Speaker 1: And now for a moment of clarity.
Speaker 2: What is the purpose of these investigations. You know they're
not going to get a successful prosecution. Presumably it's to
raise the costs for the journalists. These are organizations that
don't necessarily have a ton of money, and it's to
discourage leakers and scare them from coming forward.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why I was just going to say, that's
why I insist, as I noted, if the institutions in
media pulled themselves together and created that wall, that First
Amendment wall, then those journalists know they have the protection.
And so to the extent that you're absolutely right. Individually,
it is very expensive for one newspaper, it's particularly a
small newspaper or outlet, to sort of go up against
the behemoth of the White House and the allegations. But
if everybody's kind of working together and saying no, no, no, no,
we're the only thing, that's only business that's mentioned in
the Constitution that we have this space, I think it
would be I think it would send a very important
signal in this moment. So there's that I discribed to
your I just.
Speaker 3: They are not being honest with lol every day. But
we can't just take their statement about classified information being
leaked on face value. Classified information does not equal information
the public doesn't know. Classified information is actually very specific. Right,
But in the way in which Todd Blanche is using it,
anything that was discussed in the Department of Justice, or
in the Pentagon or in a White House meeting, right,
that is not public information that is given to a journalist.
They are grouping that in given his statements as classified information.
That's actually not true. Again, Todd Blanche is very good
at making any statements and making it sounds but it's
non normal.
Speaker 1: But that goes to the point you made before. Okay,
that's not that we consume that. At this table, we
can talk about and frame it expertly like you did it.
Folks out there sitting around getting ready for you know,
work tomorrow or the weekend or the next thing, and
they're like, that's the level of minuit sha. They don't
need to get.
Speaker 3: Involu point, which is good, I mean, not good for us,
but I mean it's good for Todd Lance because then
people at home are like, oh, well they're leaking classified
they should.
Speaker 1: Be going exactly the point. But then you have to
at some point get to a prosecution right now. Donald
Trump grabbed a whole bunch of classified documents and had
them in the bathroom down at mar Alga Largo. What
happened there, They disrupted that process, right because they knew
in fact where that could end up. They got it
founder judge that sort of said no, no, we're not
even going to investigate that any further. We're going to
stop it here. That's not what's going to happen with
the stuff they're doing now, which creates a real problem
on the back end. Meanwhile, the public, to your point,
is thinking, oh my god, they're you know, leaking classified information.
And the press is involved in that. I heard a
little bit at it on the on the way here
today from some callers into a show. But the reality
still rests at the end of the day, you've got
to prove it. And so now you've now sandwiched these
Justice Department officials between the reality of doing their job
and trying to do it right so they don't come
up on the short end of the stick on the
back end with charges against them and the political pressure
that the president is putting on them. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know, it's not even obvious that this
investigation is targeting the journalists specifically. Nominally, the only people
that might have potentially have committed a crime would be
people that are leaking classified information.
Speaker 1: Catch Michael Steele on the weeknight Monday through Friday at
seven pm Eastern on ms now