Transcription
Joining us, Hofstra University law professor James Sample. MSNOW senior White House HIGH COBB WARNED LAST NIGHT THAT THAT WAS A PREDICATE FOR DONALD TRUMP TO DECLARE A NATIONAL EMERGENCY. WHAT REPORTING DO YOU HAVE?
Three and a half months from the midterm elections, the President of the United States told the American public that their voting machines and systems were a threat of being manipulated, and their elections effectively being taken over by hostile foreign actors. And I had a conversation with a source within the administration earlier this week, before the president publicly made that assertion, that this was intelligence, Katie, that the president had been presented by his intelligence agencies back in 2025, that the White House specifically, including Susie Wiles, were presented this information. And yet, fast forward, it's no longer 2025. It's July of 2026, three and a half months. It took for the president to go and make this declaration public.
And the reason why this is significant, is the fact that the president has effectively gutted CISA, the main cybersecurity agency within the Department of Homeland Security, that works to ensure the security of voting systems at the state and local level. And just today, Mark Wayne Mullen, the DHS secretary, threatened states that don't turn over their voter rolls, that they're not going to get any federal resources to help with their elections. And so essentially, the president is setting up, Katie, out of his speech last night, a potential of declaring a national emergency or some means in which he tries to justify the federal government potentially trying to handle the elections in the states based off of what he set up was a national security threat posed by foreign actors.
So can he do that? He can try, but legally speaking, the answer to that is absolutely not. And the reason I say that the reason is absolutely not, Katie. It actually goes to a different president, Truman, not Trump. And this takes a second. So I want you to bear with me. But 1952 Korean War, there's a threatened steel strike and Truman wants to seize the steel mills, because in the middle of wartime, losing the ability to produce steel is a very serious matter. He declares a national emergency and wants to seize the steel mills in order to put them into work. In THE SUPREME COURT SAYS, IN AN OPINION THAT IT REMAINS A LANDMARK TO THIS DAY, AN OPINION BY JUSTICE ROBERT JACKSON, SETS OUT A THREE-PART TEST FOR WHAT A PRESIDENT CAN DO MERELY BY DECLARING A NATIONAL EMERGENCY.
And the test is simple. It is based around the relationship between Congress and the president. Have Congress been silent on the question? Is Congress IS CONGRESS SUPPORTIVE OF THE QUESTION OR HAS CONGRESS SPOKEN AGAINST THE ACTION THAT THE PRESIDENT WANTS TO TAKE? THE PRESIDENT HERE IS TRYING TO IN ESSENCE PASS THE SAVE AMERICA ACT WITHOUT CONGRESS. THAT PUTS THE PRESIDENT at his lowest ebb of power. He does not have the power to relocate constitutional authority that exists in the legislature. The word emergency is not a get out of I had three examples there. What is this Congress doing? This Congress has rejected the SAVE Act repeatedly, as we know. So that would put President Trump declaring an emergency and trying to do any of these things at his lowest level of potential power vis-a-vis declaring an emergency doesn't solve that.
So if he tries to declare it, I'm trying to get the logistics here. If he tries to declare it, what happens then? I assume there'll be lawsuits. Is there an injunction? Does the Supreme Court get immediately involved? What is the process? There would be injunctive relief immediately. There would be lawsuits. There are lawsuits that are being prepared for this eventuality or hypothetical eventuality. Right now, the lawsuits are already prepared and ready to go. Could it happen fast enough before Donald Trump started trying to seize voting machines or whatever it would look like to declare a national emergency? He could declare the emergency. It doesn't change the fact that declaring an emergency. We have statutes, a national emergencies act, IEPA, which was the statute at issue in the tariff space. Think about IEPA as a perfect example. It certainly applies to foreign monetary policy. It applies to lots of things, but international emergency economic policy, right? The Supreme Court said the word tariffs isn't in the STATUTE, THE WORD TAXES IS IN THE STATUTE. YOU KNOW IT'S NOT IN ANY EMERGENCY ACT, ANY EMERGENCY STATUTE. ELECTIONS? THE WORD ELECTIONS. HE HAS NO AUTHORITY TO ASSERT EXECUTIVE POWER OVER ELECTIONS.
