It’s been quite a week for the Department of Justice.
On Friday, The DOJ dismissed its ridiculous Reflecting Pool “vandalism” case against Olympic Canoeist Davey Hearn. Then, last night, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that he is rescinding Trump’s $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, at the behest of Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) joined Tim Dickinson this morning to react and discuss the Trump Administration’s mishandling of these two issues, in addition to the severe impacts that rampant wildfires will have on the environment and the economy.
Sheldon Whitehouse is a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island. He is the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and also serves as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, among others.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Tim Dickinson
Hi, this is Tim Dickinson for The Contrarian. Our guest today is the Senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse. Senator Whitehouse, welcome.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Thank you, Tim, good to be with you.
Tim Dickinson
If we can dig in on a small story, this case of… Davey Hearn, which I think has really big implications about how the Justice Department and the Trump administration broadly are run. What is your impression of the move by the Justice Department to dismiss this case that should never have been brought?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
I think the prosecutors ran into what lawyers call a Brady problem. A prosecutor is obliged by Supreme Court precedent from the Brady case, hence the name. To disclose any exculpatory information that they have. to a defendant. You can’t hide exculpatory information and prosecute somebody, and a Brady violation is a very big deal. It can be a career killer. So, what happened is that they went forward way too aggressively, based on very incomplete, and perhaps even false. information provided by the Park Police and the Department of Interior. And as they looked more into the case, they started to realize, oh my god, we have a huge Brady problem here. We have all this exculpatory information that we finally dug out. from the Department of Interior, which looks like it tried to hide it from the Department of Justice. And so they dropped that pleading, basically saying, get me out of here, pull the eject button, I’m not gonna end my career over this nonsense. And my take on it is that they were pretty angry. You don’t use words like a “botched installation,” “rushed for political purposes" to meet a July 4th deadline,” unless you are pretty angry that you’ve been put in a box where you actually indicted an American on false information, and took a long time to get the Brady information out. So, they were feeling a real pinch, and they made the choice that saves their careers.
Tim Dickinson
And I think it points to the idea that, you know, the president came up with this, wacky narrative, totally unfounded narrative, that it hadn’t been a botched installation, that had been vandalism, that had, you know, gashed 300 million meters long in the reflecting pool, whatever it was. And so I think it points to the dangers of a personalist regime, where you have the president making up something false, and the Interior Department going along with it, to the extent that just an average citizen, in fact, an American hero, a gold medalist, ends up in the crosshairs and being put through this weaponized, if I may choose a word, prosecution. What does that point to, the dangers of where we are in this political moment, in this moment in our republic?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Well, it points to how weak and pathetic the president’s staff is. You know, at some point, it’s important to be able to go to a president and say, sir, you’re wrong about this, here’s the evidence, you need to stop saying that, because you’re going to get a lot of people in trouble, including yourself. But instead, they all fall like dominoes from the White House staff down to the Secretary of the Interior, Burgum, who jumped on the grenade and said it was all, you know, vandalism himself, to this guy, Lily, who’s the head of the Park Service, who’s right before us for confirmation right now, who dodged and ducked in his testimony about this and acted as if it was all legitimate. You get this cascading collapse of character right down the line, and really along the line, somebody ought to be saying, nope, nope, stop, hold it, you’re wrong about this. But instead, the suck-up-ery It’s so prevalent in this administration that nobody’s willing to do the honest thing.
Tim Dickinson
We’re getting new developments in the Blanche nomination. It sounds like this memo that he put out overnight may satisfy Republican colleagues’ demands, Tillis and Cornyn, that put some limits on the slush fund or revoke it. What is your impression of where things stand in his nomination right now, and have any of your concerns been resolved?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
I think they’ve cut a deal. We’ll see when the vote comes up, but I think they have cut a deal. It’s not much of a deal, in my view. First of all, it requires you to trust Blanche. Who is a demonstrably untrustworthy character. And they could tee up a brand new anti-weaponization fund. They invented this thing in the Department of Justice in a fake proceeding with the Trump plaintiffs. You could regenerate that scenario and do something brand new, and it now wouldn’t be the Anti-Weaponization Fund, it would be the Trump Justice Fund, it would be the, you know, whatever. So, I don’t think there are much… worth believing. The tax amnesty, even though it’s been shrunk. is still completely unjustified, and is only signed by one person, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former lawyer, so that’s not so great either. And then, of course, you have the whole fact behind this, that this is a candidate for Attorney General who would do that stuff. Right? At the end of the day, this is to a significant degree about him. It’s like, okay, we got the burglar to give back the stuff, most of it, some of it, that he burgled. But that doesn’t make him not a burglar. He’s still a burglar. And… you can’t make things right, always, just by… turning in the bad deed that you did. And the final thing is that he’s got this huge mess in Florida, in the manner in which they went about setting up the sleazy Trump family tax fraud amnesty and the sleazy slush fund. And that whole thing is still pending. There’s still an open question whether this guy actually committed fraud on the court.
