carol leonig, thank you. vaughn hillyard, you re joining us as well. walk us through your reporting. so donald trump and donald trump fashion called up fox news a little bit here and provided some additional comments here about the special counsel being named here. and i will just read you some of the quotes here from what fox news is posting online in which donald trump says quote, i am not going to partake in it. i m not going to partake in this. he referenced how it was, this has come just days after his 2024 announcement, and the other quote that of course that is notable, is quote, the republican party has to stand up and fight. which is the sentiment that he is continuing to push and as long as he remains the center of focus of these investigations, he s going to be looking at republicans to rally against him. just like they did after the mar-a-lago search warrant execution, hallie, and when you re talking about the investigation, surrounding january 6th, then donald trump s
to fire the special counsel, it makes it harder, it makes this investigation more insulated from a republican president and a republican attorney general. of course, if that president is donald trump, i don t think anyone doubts that we have no problem firing the special counsel. i was going to say, you know, the question mark on that. and also, you know, paul, go to you for some analysis but ken you say the unlikely event that this could last two years, didn t the robert mueller investigation last nearly two years and the john durham investigation was a multi-year investigation, two other special counsels appointed regarding actions that donald trump had taken after he took office in 2017, what would a time line be for something like that? do we even know? it is a great point you re making and there are some participants of this we know and some parts of this we don t know. from the evidence on the public record, in particular the mar-a-lago investigation is much further along the
while that number s first reported to be around 40, sources close to trump told political the number subpoenas issued may be closer to between 50 and 75. that is how broad the investigation into election subversion has grown. the aggressive step comes amid new reporting that ex white house chief of staff mark meadows has not complied with a subpoena from the justice department in that investigation, making him the highest ranking trump official to have cooperated thus far. and as the walls once again begin to close in on donald trump, he is going back to his old habits, spreading lies, spreading conspiracies. but even worse, we all know all those lies can lead to real violence. and trump seems to almost be counting on that if things do not go his way. in fact, here is how he responded just this week when asked about a possible indictment. i think if it happened, i think you would have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we ve never seen before.
you make of berman s charges of political interference, and the amount of weight they carry, and that we re learning about them now officially as opposed to years ago when they were happening? while, i m glad that glenn also mentioned bill barr in the same breath as donald trump, because bill barr s justice department that donald trump politicize, that bill barr allowed to be weaponized. you saw that with the robert mueller investigation, and now berman has give me another example deep inside. but there s something to your point, here ayman. everything that donald trump does, i think this would frustrate a prosecutor in trying to bring a case against him. he does almost openly. he spent years calling on the justice department to prosecute his political enemies. you know, you know, his first attorney general, he said why are you not going after hillary clinton? it s been protected again and again and again that the justice department going after
years, allowing them to reach larger and larger audiences and in fact the brains of people who can act on these conspiracies, believing that they are real. after all, why would a former president amplify any of this garbage, right? well, david corn in his new book american psychosis, a historic investigation of how the republican party went crazy, argues that the republican party s embrace of dangerous lies and conspiracies goes back decades, well before qanon, all the way back to mccarthyism. in fact, it is in the party s dna at this point. corn rights quote, for decades republicans have told voters to be scared and suspicious. the world was a treacherous place, full of hidden foes commies, radicals, black protesters, secularist, those of the american family. david corn is back with us to break all of this down. david, it s good to see you. let s start with trump s recent embrace of qanon taking it to a