With Bondi out, who will be the next U.S. Attorney General? Yes, Todd Blanche—Deputy Attorney General and previous personal lawyer for Trump—is filling the role in the interim, but it’s clear he won’t last much longer since MAGA loyalist Lee Zeldin appears to be a top contender.
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) joins Jen to mull over the impending transition while being in the thick of Trump’s illegal war. Plus, the two discuss the uphill battle to fully heal relationships with our international allies, the possibility of FBI Director Kash Patel being pushed out next, and how we are learning a harsh lesson in fossil fuel dependence.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse represents Rhode Island in the U.S. Senate, where he champions policies to uphold American leadership in the world, protect our planet in a changing climate, and hold the powerful accountable.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. Delighted to have back with us Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island. Welcome, Senator.
Sheldon Whitehouse
Thank you, Jen. Wonderful to be with you.
Jen Rubin
Lovely to see you again. Pam Bondi was shown the door. As of this taping, we don’t know who the replacement is going to be. It’s going to be someone who’s going to do Trump’s bidding, no doubt. What kind of questions do you think Democrats should be asking the nominee to replace her?
Sheldon Whitehouse
Well, before we get past Bondi being shown the door, let me add that I think Kash Patel stands a very good chance of being shown the door next. He has the airplane issue that Noem had. He’s a little bit DOJ’s Lewandowski, the junior troublemaker who should go with the boss. The partying and all the rest of it. He’s a bumbler and isn’t good when he has to get involved in an investigation. He usually blunders in fairly obvious ways, but the key thing is that he’s gonna have to be deposed and testify under oath, subject to examination by real lawyers, in cases brought by the FBI agents who he fired, allegedly illegally.
And that’s going to be an ugly, ugly scenario that any incoming Attorney General would just assume not have to deal with. So it’s a chance for Blanche to clean that particular part of the slate. So whoever’s gonna come in and replace, Bondi, you know, it’s hard to know, because the job has demands from Trump. That are completely incompatible. With the duties of the office. And so, you can make… a, nominee say things. In the committee that you know, the nominee knows, everybody in the room knows, are complete and utter bullshit. They’re just the formalities of what needs to be said about, you know, impartial justice, blah blah blah, when everybody knows that with Trump, the deal is you have to do everything he asks, no matter how much trouble it gets you into, because that’s the price of getting the fancy job.
Yeah, I think that the questioning that I’m looking forward to is about, whether the Department of Justice will acknowledge that it should investigate where there are threats against federal judges. Behind the utterer of the threat, the person who was on the phone making the call. Obviously, that person should be investigated, but very often, the pattern of threats looks like it’s orchestrated. And I would not be surprised if the callers are curated on X, or by Laura Loomer, to be the kind of people in such a state of anger and resentment that when they’re provoked when the goods are delivered by Elon Musk, or by Laura Loomer, or by the Vice President, or the President, they will reliably go into call-up-and-make-threats mode.
And if you’re not investigating behind the utterer of a threat where there’s a conspiracy or orchestration or solicitation, you’re not doing your jobs. And judges know that. Judges know what a proper investigation looks like, because they see the trial that happens at the end of a proper investigation. So, for federal judges to see that… conflict. between Pam Bondi and the MAGA DOJ’s requirement that you not investigate the right-wing folks running the threat apparatus, while at the same time you’re the federal judge on the receiving end. of the threat apparatus. That leaves a pretty big hole to, drive trucks through during a nomination hearing.
Jen Rubin
Indeed. Now, although she is gone, she is not necessarily absolved of her obligation to testify about the Epstein files, and that is still pending over in the House. In addition to that, depending upon who is nominated, that’s another opportunity to discuss with that person. Whether, for example, the government has complied with the law, which says all the files, and you waive the objections. What do you want to know about the handling of the Epstein files, and frankly, the treatment of Ms. Maxwell, who now sits in a cushy cell with apparently a dog and, White glove treatment.
Sheldon Whitehouse
Yeah, there’s a lot that’s still pending about the Epstein files. There’s the work that Mr. Sullenberger did to get access to the 302s about the agent interviews of the young woman who said that she had been physically and sexually assaulted by Donald Trump when she was about 14. And why those didn’t turn up? And then when they did turn up, they said, oh, they were, pulled out as duplicative, but that was a mistake. Well, like, oh, really? How convenient that in four 302s the three that mentioned Trump are the three that get pulled out as duplicative, not the whole set. And then behind the FBI 302, which is the agent summary, written up formally of the, interview.
There’s also the interview notes, and those pages are still missing. Some people have seen them, and they’ve been generally described, but they have not been released yet. Then you’ve got the photo that Michael Wolf has repeatedly said he was shown by Jeffrey Epstein that shows Trump With half-naked young girls, with him around a pool, probably in Palm Beach. They are topless and young. So, like, there’s all this stuff.
At least at one point was out there that now needs to be completely brought to light. So there’s… there’s a lot to dig into with the Epstein files. The other thing to dig into is the financial transactions involved. Despite what a clever person Kash Patel is. He did not seem to be able to conclude from a document called a Suspicious Activity Report, that there was suspicious activity, in those reports that might have been something he should investigate.
And it’s that financial piece that helps connect to the triangle that I’ve talked about. It isn’t just Trump-Epstein. It’s Trump, Russia, Epstein. And the fact that so much of Epstein’s financial trail, the suspicious activity reports, lead back into Russia and to Russian banks, and sanctioned banks, and Russian accounts. None of that has been explored at all by the FBI or the DOJ under the MAGA leadership.
Jen Rubin
Well, it’s going to be a eventful hearing. Somehow I suspect that Todd Blanche will not be getting the job, because he would be especially vulnerable, but one Lee Zeldin might get the job. Now, you know Mr. Zeldin, because he is the EPA Administrator. What do you think of him?
Sheldon Whitehouse
He is, completely gone over to Trumpism. During his hearing, he actually put on a pretty good case that he was legit and for real and would honestly undertake the responsibilities of the EPA administrator. And of course, the instant he was through his confirmation, he has been a complete disaster, corrupt to the teeth. And, completely beholden to whatever the fossil fuel industry wants, irrespective of, you know, how much it pollutes, to the point that he stopped counting the harm of health pollution from emissions from power plants. He just said, we’re not going to count that any longer. You have to do a cost-benefit analysis, the EPA administrator, so he would throw in all the benefits of jobs and whatever that came with the power plant running, but he refused to look at or count, he treated as zero the known health harms of mercury, of particulate emissions, of all of that.
So you know that the guy’s a complete sellout, which would be the reason for his getting appointed. The other thing that’s interesting, though, is that in one of his cases. He did a lot of things that clearly violate DOJ protocol. There was a fake criminal investigation that was stood up To find an excuse to seize obligated funds that had gone out to a bank to hold for recipients that Congress had sent out to, clean energy projects and, you know, safety projects from storms and so forth. Around the country. And Zeldin kept calling that a fraud operation. He kept accusing the participants, the recipients of this, as being involved in fraud. Well if, in fact, you have a criminal investigation going, you actually are not allowed to smear the subjects of the criminal investigation willy-nilly out in the media.
You confine yourself to what you plead in court. That’s kind of prosecutor Rules 101. And instead, he went running all around Fox News saying how this was fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, when at the end of the day, what was fraud was the notion that this was a criminal investigation. It was part of Ed Martin’s corrupt maneuvering as the DC U.S. Attorney. So Zeldin is tied up in all of that nonsense as well. He’s not a decent or plausible choice in any rational world I suspect never having prosecuted anything.
Jen Rubin
Yes, well, in addition to that, so he makes, for the perfect nominee, perhaps. Let’s, shift gears a bit from domestic crime to international crime. And it’s not really a shift, because, of course, international crimes, international law is embodied in American law through the Constitution. Our treaty obligations and so on are part of American law. The president on Sunday, in addition to some profanity and strange remarks about Allah, threatened war crimes by any definition. And he did so, I believe, again today. What’s your reaction to that? And what’s the appropriate response from Congress, if at all, to this?
Sheldon Whitehouse
Well, the appropriate response from Congress is to demand to exercise the rights the Constitution gives to Congress. To be the entity where the decision to declare war is made. And this has now gone well through being some sort of, you know, minor incursion that is within the executive authority to make without consulting with Congress. And, so the president needs to be able to make his case. I don’t think he will be able to do that.
I think there’s huge Republican resentment building up of the way this is going. Very much divides the caucus. Between people like Lindsey Graham, who are all for war, war, and more war, and people like John Curtis, who went on Twitter recently to say, hey, not so fast, no money. for the Defense Department without having come to Congress for a proper declaration of war. Follow the Constitution here, folks. So that’s kind of the obvious place to begin. I think the other piece that we can do is to try to reassure NATO allies and other allies that whatever crazy things Trump might get up to. He really doesn’t represent the United States of America. He really doesn’t represent the United States Congress.
Most people, including most Republicans in the Senate, support these alliances, understand that they’re good for our economy and our safety, they’re good for trade, and they’ve been what made… what helped make, you know, the last century, the American century. You know, from sort of World War II, MacArthur rebuilding Japan and Asia, and the Marshall Plan rebuilding Europe, and the NATO alliance, and the Atlantic Alliance all coming together, that has been foundational. And Trump kicks relentlessly at those foundations.
He takes the side of Vladimir Putin against NATO, and against the Ukrainian freedom fighters who NATO is supporting. So, all of that does huge damage to America’s national security interests. And if the Europeans were to think that the whole country has been just taken over with Trumpism, and that’s the way we are now, I think it would be really dangerous. So I think it’s very helpful when members of Congress go to things like the Munich Security Conference, travel, speak to our allies, and point out that Trump is aberrational in this respect.
