you could say jones day, don mcgahn and just look at the trump picks to the supreme court.d on all of those and the other picks in the federal judiciary. it is more than that and deeper than that. >> it's deeper than that. what i have to say about what david came up with here is we have this phrase we've often used on the u.s. solicitor general's office as the tenth justice, the handmaiden to the court, normally representing all of the federal positions. it is as if jones day has become a new handmaiden to the court. obviously noel francisco from jones day was the solicitor general but so many of the other lawyers infiltrated various parts of the trump administration. as i was reading his book i was aware of key figures who were behind the scenes on the citizenship question, the census questionnaire, the affordable care act, contraceptive mandate. so many different issues from social policy involving reproductive rights to regulatory issues. so a very important set of tentacles throughout all different parts of government. now, you know, you mentioned, john, of course corpo

and one of these people in particular, don mcgahn, would soon become a household name. nearly 2015 was the trump campaign. the interim saw idle ion on the lot of issues, but more than that, he saw -- strong beliefs >> particularly strong beliefs. that's one word for it. >> i sometimes speaking euphemisms. and he thought trump was his vessel to achieve many of his -- career ambitions. this included remaking the judiciary, and included dismantling what mcgahn disparagingly referred to as the administrated state. and trump was very happy to have people like mcgahn and -- it led a lot of establishment credibility to him at a time when not a lot of people were taking his campaign seriously. >> it's the moment when trump sort of convinces skeptical establishment republicans when he talks about this list of people he to point, and mcgahn is the linchpin. he's the guy connecting the federal society and their long laundry list of conservative justices and judges for the trump administration. and then, the list as he used. >> that's exactly right. it's not just mcgahn. it's a lot

the aid 6th received from white house counsel from jones, day lawyer don mcgahn, his white house counsel, while mcgahn was in the white house, there had been a saying among some republicans at jones, day. no vacancy left behind. it was a nod of course to how many conseratives mcgahn was imbedding. nbc news reports president biden is now actually seating judges at a faster clip than trump. so talk about the impact, though, of what you report of the conservative judges and was judge cannon, whose remarkable decision down in florida has been overturned by the 11th circuit, the three-judge panel, and has been criticized by lawyers and former prosecutors, you know, judges, retired judges by just about everyone for raising issues that hadn't even been brought up in court by the trump team. >> well, and i think that is the nightmare scenario that a lot of people are worried about, that don mcgahn, while he was in the white house, future jones, day lawyer, once in a generation remaking of the federal judiciary. it sounds like biden is also getting judges concerned. certainly not on the supreme c

he ordered his white house counsel, don mcgahn, to get the justice department to prosecute her. according to the new book from journalist peter baker and susan glasser, trump not only repeatedly pressured his attorneys general to prosecute clinton, but told don mcgahn that if they win, he would prosecute her himself as president. and until the white house counsel that had to explain to trump that presidents, no, they cannot prosecute people. that's not how any of this works. donald trump campaigned on it. he tried to do it as president. and here we are, more than a year and a half after he left office and don't trump is still at it. after he's no good, very bad today of legal developments yesterday, trump went on sean hannity show to vent about all the ways in which he has been mistreated. and hear trump tell it last night -- with hillary clinton was accused of, having classified documents in her possession, was so bad, it might have been her emails the fbi was looking for when they swooped down on florida beach club last month. seriously, that is what he said. >> i pointed out

how are more of them not concerned with the kinds of things don mcgahn was concerned with?e that this cult of loyalty around trump is just something that is recalling hard for us to understand because we see so many people fall prey to it. this idea that loyalty is above everything and we know that that is trump's highest value. if you go back and read mary trump's book, which is fascinating. this is really the culture that he was brought up in and one that he creates around him. and it's, i think, partly the need to be loyal, the fear of being ostracized and what that would entail. apparently, for lawyers the fact this could impact their livelihood appears to not enter the equation. i am glad you mentioned the pardon. there is also, i think, this implicit promise of some kind of reward where maybe down the line if they are successful in these efforts that anything they do that transgresses the law will somehow be erased and if you look at trump's history of pardons, what does he pardon for? process crimes. obstruction of justice, perjury, contempt of court. he doesn't beli

spring of 2018, trump instructed don mcgahn to direct jeff sessions to prosecute clinton and comey andey general refused, the president said he would do it himself. and then he compiled a memo to explain how inappropriate it was to use the justice system as a political weapon. >> really turning them into instruments of his personal power. he did not recognize the boundaries that were set up, the constraints and checks in our system. in many cases he did not understand the checks, in fact, when he first came into office in 2017, he literally said to one of his aides that he didn't know that it was congress that had the power to declare war under the constitution. he knew nothing about most things is what a seen the yor official in the white house said to us. but on this specific point about the justice system you see the through line that's early on in the presidency. in 2020 he's saying to bill barr, where are the arrests you want to arrest joe biden, hillary clinton, barack obama. he was all about politicizing these institutions. >> seize voting machines, get the pentagon involved and

lawyers who sometimes sit at the nexus of a lawless president and what the office is supposed to be, don mcgahn found himself in this position, too, are sometimes the one that respond to subpoenas and tell the whole truth. >> yeah, let's forget famously al capone was not taken down for the murders and his racketeering career, but simply on tax violations and it does look like as carol said, doj may be headed to a straight-up fraud violation. you told people you were going to take their money for x and you used it for y, and i'm curious to hear his analysis. this gets complicated, unlike the steve bannon case, where he took money to build a wall and stuck it in his pocket and he converted to personal use. doj is not there yet. you told people you were going going to save america because of a fraud of the baseless allegation that the election was rigged and he actually won, and that's fraudulent, yes, but people lined up to give you up to a million dollars a day at one point, nicole, for this effort because they thought the election was bad. now you moved that money and you're paying legal defens