Tim Dickinson
Well, please, please unpack that for us, because I think it’s important for people to understand, and it’s a little complicated.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah, well, let me start with what fraud on the court is, because it’s not a term you hear very often, because it’s a very rare occasion. Fraud on the court is when an officer of the court, like a lawyer practicing before the court. Does something that is dishonest and breaks the rules of the court. for the purpose of committing an injustice. It’s worse, actually, than contempt of court. And in the history of the Department of Justice, we have looked, there’s never even been an allegation of any senior Department of Justice official committing fraud upon the court. It is… That bad of a charge. Well, in this case, 35 federal judges brought the charge. The judge sitting in the case said, wow, you’ve got something there, let’s reopen the case and take a look. And she did take a look, and she rendered an order that was brutal. for the conduct of the Department of Justice, brutal for the conduct of the Trump lawyers. resulted in one of Trump’s lawyers being referred for bar discipline in Florida, and she sent her decision in the case up to the New York bar, which has authority over Todd Blanche, for them to consider in what I guess are other disciplinary measures that are being, brought with respect to Blanche’s misconduct. So it’s a huge mess. It’s epic in the sense that it’s never happened before. The Department of Justice is ducking around it. One weird thing? In that whole proceeding, despite the fact that the case was Trump versus the United States, the Department of Justice, the IRS, The IRS, the government, the DOJ, nobody ever even filed a pleading. It’s as if they knew it was crooked, and they knew it stank. And they didn’t want to file a pleading that would give the court disciplinary jurisdiction over them. But of course, their conduct behind the scenes still creates a fraud on the court problem, hence the referral to the New York bar. So it’s a deep, deep mess, and it doesn’t go away because they stalled or stopped. the slush fund and reduced the crooked Trump tax fraud amnesty.
Tim Dickinson
Well, it’s just… we’re looking at a Justice Department that stinks from the head down at this point. What are your concerns about the broader implications for where American justice is heading right now?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Well, the terrible thing is that other than the two senators who are not running for re-election, and therefore a little bit free and clear to defy the White House, all of the other Republican senators are lined up with the guy who botched the Epstein files. With the guy who incubated the slush fund. With the guy who gave his former client a huge tax fraud amnesty, with a guy who has run the most criticized, penalized, and incompetent Department of Justice in history, and they’re cool with that because Trump’s the nominee. It’s pathetic.
Tim Dickinson
If I can shift gears a little bit, you’re on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and I know that climate is dear to your heart. I’m here in the Pacific Northwest, where we currently have a near-record wildfire season, and it’s just barely August, with a couple months to go. I think three times the size of your state, Rhode Island, is now in flames in the Pacific Northwest. And this is happening in… France, England’s in drought, Spain’s on fire, and then there’s floods in Texas. We have hell and high water upon us right now, and things are only sort of getting worse. At the same time, the oil companies are reaping record profits, and Trump is preaching energy dominance. Where are we in this difficult summer?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
I think we are headed for a crash. More and more people who have nothing to do with clean energy, nothing to do with environmental activism, but are leaders in the financial community. Our warning that we are headed for a crash. And the crash comes when climate risk makes whole areas of property uninsurable, or uninsurable at any reasonable cost. And when your home is uninsurable. It also, guess what? Just became unmortgageable. So, good luck getting a buyer, unless you’re, like, in Palm Beach and your billionaire is swapping mansions. But for normal people. It’s a huge blow to the value of your home when nobody can get a mortgage to buy it from you any longer. And that cascade is warned by, like, the chief economist for the huge mortgage giant, Freddie Mac. To end up in a significant recession, like 2008, all over again. You’ve got, you know, we had the president of Aeon, the biggest insurer in America, talk to us about it. There’s an amazing editorial piece by a board member of Allianz, the biggest insurance company in the world. Saying, look, when climate makes insurance unavailable, the real estate market crashes, the insurance market crashes, and by the way, big chunks of the financial markets crash, we are headed for a really, really dangerous place economically. And nobody’s paying attention to this, nobody’s preparing for this, because the fossil fuel propaganda machine is still cranking out all of its crap. They’ve thoroughly corrupted the Trump administration, they’ve heavily corrupted the Republican Party in Congress, and so there are very few voices talking about this in politics, and very few people listening to the knowledgeable voices that are making these warnings. So, I think we’re headed to a real calamity. One last little factoid: the head of the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, testified in the Banking Committee earlier this year. That there were going to be whole regions of the country Where you couldn’t get a mortgage any longer because you couldn’t get insurance any longer, which made them largely unbankable as well, and risked a banking problem in the United States, and there’s something called the International Financial Stability Board that has put out a warning to the global banking system, saying, look out, here it comes. So, we have all of these warnings about a looming crash. Because we haven’t coped with climate risk, and it is real, it’s not going away, it’s actually changing the way properties are valued, and nobody’s doing anything about it because of the filthy grip of the fossil fuel industry, and its climate denial fraud operation, and its dark money corruption operation.
