we re going through a similar dance right now after the president s son pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges drawing a chorus of conservative criticism for a sweet settlement that includes only probation, but now we come to the irs whistleblowers who have been all but ignored by the press and, of course, we have to be cautious about unproven claims. but the new york times, to its credit, broke with the pack by saying it confirmed independently based on a source that a second unnamed irs official claims david weiss, the u.s. attorney in delaware, asked, the oj for special powers to the doj for special powers to pursue the case outside the state and was turned down. whistleblower gary shapley has said he was not the sole decision maker in the case and that he was constrained in the probe. you convinced looking back at this now that this was an effort to protect president biden and his family? there were definitely hindrances that aye never seen before in my 14
buildup. high stakes, mistake or break, you name it. but in this incredibly tight race between two presidents, each of whom casts the other as a danger to democracy, it does seem that the cnn presidential debate in four days might just live up to the hyperbole. let s face it, how many people in america haven t made up their minds between 81-year-old joe biden and 78-year-old donald trump, and which of these two men can exceed those all-important expectationses certified by the presses? if trump did some advanced spin by denigrating cnn s moderators. they thought i would say, no, i don t want to do it because cnn is so, you know, it s fake news. i ll be debating three people instead of one-half of a person. howard: sometimes debates can be decisive, in the first one in 1960, richard a anybodies son had a 5:00 shadow, and jack kennedy looked young and vigorous. sometimes a good zinger can turn the tide with a tense president carter against a relaxed ronald reagan. there you
doors, differences he had with the military, intelligence officials. those people are all beloved by mainstream media and go on and talk about what a fool trump was is and, you know, how blustering and how wrong, and trump wanted to keep some documents that shows, no, they were reckless and war-mongering, and i was fighting them. so i see why he would want to hang on to that evidence. howard: i want to come back to your earlier point. i m not denigrating cnn s scoop, but criminal investigations are supposed to be confidential. the justice department, trust mentioner i used to cover the agency, leaking this, i think, even though it wasn t in the indictment to make donald trump look bad and give tv something more exciting than a partial transcript. yeah. it speaks to the weaponization of the justice department, something house republicans are very animated about and are trying to get to the bottom of. there are a lot of people in this country, a lot of conservatives, who don t think tr
the very forces working against trump. howard: ameshia, you may not agree with the weaponization of government charge, but cnn also broke the story of the partial transcript of the same conversation before donald trump was indicted, so plenty of folks certainly have the impression that the network, like other news outlets, is working hand in glove with doj. i know that cnn is in a ratings war with itself, so at the end of the day with as much as they can break anything and chasing the tail of trump for as long as they possibly can, they re going to leak these. it is very interesting that they come in such quick sequence, and i do think that journalists and other media investigators should, you know, be on alert of that. but also where does this go? again, this is greatly impeding the trial in and of itself and the investigation, but i am more interested in what cnn is up to with with this here. also the fact that they serve to diminish already, i think, lax
faith in our systems of government. howard: right. well, i think what cnn is up to and they probably miss the ratings from when trump was president, also like a lot of organizations, is getting the scoop. and i know a lot of people it might seem like, okay, he says this but the transcript says this, might seem incremental, but the question is did he know he had a classified document, did he show it to somebody, and that s one of the key charges in this indictment. robby, ameshia, thanks so much. why is rfk jr. getting so much media attention? but up next, journalists still struggling to figure out what happened in russia with that short-lived military coup against vladimir putin. so people think they re open. surprise. [ laughs ] [ horn honks, muffled talking ] -can t hear you, jerry. -sorry. uh, yeah, can we get a system where when someone s bike is in the shop, then we could borrow someone else s? -no! -no! or you can get a quote