Jen Rubin
Well as, I think President Biden found out, the question for the Europeans is always, okay, so we get four good years, and then what happens? Once he’s come and then come back again, the, prospect of. erratic bouncing back and forth between normal America and Trump America looms large.
Sheldon Whitehouse
As glad as the Europeans are going to be to have America bac, and as quickly as most of the relationship will heal in a relationship in which one spouse has punched the other, you may heal, but never completely. You will still be the spouse that punched, and no matter what you do to help and cure and heal and recover and improve yourself. The punch will never go away, and what we’ve done will never go away.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. I would come back to an aspect of the war that you’re very familiar with, and that is the energy situation. Donald Trump, for years, has told us, if we just drill till our brain’s fallout. And we become energy independent. Everything will be fine. We’ve seen that, of course, the energy markets are global, and that what happens in the Strait of Hormuz matters a lot to energy prices here.
Sheldon Whitehouse
Well, let’s be clear about one thing, Jen. That’s fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuel energy jumps around like crazy. Clean domestic energy from wind and solar does not.
Jen Rubin
And that’s where I was going. What, lesson do you think this should drive home, even if it’s lost on Donald Trump, about our energy sources, about these sources of clean energy that Donald Trump has tried to stop. How many times has he gone after the wind farms? And talk a little bit about why, again, this is a national security issue, not just an energy and economic issue.
Sheldon Whitehouse
Well, people need to understand that fossil fuel energy independence is not a possible thing. It cannot exist. There is no way in which that can be true, because The prices for fossil fuel energy are set internationally. They’re set by a cartel made up of a lot of countries who do not love America and do not have our interests at heart. And the American oil industry, even where a gallon of gas has been drilled, piped, refined, trucked, and sold at the pump in the United States of America. They will still raise the price of that gallon because of something that happened in Ukraine, or something that happened in the Straits of Hormuz, because they can. They can never be trusted to exert price independence. They won’t do it, they will always play the international pricing game.
So, both for reasons of the nature of the market, and because the fossil fuel folks cannot be trusted, there’s just no way you get energy independence with fossil fuel. You do get energy independence with wind and solar, because they are right here. They don’t go through the Straits of Hormuz, they don’t have an OPEC that can raise prices domestically, because a bunch of, you know, Gulf state potentates decided it was time. So, we really are in an energy independence mode when we’re operating as a clean energy provider. And the last thing that I’ll say about this is that the big lie that the Trump administration tells is that they’re protecting people’s pocketbooks by trying to assert energy dominance, by which they mean fossil fuel dominance.
As the efforts to shut down the offshore wind farm off Rhode Island proved. The offshore wind off Rhode Island is going to come onto our grid at 9 cents per kilowatt hour. We know that because it’s in the contract. The average price for the grid is 18 cents per kilowatt hour. So it’s half-price energy, lowering costs for everybody in our region who is served by that grid. And yet. the Trump administration will say, oh, we can’t have that expensive fossil fuel, that expensive, offshore wind. So, why are they lying? They’re lying because they are the servants of fossil fuel, and fossil fuel’s disinformation campaign needs to pretend because they have a big megaphone to yell through, that it’s actually less expensive. When it isn’t, all you have to do is go to any grid, and you look at what they call the generation stack, you know, the different units that get called up at different levels of demand, and they always run the less expensive stuff first. And guess what that means? That means they’re always running the solar and the wind first.
And so when all that solar and wind moves in. It displaces expensive fossil fuel units. They don’t get run any longer. They don’t set the price on the grid any longer. They actually don’t make as much money any longer, and that’s the big tell. What the Trump administration is doing is raising electricity prices across the country by depriving grids of clean energy so that all of that extra ratepayer money That comes in at higher rates. Can be flowed through to their big fossil fuel donors, who are running the plants that get now called up because of the dearth of clean energy. It’s a scam.
Jen Rubin
And that seems to be a very good topic that more Democrats should be talking about, since we’re all about affordability, and we are in a war in which all of this is being displayed.
Sheldon Whitehouse:
When the cost problem has that added, fact of corruption as well, it is particularly aggravating to voters. It’s one thing to have your costs go up and be aggravated about what that means for your budget. It’s worse when you know that’s being done to you on purpose to send your money to Trump’s big fossil fuel donors.
Jen Rubin
And next time, we can even talk about homeowners insurance and the problem that that has created. But we will save that for another day, Senator. As always, it is a pleasure, and we’ll look forward whenever those Senate confirmation hearings are for, Pam Bondi, 2.0. So thanks so much for being with us.
Sheldon Whitehouse
Thanks so much, Jen. Thanks for all your great work.