Tim Dickinson
I haven’t heard anyone articulate that. I’ve studied climate for a long time, but this intersection that you’re pointing to is between the climate crisis and a potential real financial crisis that could stagger the American economy…
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah, it’s widely warned of now. It’s widely warned in the insurance industry. It’s been warned of by the former risk chief at Goldman Sachs. It’s been warned of by the current Prime Minister of Canada, who used to run the Bank of England. I mean, these are pretty serious people out there. And, like I said, they’re not there to be green, they’re there because they’re financial. experts, and the warnings are all aligned, and then you go look at Florida, And it’s actually happening. The Florida insurance market is teetering, if not completely sham. It’s harder and harder to find mortgages in Florida. The only way you get one is by dumping the mortgage to Fannie and Freddie, so taxpayers take the risk, and Florida is now leading the country in lost property values. So, you look through that cascade from climate risk, to insurance collapse, to mortgage collapse, to property value collapse, to crash, and Florida’s already four steps down.
Tim Dickinson
Wow. I’m conscious of our time. I wanted to look forward a little bit with the Senate and the funding of the government. What can you tell us? I understand there’s a deal that’s been being brokered about funding the government through the election? What can you tell us about that?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah, I’m, I’m getting off this to get in the car, to get on a plane, to get down to Washington to get a briefing on how what’s been done, but I think the Republicans finally came to their senses about a continuing resolution that will fund the government and push it back a few months so that Republicans and Democrats can negotiate a proper deal. And, I think that may also start to free up the national defense bill, because that was stalled, because nobody would agree on the appropriations numbers. But if what they have done is that Republicans and Democrats have agreed on the top line, that’s always the key first step. and then you go down to the different subcommittee chairs on appropriations, and they get their numbers from the top line, and now they fill in the laws, the appropriations, up to the amount that they’ve been authorized by the top line agreement. So getting that top line agreement is central, and when so much of it is defense stuff. We couldn’t go to the defense bill until we had this agreement on the appropriations bill, so a lot might start to move, not immediately, we have to get through the original vote first, but, by… in this Congress, and it makes the chance of a shutdown, way, way, way, way less.
Tim Dickinson
Well, in the couple minutes we have left, I just wanted to open it up. What’s top of mind today as you’re thinking about the country?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Well, I think, the… nice thing that we’re seeing, is that across the country, people are starting to catch on to the fact that Trump sold them a bill of goods. That he said there wouldn’t be wars, and he went off and had this crazy adventure in Iran. He said he’d make life more affordable, and in fact, he’s driving up costs everywhere he can. People have been had, and they’re starting to realize that independents are turning hard away from Trump. There’s a significant MAGA cohort that has basically decided that they’re done with him. So, it’s reassuring that the American people seem to be catching on. I’ll close with one last scam, if you don’t mind. Please. This whole Trump business of attacking clean energy. You know, they’d like to say it’s because he hates windmills. No, it’s not because he hates windmills. It’s because clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy. And so when you bring clean energy onto the grid, offshore wind, onshore wind, solar, it runs first. Because every grid runs the cheapest stuff first, and then as demand goes up, they go up what they call their generation stack to more and more expensive units. So that means all of the clean energy would displace fossil fuel units. So when you block it, two things happen. One, you raise costs for Americans on their electric bills by literally billions of dollars. And two, those excess billions extracted from American consumers go straight to Trump’s big, corrupt, fossil fuel donors. It is a massive money pump out of people’s pockets to pay off his big, crooked fossil fuel donors. And that’s the story, I think, that’s worth telling, and I think we’ll get it out there before the election so people understand they’ve been had by this guy.
Tim Dickinson
One small follow-up. The election certainly looks like it’s blowing in Democrats’ favor. These efforts to push through the SAVE Act, which of course would massively disenfranchise women, minorities, people who don’t have passports, proper identification. And it seems that there’s a piecemeal effort to try and drib and drab this through. Do you think that those efforts are going to have any luck in the Senate?
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
I don’t. I don’t see it happening. I think that the senators, frankly, don’t want to spend time on this. They want to spend time doing one of two things. The Republican senators want to spend time home. where people aren’t putting a microphone in their faces in Washington asking about the last crazy thing that Trump did. home where they can campaign, where they can make the election more about them and less about Trump and Republicans in general, since the brand is damaged. and home where they can talk about the things that people are concerned about, which is, like, why stuff costs so much, rather than be chasing rabbits, like the SAVE Act. Or the slush fund, around Washington for Trump. It just isn’t the topic that people care about right now. And of course, Trump makes a mess of it for them by saying the quiet part out loud, that this is how we corrupt the election.
Tim Dickinson
Well, Senator Whitehouse, thank you so much for your time. It’s great to always have you on The Contrarian.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Thanks, good to be on. Contrarian does great work.
