February 25 – The Democratic Memo Rebutting Nunes; The Breakdown of Bipartisanship in Intelligence Oversight; Supreme Court Poised to Break Unions and Defund Democrats

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo and speak with Robert Litt, the former General Counsel for the Director of National Intelligence who is now with Morrison and Foerster National Security and Global Risk and Crisis Management Practices. He joins us to discuss whether our intelligence agencies will continue to confide in Congress and the increasing pressure that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is bringing to bear on Paul Manafort whose business partner Rick Gates is now cooperating with Mueller. We assess whether Manafort will break under the mounting pressure of spending decades in prison or hang tough and fall on this sword for Trump in the hope of a presidential pardon and examine the reasons why Rick Gates lied to Mueller as recently as February 1^st after his proffer to make a deal in an apparent attempt to cover up for the Kremlin-friendly Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who Gates met with but lied about the 2013 meeting.

Part 2

Then we look further into the Democratic memo from the Minority Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and the extent to which it reflects the total breakdown of an oversight committee that was traditionally bi-partisan. Loch Johnson, the Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia who served as staff director of the Senate Committee on Intelligence and is the author of a new book just out, “Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States”, joins us. We discuss Trump’s Republican enablers apparent willingness to destroy the DOJ and FBI in order to cover up for Trump and distract the public from the Russia investigation.   

Part 3

Then finally we look into the Janus v. AFSCME case before the Supreme Court on Monday which could strike a major blow to public sector unions and dry up Democratic Party funding before the 2018 midterm elections. With Janus predicted to win the case thanks to Neil Gorsuch, we speak with labor expert and University of California, Berkeley professor Dr. Harley Shaiken, about how this conservative assault could set a precedent for workers’ invocation of the First Amendment to essentially free-ride on unions without having to pay dues as well as further limiting workers bargaining rights, like the restrictions Scott Walker passed in Wisconsin in 2011.