And the reason here, Katie, is simple. The framers of the Constitution didn't omit that emergency power accidentally. They were very aware of what an executive who had control over elections could do. Well, that's heartening. All right, let's talk about what the president tried to claim last night. He presented a lot of intelligence, declassified stuff, tried to make it sound like it was big and relevant revelatory that this was information that was being kept from the American public. Michael, did you see that? No, not at all. What I saw the president do was a subtle but very manipulative maneuver. I don't know if it was of his own volition or because his advisors set him up for this, but he fundamentally allited the difference between raw intelligence and a finished analytic conclusion.
The intelligence community collects hundreds of thousands of data points any given day from human sources, from signals intelligence, from environmental variables, from more sectors than you could possibly imagine. And not all of that is evaluated and not everything that is evaluated turns out to be true. But because it's been collected, it ends up in a file somewhere in the CIA or NSA or FBI. And what we saw last night was the release of a lot of unverified allegations. And what I strongly suspect is also there that he did not release, and I'm saying this based on the conclusions his own government drew in the final month of his first term, what he didn't release is all the information and conclusions that the government has contradicting those allegations. This was selective declassification of unfounded rumors and accusations that have no evidence backing them up. And let's be clear, this is why he installed people like Bill Pulte and Kash Patel and John Ratcliffe in their positions. They've shown time and time again they're willing to engage in this sort of behavior. So we're unfortunately at the point where the THE PRESIDENT AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ARE LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY OMISSION.
I mean, I have the intelligence document in front of me, the declassified intelligence document. You're talking about what what was left out and cherry-picked, I'll give you a big one. We assess that Russia is using a range of measures, primarily to denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia establishment. For example, it's directing or encouraging proxies to spread claims about Vice President Biden. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social media more broadly. Moscow's efforts seek to amplify social discord in the U.S. and undermine Washington's global standing. There's also this other foreign actors, a range of other foreign actors have expressed preference for the outcome of the election. We have reporting on a few that have either considered or taken steps to attempt to covertly influence U.S. voters, presidential candidates, or U.S. politics surrounding the election. That includes Turkey, Turkish officials. The president has been glowing about Erdogan and Turkey of late, just leaving the G20 summit there the other day.
Hannah, besides the contradictions in what was presented last night on paper and what Donald Trump tried to present to the American public, there is an inherent contradiction in the actions that he's taken. He's accepted the primary results so far this year. He's talking about rigged elections and vulnerable elections and elections that Americans can't trust, they can't be validated, he's implying. And yet, Ken Paxton is somebody that he's happy to and he's happy to be a candidate. He lost his primary to a Trump picked candidate, same with Bill Cassidy in Louisiana. He's had no problem accepting those results. Why should we, why should we believe this administration is suddenly oh so worried today? That contradiction is so obvious it's almost hard to talk about. What about the 2024 election? You didn't mention that. He doesn't talk about that election, but he talks obsessively about the 2020 election. So what happened? Like all the machines got fixed in 2024, but they were broken in 2020. I mean, the argument really does not hang together.
The one thing we haven't talked about yet is the power of the states. Inherently, as many people have said, the president has limited powers that exist. The executive branch has limited powers over elections for a reason, but the states don't. And one big change between 2020 and now is that a lot of election deniers, election skeptics, whatever you want to call them, have risen to power in states like Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, a lot of swing states. And also Stephen Miller's legal group is filing challenges in a lot of these states about very specific things, like the voting machines and drop boxes and all that kind of stuff. And all of this is preceding the argument to say, oh, the results are null and void. If we lose, the results are null and void. So they're not just addressing this at the executive level. They're also addressing this at the state level around the country, but especially in swing I DON'T THINK THEY'RE GOING TO DECLARE THEM NULL AND VOID. DOES THAT MEAN VOTES DON'T GET CERTIFIED? DOES THAT RESULT IN ANOTHER RIOT? IF THE COURTS ARE GOING TO GET INVOLVED, AS JAMES WAS I DON'T THINK IT'S GOING TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL AND WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE AND WHAT HAPPENS? ONE OF THESE PEOPLE CAN CORRECT ME. I don't think we've been there yet. I mean, in Georgia, there was a famous call with Brad Raffensperger, who was then the secretary of state, where Donald Trump said, find me those 11,000-something votes. And Raffensperger said No. However, there was recount after recount and investigation. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations got involved. There were several, you know, there's a hand recount. There was a machine recount. And yet he still doesn't accept the results of that election. So so I'm not sure, but he hasn't overturned the results of the Georgia election. So maybe someone else on the panel who's a legal expert can help me out. Have we ever been at WHERE THE PRESIDENT ACTUALLY DECLARED AN ELECTION WHILE ON VOID. JAMES. THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION.