Briefings

Background Briefing: October 14, 2021

On By gram

 

Trump Faces a Deposition as Bannon Defies a House Subpoena

We begin with Trump having to face a deposition on Monday and Bannon defying a House subpoena today setting in motion several steps in a process to eventually have him held for criminal contempt and possibly at the end of the day outfitted with an orange jumpsuit. Joining us is Harry Litman, a former United States Attorney and deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department now a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego and the Executive Producer & host of the Talking Feds podcast and a legal affairs columnist at the Los Angeles Times where his latest article is “The Jan. 6 House Select Committee is the last, best hope against GOP lies.” We discuss how slow the process has been in bringing justice to those traitors who stormed the Capitol in a coup attempt and when will those insurrectionists in suits and ties further up the chain at the DOJ and the White House and in the Congress itself, be held to account.

 

The Resistance Movement of the Rationals Against the Radical in the GOP

Then we examine the resistance movement of the rationals against the radicals in the GOP and Trump’s bizarre call on his followers not to vote in 2022 and 2024 and speak with Miles Taylor, the Co-Founder of the Renew America Movement, a coalition of over 150 members and former members of the Republican Party calling for strengthening the rule of law and restoring government ethics. Having served as chief of staff for Kirstjen Nielsen, the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration, in 2018, he wrote an anonymous op-ed for the New York Times providing eyewitness insight into White House chaos, administration instability, and the people working to keep Donald Trump’s reckless impulses in check. His subsequent book, a New York Times best seller, is A Warning, and he has an article at the Washington Post, “We Are Republicans. There’s Only One Way to Save Our Party From Pro-Trump Extremists.”

 

Iran Stalls the Nuclear Talks as it Moves Closer to a Nuclear Weapon Israel Will Not Tolerate

Then finally we speak with an expert on Iran, Nader Hashemi, the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver about threats from Israel that it not just has the “right”, but a “responsibility” to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Since Iran is refusing to negotiate to revive the stalled indirect nuclear talks with the U.S., the French Foreign Minister is warning the situation has reached “a crisis at a critical moment” since Iran is creating facts on the ground as it gets closer to a bomb which Israel will not tolerate.