court order in deporting some Venezuelans. And on top of all that, Trump's borders are flatly declared that they'll ignore what judges say in
0:55.8	carrying out future deportations. At the White House press briefing Monday, Caroline Levitt spun
1:01.6	madly about all this, but was unable to say with real clarity what the White House's stances
1:06.8	really are. We think this is key because Trump appears on the precipice of a new level of law
1:12.7	breaking, and the White House is constructing its fake rationales for all of it in real time.
1:18.9	Today we're talking to legal scholar Matthew Seligman, who's one of the best out there at unraveling
1:23.5	complicated legal messes, and this certainly counts as that. Thanks for coming back on, Matt.
1:29.7	Thanks for having me. So let's start with Trump's deranged tweet. He said that Biden's preemptive
1:36.0	pardons of January 6th committee members are void and vacant because they were signed by Autopan,
1:42.2	and Biden was too senile to know who he was pardoning.
1:45.8	Trump, who has long wanted to prosecute the January 6th Committee for the crime of holding him
1:50.6	accountable for inciting an armed insurrection, then said they are subject to investigation
1:56.1	at the highest level. Matt, what on earth does Trump mean by all this?
2:04.0	Well, what he means is that he wants to reopen the potential criminal prosecution of the members of the January 6th Committee
2:11.0	and others who participated in that investigation. And that alone is chilling. Now, in order to
2:16.7	try to open up this possibility, he's claiming that
2:20.9	the pardons that President Biden issued are invalid because, of course, those pardons prevent the
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